Educators have research and data that helps to guide their professional recommendations, but parents have a quiet little “voice”. That voice speaks to us to identify concerns, to confirm our intuition, and to protest when we know something is wrong. Our youngest daughter was identified at birth with multiple disabilities. Physicians told us that she would never be able to dress herself, manage her self-care, or engage in typical childhood experiences, but our little voices

For parents and teachers, the focus of attending school is for learning important conceps that will prepare children for their future, but if you asked a student what they care most about at school, they will tell you that it is their "friends". For many students forming those meaningful relationships is as hard as their academic studies. While there are not specific subjects whose focus is on friendship development, if a student lacks the intuitive ability to build those r

Student achievement is measured in a variety of ways, but both parents and students rely heavily on grades to inform them on how things are going at school. Grading is a "summative" measure that is determined at the end of a grading period, when it is often too late to affect changes to the student's performance. In order to work more collaboratively with your students and their teachers, developing an ongoing communication process will allow parents the opportunity to inte

Everyone leads busy lives, so how can parents and teachers stay in touch with each other? Communicating with your children's teachers goes well beyond parent/teacher conferences, consider these other communicative opportunities to stay connected: Most teachers maintain a website, find out when new information is posted As homework support, many teachers post explanatory videos on YouTube Share with your children's teachers the best way to stay in touch, whether phone calls, a