Communication With Families the Teacher\'s

Communication With Families

The teacher's speech shows sensitivity when thanking and having translators to be present so that more, who are not English speaking, could understand what is going on. The teacher is also sensitive to the parents when he or she denotes that there will be written material sent home because the teacher knows that not all parents will remember everything that was said that day. Another moment of sensitivity toward the parents from the teacher was that the teacher offered to stay late until 8pm to offer the chance for more parents to come by.

These three instances of sensitivity from the teacher directly affect the parents. In the first case, having translators allow the parents to feel more comfortable since they are understanding everything that is going on, and if they ask questions that they are not able to communicate in English, they could still get them heard since there will be someone translating. In the second instance, having a paper to refer to helps them be able to access that information later, if they were not really able to process everything that was being said then and there and it is the first step in establishing communication methods, "by increasing communications, teachers acknowledge and build connections between institutions to focus on the common concerns of teachers and parents" (Epstein, 2001). The best case of sensitivity was by having the teacher stay late and this gives all types of parents the chance to come in even if they work during the day, which most parents from low income households do.

Although the speech contained moments of sensitivity, it also included moments where the teacher was not so sensitive to the parents. The first example of this is when the teacher says, "There is also a copy of the national standards for Social Studies, which will help you and your child prepare for the country reports they will be assigned later in the year." In this quote, she is assuming that all parents are directly involved in their child's education and that they have time to be able to fully engage themselves in a project with their child. Another moment os insensitivity from the teacher was when the teacher spoke about the website, "E-mail is one of the best ways for us to communicate." By saying this, she is assuming, first, that all these children have computers in their homes where their parents could access them, and second, that the parents are even able to use the computers.

These two instances of insensitivity could make the parents feel distant and unengaged in their children's education because they are not able to be as involved as maybe they would have wanted to be. "Parents cannot use information that they cannot understand (Mendoza, 2003), and so although it is great that they could access the teacher by email pretty quickly, and that they have step-by-step guides to do things, if they do not know how any of those systems function, they will not be able to be involved in their child's education. In both of these instances, the teacher could have shown more sensitivity to the parents, since their roles as teachers are to educate not just the student, but their families as well, especially in low income situation (Epstein, 2001). Even in the instance of the teacher providing the parents with written information, the teacher is assuming that all parents are literate, when that is not always the case, therefore the teacher is not being sensitive to particular circumstances (Mendoza, 2003).