Home School Connection

Despite having more tools than ever to communicate with each other, Jeremy Hyler, a middle-school English teacher in Michigan, says he notices that communication breakdowns among educators, parents and students are increasingly common. In this article, he shares that technology-based communication, where tone can often be misinterpreted, may be at the root of the problem. He also discusses a common problem known as “keyboard courage.” “Keyboard courage” he says is the courage to say things to individuals that you would not normally say if they were standing in front of you. Some of Hyler’s tips to combat miscommunication when using technology include reading a potential post out loud to a friend or family member to gauge its tone, or writing your response in a word processing document first. His biggest advice? Put your digital device down and talk with the person face-to-face (or at least do that when the current health crisis is over).

Personalization is the key to effective parent-school communication, according to a survey of parents, teachers and school leaders by the Center for American Progress. The survey found that in-person, parent-teacher conferences were preferable to technology-based communication, with research associate Abby Quirk saying, “We thought there might be special interest in options that use technology because they’re newer, they offer potentially more options, but what we found was that the technological advancement, so to speak, of the communication method really wasn’t that important. What we found was that the individualization was really important.”

In a recent opinion piece in The Dallas Morning News, Doug Levin, president and founder of the K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center, challenges school leaders to take measures to protect both their schools and communities from digital threats amid growing reliance on technology in school operations, teaching and learning. He urges them to collaborate on security challenges and share information on cyber threats with other school districts that face similar issues. School cybersecurity failures across the country have resulted in the theft of millions of taxpayer dollars, outages of school IT systems, and large-scale identity theft.

The current media and technology landscape means kids are no longer confined to just learning in the classroom. Sure, kids have always been able to learn outside the classroom via books and other life experiences, but today’s technology allows children to learn in a multitude of new ways. Looking at that change, Project Tomorrow runs a survey called Speak Up, polling hundreds of thousands of sixth graders and adults about learning trends, and makes the local data available to individual districts. Here are a few takeaways:

• For students today, there is very little distinction between school learning versus what they do on their own at home or on their digital device(s). They feel the learning experience is happening all the time. It is also found they have a healthy balance of using print materials versus first-person materials, and having opportunities to engage with people as well as with digital tools. The media is often quick to say kids today just want to put their nose in their phone and don’t want to interact with people, but the survey found that is more of a symptom seen in Millennials rather than in this current generation. 
• Students want to co-learn with their teachers and parents. Because they are so used to looking up information online, they are not looking to the teacher or a parent to be an expert in everything. It is common practice to go home and look up information they received at school – partly for accuracy and partly to learn more about a topic. Parents should understand that and not be offended by kids looking for verification of what they say.
• Students today are also good at authenticating resources. Surveyors were told by students that kids never use a dot com, they don't trust dot coms; that dot orgs are okay; a dot edu is the best; and you shouldn't really even trust the dot govs.

School assemblies, poster campaigns and lectures are largely ineffective at curbing bullying among students, writes clinical psychologist Jeff Nalin. In a blog post, Nalin suggests seven strategies to help educators and parents address bullying behavior, including modeling the desired behavior, teaching coping skills and rewarding prosocial behavior.

A new app called Goya-Move can dramatically reduce the amount of smartphone distractions in the classroom, but parents have to play an active role, its founders say. Goya, an acronym that stands for "Get Off Your Apps," lets parents disable apps on their child's device during specific hours of the day. Most parents support tucking phones away in class, but the vast majority want to keep an open line of communication in case of emergencies, making them somewhat resistant to an outright smartphone ban at school. Goya-Move may be a good compromise as it helps parents sync their devices with their child’s and set the hours of the day that kids are at school. A VPN, or virtual private network, then blocks the apps during that time, locking out chief distractors like Snapchat, Instagram and even web browsers. Kids can resume using apps as they wish after the set hour has passed.

A recent report released by Common Sense may give pause to the concept that digital products are the means to increase achievement for students in schools serving lower-income areas. The report surveyed 1,200 teachers from across the country and found that 12% said the majority of their students have no computer or Internet access at home. Homework is still an issue when a digital connection is not available.

As you have probably read and heard, many schools are beginning to form their own e-sports teams for students who prefer their playing fields to be digital. The High School Esports league has released a new and free esports curriculum supported by Microsoft. It includes an overview of esports gaming, full lesson plans, and exploration of careers in the gaming field. It is a resource that could be good for schools interested in getting involved.

Need someone else to read a bedtime story for your kids this Tuesday? Archie Moss, an elementary-school principal in Tennessee, reads weekly bedtime stories to students over Facebook Live. In an interview, Moss says the idea for the "Bedtime Stories with Principal Moss" program came from the school's librarian, Monique Howard, who shared it as part of an effort to find innovative ways to reach students and build a culture of reading at the school. He has read stories every Tuesday night since February when it was started as a celebration of Black History Month.

Some communities have adopted an online kindergarten-readiness program called Waterford Upstart, operated by nonprofit organization Waterford.org. Advocates say that the program is a high-quality, cost-effective preschool program that rivals some brick-and-mortar options, but critics say that these programs raise questions about education quality and what exactly preschool is meant to teach. As the economic chasm in the United States grows, experts remark that having access to human interaction is becoming a stark dividing line through every stage of life.