How Preschool Teachers Should Communicate with Parents

As a preschool teacher, you may be wondering how to communicate with preschool parents have a great experience. You’ll also be the primary person to inform parents if there are any concerns with their child in preschool.

Here are many of the ways you’ll communicate with preschool parents:

FACE-TO-FACE

Once school starts, you will be the primary source of communication to parents about their children.  While you don’t have a lot of time during dropoff or pickup to chat with parents, try to make sure that you talk to each parent at least once every 2 weeks.  (This is because we typically run part-time programs where we only see the parents 2x/week. All Day preschool teachers should talk to preschool parents every day.)

(Trust us, this small bit of communication can help a parent feel more trusting and comfortable with the whole situation.  And a happy parent helps your job to be even smoother!)  While you’ll have your parents who always want to talk to you, think about how you can engage those other parents who just dart off.  

If anything happened during the school day that the parent should know about (i.e. a potty accident, bump, bruise, illness, etc.) be sure to tell the parent discreetly at pickup.  You can often tell the parent: “Can I talk with you in just a minute?”  Then after all parents have matched up kids you can tell parent quickly (remember the pickup line…)  

PHONE/TEXT

• Parents will receive your cell phone number at Meet ‘n Greet time in case they need to reach you.
• If you forgot to tell the parent something at pickup time, please call or text the parent immediately after class.
• Be sure to check your phone before class ends to see if anyone new is picking up one of your students.
• Also, when a parent calls or texts you, please try to be prompt in returning the call or text after class is over.
• My favorite rule of thumb is to always add a smiley face after a text to ensure that every text sounds happy and is not misread

EMAIL

Our teachers don’t use email to communicate with preschool families.

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

• To inform parents of what is happening monthly in the classroom, you will compile a monthly newsletter that will be sent out the first day of every month.  
• If you’d like to see what past teachers have done with their newsletters, visit the parent portal.
• Access your newsletters by logging in to Smore
  • Username: <username>
  • Password: <password>
• Your newsletter template will come pre-populated with:
  • Upcoming birthdays
  • Scholastic order information
    • NOTE: All Scholastic orders go through the school under the Director’s name.  If a parent says they ordered it under your name, they should contact the Director to fix the order.

Each teacher should complete their portion of the newsletter by NO LATER THAN the last day of the month, as it will be emailed on the first day of the month.  It should include:

• 3-5 Paragraph Letter
  • First 2-3 paragraphs should detail skills learned and activities done in the current month.  
  • Last 1-2 paragraphs should detail upcoming themes, skills to cover, and activities taking place in the upcoming month.  
  • Feel free to list any tips or activities that you’d like for your students’ parents to do with their children at home to help you at school (i.e. practicing handwashing, or looking for letters around the house, or putting on coats, etc.)
  • Proofread for spelling and grammatical errors

• 7-10 Pictures Max
  • Try to capture some of your favorite moments or activities through pictures.  Make sure there are a wide variety of activities shown in the pictures each month (i.e. not 8 pictures of children playing with play dough, etc.)
  • Try to get each child shown every other month.
  • No need to resize pictures.
  • Please rotate pictures if needed with LunaPic   
• Caption For Each Picture
  • Captions should be 1 sentence long and should detail the skills learned or the activity taking place in each picture.  Do not include children’s names.
• Themes For Upcoming Month
• Be sure to click “Update Page” when finished, otherwise the Director won’t be able to see your changes.

PARENT/TEACHER CONFERENCES (PTC)

Please review this article for more information about Preschool Parent Teacher Conferences.

We hope this was helpful as you learn more about how to communicate with preschool parents.