The importance of communicating as a teacher.

Communicating with Parents:


As teachers we are with the students for 7+ hours daily. We spend a lot of time with the littles, it is extremely important we keep in contact with the students parents. Being that we are with the students the majority of the day, we know who, they are, what they are interested in, and what they need to work on. The students do not always communicate well with parents, and thats what we are there for. It is good to inform the parents of what kind of behavior there child may or may not be struggling with. The struggles and positive behaviors the students may be displaying, it is so important to share this with the parent. It is hard enough for some parents to be away from their children for that long, and they must know whats going on. Also, students rarely tell their parents whether or not they have homework, so solve this problem, let the students and parents know in the beginning of the year, that each day the students will be required to write down their homework assignments, and each night they need a parent signature. This way the parent and teacher are communicating every day, the teacher may even write a note int he students planner for behavior purposes. Teachers and parents can communicate in many ways, letters, email, conferences, text and calling. I think it is extremely important for teachers and parents to consistently communicate.


Communicating with Students:


In the previous section we discussed the importance of communicating with parents as a teacher. It is extremely important to communicate everything with your students. If there is no communication in your classroom, the entire year would be chaos. We need to communicate everything to the students;

• Rules for you room, playground, hallways, 
• Assignments, homework, requirements
• Behavior issues
• Positive behavior

These are all just some ways of communication from a teacher to a student. The student needs full communication in order to know what is expected of them. Being in the elementary grades, they are not fully responsible enough to just read a syllabus and learn on there own. We need to guide them in every step of the way, in no ways am I saying " babying" them, but reinforcement of rules, activities, assignments, negative and POSITIVE behavior. This can all be done with communication. How a teacher communicates with the students can vary in many different ways, it can be verbal communication, written, to even a smiley face on a graded paper. These are all appropriate for students to be hearing and seeing, with no communication, the students will not know what is allowed and not allowed, they will be unaware of their grades and assingments. With no communication from the teacher, the teacher is completely sabotaging their teaching career. 

Monitoring Professional Development Information: 

Being a teacher we are constantly learning something new, we have to keep up with the newest technologies which only enhance our classroom lessons, and allow the students to become more hands on. With technology it opens up so many doors for teachers to extend their lessons, and broaden their minds from plain old lesson plans. We still need to follow the standards of the state of Florida, but who says we cant make them fun?! With technology it gives us the opportunity to achieve this goal. We must use our resources the web has so many fascinating ideas for every subject you can imaging, from using http://www.funbrain.com/ to http://www.kidsknowit.com/. These sites have every fun educational games, worksheet, group activities you can think of. Without a teacher being up to date with technology they wouldn't be able to enhance their lessons for the students.