FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Hi guys. Today I want to talk about something that’s probably one of the most important things that happens outside of your classroom, and that is how important parent communication is to personalize, self paced in mastery learning. There’s a fundamental truth and that’s that some of these things are relatively new in education. Especially in terms of their implementation in schools and classrooms.

So many parents don’t know what personalized learning actually looks like. Some of them might even be confused by it. I’ve had many parents wonder why the teacher doesn’t stand in front of the classroom for 45 minutes a day, talking while the students take notes, and then give a quiz at the end of every week with homework being assigned.

As teachers, we all fundamentally understand that education is changing to meet the individual needs of students, but sometimes this looks very different to parents, and when they don’t understand things, sometimes they can be scared or even fight against them. I’ve actually experienced this myself, as a teacher, as well as working with schools on new initiatives.

If parents don’t fully understand what’s happening in the classroom, they may not support it. Whether that’s on social media, whether that’s through emails to you, or maybe being frustrated with administration. You want to avoid this at all costs, and the one way you can do this is to communicate effectively. That means when you’re making changes in your classroom to be more personalized, or self-paced or student centered, in your instruction, making sure that parents are fully informed about what these changes are going to look like is absolutely paramount to the success of any initiative.

This becomes even more important as brand new things continue you to change throughout the year. So you can do things like send emails out, send newsletters out, call home to parents you think might not understand what’s going on. You can even invite parents into your room.

I strongly encourage during parent teacher conference nights, during open houses and things like that, to talk about new initiatives like personalized learning with parents. Getting ahead of the game and informing parents ahead of time can be the number one tool to gaining their support, because once parents support changes and initiatives in your classroom, they’ll become that much easier to implement, because when you support learning as a community, it’s always more successful.

So remember, whether you’re trying something new, or you’re trying to personalize learning in your classroom, individualize instruction, implement self paced or mastery learning, always communicate with parents and stakeholders, so they know what’s going on and therefore, can support it. I hope this has helped you, like always, teach better. Stay awesome guys.