Parents should embrace technology when communicating with teachers
Aug 18, 2014, 7:44 PM | Updated: 7:46 pm
PHOENIX — For parents, speaking with teachers is completely different than how it was when they were in school.
The same goes for teachers and the role they play in educating students, especially when it comes to both the Internet and parents who could be described as “nosy” or even “confrontational.”
“We always want the parent to be an advocate for their kid,” Tony Britton, guidance counselor at Desert Edge High School in Goodyear, Ariz., told News/Talk 92.3 KTAR’s Mac & Gaydos Monday.
But even Britton admitted that the landscape between the teacher and parent has changed.
“It has shifted a little bit…it used to be the teacher was always right (and) the parent would back it,” he explained. “Today, we’re seeing that with children being more and more mature and having more access to information that they’re definitely not always in the wrong.”
Britton said that in the past, parents would get a phone call from the teacher, at best, but otherwise, they mostly had to make a special trip down to the school. With more and more schools and teachers using the Internet, Britton advised parents to use other means of contacting the teacher first to help keep heads cool and facts straight.
“Email allows me an opportunity to put my ducks in a row, so when I get back to the parent, I’m not leaving something out or they’re not leaving with an incomplete answer,” he said.
He added that the school districts and individual schools also have websites with additional ways to contact teachers.
