Q: It feels like parents trust educators less these days. The home-school partnership is strained at best. I’m not just talking about the disrespectful rhetoric that teachers shirked their duties during the pandemic or that they’re lazy and dumb, though clearly that’s contributing to everyone’s unhappiness. Rather, I’m talking about the blurred lines between home and school. Parents today seem to hold the unrealistic expectation that they should know everything their kids are doing, reading, and learning during the school day. And it’s even worse when students go home with a complaint about another student. From the way parents approach me, you’d think I had insulted their child!
Not that long ago, the boundary was straightforward. We had a curriculum night during which we gave parents an overview of what their child would be learning over the course of the semester. That was their chance to ask questions and discuss how they could support their kids at home. We also had a parent-teacher conference twice a year to brief them on their child’s progress. If a student needed something more — for example, if they needed accommodations or stopped coming to class or were getting bullied — we would of course contact home. But there was a clearly demarcated line; teachers planned the lessons and parents ensured their kid had the right supplies and hopefully got to class fed and rested.
Parents now want to know absolutely everything, and quite a few feel compelled to second-guess what we’re doing. They’ll weigh in on things like how we assign homerooms, how we cover math concepts, how we pick the books we teach, and how we choose which field trips we take. The home-school line is now totally blurred and it’s exhausting. It’s also a distraction from time I could be using to plan great lessons and meet students’ needs. Beyond being annoying, this behavior is unproductive. How can I set healthy boundaries for myself? Also, how can school administrators help me and my colleagues reinforce boundaries in a way that still encourages strong partnerships with parents? I want to discourage what at best feels like meddling and at worst feels like condescension and bullying, but I don’t want to cut them off.
A: It’s not easy to be assertive and set healthy boundaries, particularly during times of heightened anxiety, but you’ll have better luck if you start with empathy and validation. Remember, these are parents who supervised their child’s remote learning and may have gotten used to having their finger on the pulse of everything they do. And if their kid struggled socially or academically during the pandemic, it’s not hard to understand why they might be parenting more protectively. Plus, these caregivers probably haven’t had much face time with teachers; they’ve had less time in the building itself; and they’ve also had fewer organic interactions with one another. In other words, their behavior likely has far more to do with their own stress than lack of trust in you. In fact, the same boundaries that will help you be more productive will ease the burden on them, too.
Try to think of this as an opportunity to break bad habits and reestablish norms. To help set a new tone, administrators can send home regular communication about things like curriculum nights and parent-teacher conferences, and they can direct caregivers to a website or school handbook where they can find answers to commonly asked questions. They also can invite parents into the school to collaborate in appropriate ways and to clear up misconceptions. After all, what parents are saying may not match what teachers are hearing. When that leads to conflict, an administrator can help. If you think a parent interaction will be fraught, for instance, ask an administrator to join you. They can shut down a meeting if it starts to disintegrate.
You also can direct caregivers to a blog or website where you post updates about what’s happening in your classroom. Regular communication can eliminate misunderstandings and cut down on back-and-forth about minutiae. (I recognize that you’d have more time to post updates if parents weren’t constantly contacting you, but you may have to “over-communicate” as you establish a healthier partnership.) Use your resources, including room parents and PTA members, to help convey realistic expectations and perhaps boost empathy for you. Parents may not appreciate, for instance, the extent to which educators are dealing with more complex behavioral, social and emotional issues, staff shortages and lost institutional knowledge, budget shortfalls, the threat of violence, and general fallout from years of uncertainty and unrest.
Remember that trust is a two-way street. Parents aren’t trying to make you miserable; they’re trying to advocate for their children. If you want to facilitate more constructive communication and establish better boundaries, stay calm, practice patience, use your resources, and ask questions rather than make assumptions. No one benefits when teachers and caregivers approach one another as adversaries.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phyllis L. Fagell
Phyllis L. Fagell is the school counselor at Landon School in Washington, D.C., a therapist at the Chrysalis Group in Bethesda, Md., and the author of the Career Confidential blog. She is also the author of Middle School Matters and Middle School Superpowers, available at https://amzn.to/3Pw0pcu.
