Speaking of Communication

Reponses seem to trickle in, but I fear the communication to the masses has ceased, and so I won’t get the statistics I was hoping for.  I would love to see the answers to these questions from school to school and grade to grade, but we’d need a higher number of responses to see that.  If you want to see that too, you’d need to forward the link on to more people and ask them to fill it out.  If you’ve subscribed to this feed by email, then simply forward the email.  If you’re reading this because somebody forwarded it to you, then the place you want to go is http://swparents.blogspot.com to find out what neat things we’re trying to learn about each other.

Speaking of communication, I have to be honest.  The idea for this survey and the blog were self serving, but we also figured it would serve others.  We’ve been feeling like the communication we’re getting from the classroom just isn’t up to par in the Sedro-Woolley School District.  Now, that seems to be okay in lower grades where most of the work is done in the classroom.  However, our oldest daughter just entered 5th grade this year, and the homework really took off.  There’s more daily work, and there’s more projects.  It’s been a big adjustment to try to keep her on track and organized enough to know what’s due and when.  She’s coming along, but part of the struggle on our part in helping her is that we need to know the same things, so that we can teach her how to stay on track.  

Now, if she were perfect at organizing and prioritizing, then she would accurately relay all the information to us from the teacher, and then we’d relay it back to her.  Do you see the problem with that?  If she could accurately bring the information home from school and relay it to us, then we wouldn’t need to teach her anything because she’d already have it figured out.  The problem is you can’t rely on a 5th grader that you’re trying to teach organization and communication to, to be the primary means of organization and communication.  It just doesn’t make sense. 

We’ve talked to the teacher and the school about this, but they don’t seem inclined to make any changes.  We began wondering, is it just us?  Are we being unreasonable to expect the teacher to communicate directly with us?  Is it too much of a burden to expect teachers to communicate electronically to eliminate the mounds of paper?  Should getting homework and test scores back in a reasonable amount of time so we can stay on top of grades be considered something only the exceptional teachers do, and not just the standard expected of every teacher?  These weren’t problems we had before 5th grade.

Well, from looking at the surveys filled out, they would suggest this isn’t all that abnormal.  If we take a look at parents of kids in grades 1-5, notice how the parents of 5th graders (the green) would rate the communication with the child’s teacher.  I think the chart is a bit misleading because a higher number of responses might balance it out better, but I don’t think it is any fluke that as the kids progress from 3rd to 4th to 5th, that the average view of communication with the classroom deteriorates.   Is it because K-4th grade teachers are so much better at communicating?  I don’t think so.  I just don’t think there is as much of a need in those grades, and then when it becomes needed it doesn’t happen, so parents become frustrated.  Am I wrong 5th grader parents?

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?  I don’t know.  There isn’t really enough data to see any sort of trend, since most responses come from the parents of the younger kids.  I’d like to hope that perhaps the CMS and high school teachers have parent communication figured out a little better, but I guess the jury is out on that opinion unless we can get more parents take the survey.  Maybe their lack of willingness to participate in something like this suggests that everything is going well for them.  I sure hope so.