School-to-Home Notebooks

Abstract

How do we as school personnel and administrators build successful partnerships with families? How can we communicate effectively with parents and caregivers-especially when frequent communication is necessary? How can we learn about what works for parents? This article summarizes advice from parents and provides specific suggestions for better home-school communication. Need for CommunicationSchool personnel, particularly those affiliated with special education, often find themselves jotting a quick notedaily or several times per week-to parents or caregivers about their child with a disability. Sometimes school personnel do this because the parent has requested it. At other times, personnel initiate this practice in an effort to keep parents informed about important aspects of a child's day. This is particularly likely to occur when the child has communication difficulties (and is not likely to convey the information themselves), health concerns, or behavioral challenges.Day-to-day communication between school personnel and parents may occur 22 ■ COUNCIL FOR EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN

Developing Collaborative Partnerships With Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families During the IEP Process

“…Beyond translations and live interpretation during meetings, teachers should ask CLD families their preferences for communication between meetings or offer them a variety of options from which they can choose. School-to-home notebooks may not be the most effective tools for communicating with CLD families because of possible misinterpretations due to language proficiency and technical-language use (Davern, 2004). Speaking in person may be more effective as it can limit misunderstandings that may occur with written text (Larocque et al, 2011; Lo, 2012).…”