Communication between home and school is one of the most important pillars of a strong school community. When communication is open and transparent and parents, as well as the school, feel that information is shared across the community, a good partnership can be formed that is conducive to learning and ultimately advantageous for all involved.
It is important that parents are closely involved in their child(ren)’s education and monitor and are aware of their progress in school. This can only be achieved if the communication between home and school is ongoing and open. The school has to have procedures in place to enable regular communication on progress. This is done at WIS through Progress Reports, Grade Reports as well as conferences that are organised one, a semester.
For these communication channels to work effectively, it is critically important that all parents are involved in their child(ren)’s school life and that teachers are approached whenever parents have questions or concerns. The same applies to the school. It is crucial that teachers get in touch with parents as soon as there are concerns, but also to praise and send messages of acknowledgement to parents. If these conversations are ongoing and work in a two-way direction, parents will have the peace of mind that their child gets all the support he/she needs and the school has the assurance that the children get the support from home that is necessary for a child to thrive at school. If one of these communication avenues is not functioning properly, there will be situations where either the school or parents will miss important information that will then jeopardise the success of the child in their learning.
We want to go back to a regular opportunity for parents in different sections of the school or in different grade levels to have the opportunity to meet with school staff to have conversations, ask questions, and clarify anything that is unclear.
Meetings will often have a certain focus depending on the grade level of section needs and parent questions. For the coming weeks, we want to hold parent meetings for our Middle School classes - Grade 6 and Grade 8.
Our Grade 8s are moving into High School next year and there are bound to be many questions from parents about the new programme and how it is working exactly.
In Grade 6 a number of parents have expressed the wish to meet other parents in the grade level and to discuss some developmental challenges that occur at this age in young people’s lives.
We also want to focus on discussing and creating awareness of the use and influence of social media in our kids’ lives. In the new academic year, we will be getting in a social media expert and social media lawyer - Emma Sadleir - from the Digital Law Company to address some of the legal issues with regard to the use of social media and children’s social media profiles as well as activity on social media.
Parent sessions
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On Thursday we had a well-attended meeting with Grade 4 and 5 parents about acceptable behaviour and what it means to be a WIS student as well as children’s use of social media and digital devices. We will offer this information session to our middle school parents as well in the near future to strengthen mutual understanding of appropriate and trustworthy conversations about social media issues our children are exposed to.
Maggie Reiff
Secondary Principal