The Missing Link: Building & Nurturing Teacher-Parent Relationships

Join forces with classroom technology to empower your student

Indian parents tend to view education as their child’s job. This makes sense – their generation was often the first one to experience significant social mobility, with access to more luxuries like FMCG goods and westernised modes of living in urban centres. It’s no wonder that these amenities seem fleeting to them. It must feel like they could so easily lose it all. Education is the one aspect under their control that will ensure that their children will continue to at least maintain the standard of living they grew up in, if not reach new heights.

This is likely why Indian culture tends to place such a high value on education. From working long hours to save for higher education to actively monitoring their child’s performance in school, Indian parents are very highly involved in their child’s schooling and committed to ensuring they have the best possible options for a bright future.

An interesting point to note here, however, is that this drive seems to be confined to the two-way street of a parent-child relationship. Beyond trying their hardest to ensure that their child gets into a school that is ranked well and has a history of producing successful students, parents don’t seem to prioritise forging a relationship between themselves and the educators working with their children. Students build a learning and mentoring relationship with their teachers and dealing with the day to day in the institutional structure of a school teaches them discipline and organisation. Parents teach their children how to plan for their professional futures and take an active, one-on-one interest in their progress. So why don’t teachers and parents work together to achieve a common goal – the child’s success?

For a parent, dealing with the institution educating their child might seem daunting. For overworked educators, the task of maintaining a continuous feedback loop with the parents of each individual child seems overwhelming on top of all their other responsibilities.

How do we make this simpler for both parties?

1. Ditch the Parent Teacher Conference

Oftentimes, the first meeting between a parent and teacher occurs well into the school year. A teacher is asked to meet and share feedback and concern for anywhere between 30 to 60 (if not more!) students in a day or two. A parent is left thwarted after only getting a few minutes to discuss their child’s future. There exists a better way of doing things – Fedena school ERP allows parents and teachers to communicate quickly and easily through their messaging system. The time investment is negligible, but the resulting rewards are anything but.

Read more: Why schools need an online parents communication system

2. Share Student Success – Not Just Problems

Establish communication on the first day of school, instead of waiting for an issue to crop up. Building a relationship with a parent where both successes and opportunities for improvement are shared allows educators and parents to work as a team. Classroom technology allows parents to track their children’s assignments, grades, and in-school activities remotely. It empowers parents to have a more comprehensive view of their child’s day, rather than having to settle for a lacklustre “Fine” when a child is asked how their day was.

3. Establish Community

“It takes a village to raise a child” might seem an outmoded adage in these modern times, but no parent or teacher is going to turn away from a helping hand. A lack of time and resources should not be a deterrent. School ERPs like Fedena allow teachers, administrators, and parents to work together in real-time to ensure every student stays on track at school. With features that allow administrators to communicate events and fees to parents and parents being able to monitor whether their child got on the school bus, education technology is forging a strong community for schools and colleges alike.