Even if your child is a good student, you should still make some type of contact with his teacher at the beginning of the school year. With the influx of e-mail, communication is so much easier. Most schools will freely give their faculty’s school e-mail addresses, so that parents can keep in contact with teachers on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. E-mail is quick, easy, and can provide immediate responses.
Say for example, your son has had a particularly rough week because you and your spouse are having marital difficulties, or maybe a beloved grandparent is ill, and your child is worried. You can communicate this to your child’s teachers. After all, teachers are only human, and they are definitely not mind readers. A child may be too intimidated or too private to share his feelings with the teacher, and this is where parent/teacher communication can help that teacher understand what is going on with her student. In the same respect, if a teacher is concerned about a change in your child’s behavior, she can easily e-mail you about what is going on in the classroom.
Attend School Functions
When your school holds PTO meetings, open house nights, and parent/teacher conference days, you should make plans to attend. It is important that your child see you involved in her school life, and it is also important that her teachers know you are concerned about your child’s academic success.
Purchase an Assignment Book
Some children have difficulty staying organized, and this can definitely affect their grades. Obviously, teachers don’t have the time to write down the day’s homework assignment for every child individually. If your child repeatedly tells you he doesn’t have homework or has forgotten the assignment, it is probably time to buy him an assignment book. You will need to let your child’s teacher or teachers know that he is to bring the assignment book home everyday for you to check. It is his responsibility to write down the day’s homework assignments. He should then get his teacher to initial that the information he has written down is accurate. If he doesn’t have any homework, he should write that down and have the teacher initial that, also. If he continues to turn in incomplete homework assignments, you will need to come up with some type of repercussions, such as loss of privileges for the phone, television, video games, or computer, or you may need to ground him from some activities.