Reply To: Share your practices

Share practices for parent partnership in your setting. How well do these work? What kinds of parent partnership do they enable?

One of my personal goals for this year is building on communication with families which aligns with this really well. I ensure I always greet the parents and ask how they are. Some families mention what they’ve been doing lately so I make an effort to listen and extend the conversation where appropriate. With the likes of covid and not being able to have the whanau in our rooms, we have moved ‘our day’ which is a collage of photos and a memo about what the children have been learning that day to outside the gate where both parents and children can view them. I have added a parent response page on the wall where parents can write down messages in response to the learning stories on display. My intention for this is to include the whanau and have them share their thoughts on what their child is learning or any feedback. We have also established a communication chart which lists down any messages about children and a brief description of what they were learning for the day. This has been a great prompt to delve into whanau conversations and ensure they need to know anything important. We also have newsletters sent out monthly with any updates around the centre and with covid aswell which we can reassure whanau with what we are doing regarding health and safety. In our room too, there is a parent aspiration wall that one of the teachers has put up. We have found it helpful to know more about family values and beliefs, as well as goals the parents have for their children. I believe these practices are working well for teachers, children and their family as we have had team discussions to ensure we are still interacting and building on parent relationships despite the circumstances of being in the red/orange light zone. I also feel that these practices enable a reciprocal parent partnership where there is a sense of sharing information and ideas, learning from each other and looking into goals and needs the whanau require. With this a strong parent partnership can develop to support them and their child’s needs. It is also great to find out more about the child and what plans we can put in place to extend the learning.