Nine Steps to Better Connections with Parents
Scott Reed, 2010 Golden Apple Award winner
Scott Reed shares nine parent-centered strategies that he has been using and improving for the past years to better establish connections among parents, students, and himself. One step describes the exciting, intricate process of creating an event for Family Physics Nights (Phamily Physics Phun). Science teachers, especially, will be inspired by the way Scott encourages his students and their families to have ongoing conversations that foster academic and skill-building experiences at home. Scott’s classroom environment also thrives from this positive approach.
It is through the National Board process that Scott was inspired to improve the ways of involving and partnering with his students' parents and families. (See the standards, specifically Standard XII.) Scott uses the strategies included here with his junior/senior physics classrooms at all academic levels, but each step can be adapted to many levels of education. With a shared passion for the pursuit of enhanced scientific understandings, Scott and his students are daily empowered by this process.
Scott adds: “Please note that I do not believe that this is the set formula for connecting with parents; instead, it is what has worked very well in my classroom. In fact, the strategies are continually being reconsidered, refreshed, and renewed every year. In sharing this resource, I hope that you might find at least one additional strategy that can be used in your classroom, or hopefully you might at least be able to tweak something that you already do so that you can strengthen your relationships with your students and their parents.”
Scott Reed, a 2010 Golden Apple Fellow, has been exploring physics side-by-side with his amazingly talented students at Niles North High School since 1997. In 2005, the students of Niles North named him Teacher of the Year, and in 2007, Scott was recognized as a Golden Apple Teacher of Distinction (TOD), where he helped found the very successful Annual Golden Apple Teachers of Tomorrow Conference in 2009. (For more information about this conference, please email TeacherTomorrow@gmail.com.) Scott received his National Board Certification in Science AYA in 2007, and has served as a National Board coordinator in his building and as a regional facilitator ever since.