VIEWS & OPINION Getting parents on


board as partners Comment by KALEY FORAN, lead content editor at The Key.


Dealing with parents can often be daunting and time-consuming for staff. However, effective home-school communication is an essential part of building strong relationships with parents and keeping them on side as partners. So, what can you do to improve communication with parents and carers in your school?


• Talk about the positives, not just the negatives You don't want parents to dread getting a phone call or email from school. Encourage your teachers to talk to parents about the positive things, and not wait until there's an issue or a child is in trouble. Regular communication may be time-consuming, but the time spent is well worth it. Emails are fine, but phone calls are better - they feel more personal,


and there's less opportunity for misunderstanding. Parents are also more likely to mention useful bits of information over the phone, which a teacher wouldn't otherwise get in an email.


• Set clear guidelines so communication is consistent Dealing with parents, especially if they're demanding, can be intimidating for staff. Make sure you set clear guidelines for what good communication with parents looks like, and train your staff on these. For example, you might decide that good communication means: • The interests and voice of the pupil are central to every conversation • Conversations are clear, direct and focused on facts • Addressing issues proactively wherever possible • Being solution-focused • Staff have well-balanced relationships with parents


This will help staff to feel more confident in difficult conversations. It'll


also allow you to achieve consistency, limiting the number of instances of "But the other teacher said..." and will help develop relationships with clear boundaries.


• Train staff regularly How regularly you do this will depend on how much routine contact staff have with parents. It can also help to schedule training around key events such as parents' evenings, so the guidance is fresh in their minds. Your training should help staff understand the types of conversation


they're likely to have with parents, and how to manage these. For example, you could role play scenarios where parents are upset or aggressive. You can also use it as an opportunity to help staff understand how to have well-balanced relationships (not too firm, but not too accommodating either).


• Put the right support in place This is particularly important for ECTs or recently qualified teachers. No one is going to get every conversation right every time. Make sure your staff know who they can call on for support if they're feeling concerned or out of their depth. Also, reassure staff that they can talk honestly to senior leaders about conversations that haven't gone well. If staff feel they'll be blamed every time a parent escalates a complaint


or gives an angry response, they're less likely to communicate in the effective, consistent way your school needs them to, in order to maintain good relationships. By providing regular training, and supporting with difficult conversations, senior and middle leaders in particular can help staff feel more confident.


• Be clear with parents about what communication they'll get from you A home-school communication policy might be helpful here. You can use it to set out things like who to email about specific questions/issues, timescales for the school responding to an email, when parents should make appointments with staff, and expectations for parent conduct (this could also go in a parent code of conduct).


PSHE – let’s make it personal


Comment by DR MARGOT SUNDERLAND, Director of Education and Training at The Centre for Child Mental Health (CCMH) and Co-Director at Trauma Informed Schools UK


Today, more than ever, our young people need effective PSHE education with an approach and curriculum they connect and relate to, rather than lessons imposed upon them. Our students need the tools and understanding to navigate relationship break-ups, sexual harassment from peers, social media, parent to parent conflict and exams etc. We are dodging the emotional pain young people experience by


providing PSHE materials that suggest coping strategies such as ‘Take a walk’ and ‘Offer to do chores at home’. Mindfulness, exercise and tweaking negative thought patterns cannot alleviate symptoms resulting from a painful or traumatic life experience, and will not alleviate panic attacks, phobias, self-harm, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive rituals etc. Suggesting these are coping strategies for trauma triggered emotional distress is ‘cruel optimism’ - the student expects relief, but it doesn’t work.


Make it personal We need to make PSHE personal to our students and offer support for real experiences not advice on how to ‘manage feelings’ which is very detrimental to physical and mental ill-health. Start with: • Open questions – ‘What in your life do you want help with in terms of mental health?’ • Ask students to write ‘What I wish my teacher knew about me’. Key themes that arise - often about emotional pain - can remain anonymous and be discussed in class or a group. Students may ask to share it with a teacher they feel comfortable talking with • Ask for feedback - is school addressing their core human needs for


February 2022


feeling psychologically safe with a real sense of belonging? Do they feel supported and valued, are they ‘seen’?


Skilling up teachers Teachers often feel inadequate teaching PSHE - we wouldn’t expect an art teacher to teach chemistry - we need to skill-up interested teachers with core skills and knowledge: • To be empathic listeners • Understand how trauma can be healed through relationship with an emotionally available adult in school


Learn about mental health and the symptoms of mental ill-health PSHE curriculum should promote the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of mental health: • Provide students with the vocabulary to express how they feel and normalise conversations around emotional pain instead of using words like ‘mental health’ or biochemical imbalance’. Symptoms are reactions to stress that leave you feeling overwhelmed, and coping mechanisms differ from individual to individual – from headaches, panic attacks, hearing voices or social withdrawal • Explore Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – what they are, what it feels like when emotional needs are met and the effects of unmet needs on mental health. Painful life events only become mental illness when no one helps to understand them – seek out an adult to talk to • Provide themed groups led by an empathic adult, so that young people who’ve all experienced parental break-up, school moves or anxiety can talk together • Include a basic understanding of the neurochemistry of emotion, what effects the levels of feel good hormones - dopamine and opioids, what triggers too high levels of stress hormones e.g., cortisol and what to do when this happens We need to equip young people with the knowledge that some


experiences in life will be extremely emotionally painful, but the pain will pass and they are not broken - they can work through the painful and traumatic life experience and come out the other side.


www.education-today.co.uk 21


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