Build home–school partnerships
Students with behaviour disabilities particularly benefit from a strong collaboration between professional supports, school staff and families. Teachers will often need to build rapport and a trusting relationship with parents in order to have effective discussions regarding behaviour programming, consequences and interventions. Many families with students who have behaviour disabilities have negative and unresolved conflicts related to past experiences with school and are not always open to involvement.
Some parents of students with behaviour disabilities may not be comfortable attending formal school meetings, particularly if they haven’t attended such meetings before. In challenging or difficult situations, parents’ care and concern for their child might show up as tension, anxiety or frustration. Teachers must remain nonjudgemental and avoid making assumptions. The parents’ behaviours do not necessarily reflect how they truly feel or how they are actually coping. Emotional and other issues may get in the way of promoting an atmosphere of collaboration.
Following are some examples of parental and family issues the school may have to deal with.
- Parents who struggled at school themselves may be intimidated and feel uncomfortable about working in partnership with teachers.
- Parents may feel guilty or think they are in some way responsible for their child’s difficulties. Some families may struggle with feelings of loss, grief or embarrassment as they try to come to terms with their child’s behaviour disabilities.
- Family situations can make participating in the child’s education a challenge; for example, parental conflict, shift work, language barriers or having more than one child in the family with behaviour disabilities.
- The parents’ culture may include a belief that school and home are separate.
- Parents may have issues of trust and need time to become comfortable talking about their child.
- Parents may not have confidence in the school’s ability to provide adequate support for a student with behaviour disabilities.
- Some parents find it difficult to believe that their child has different needs than other children, particularly if their child does not experience the same degree of difficulty outside of the school environment or if the child shares behavioural characteristics of other family members.
- Parents and school staff may have differing opinions about a child’s particular diagnosis, what that means in terms of expectations and how severe the current problem behaviour is.
Involving parents requires time, trust and a belief that parents are partners in their child’s education. Teachers can take a guiding role, particularly in the early stages, to help parents become actively engaged and committed to the process. Teachers need to help parents understand the value of a team approach to planning for behaviour support and the role they, as parents, can play in ensuring that the support accurately reflects their child’s strengths and areas of need.
Take time at the outset to provide information and discuss what both parents and school staff hope to get out of these meetings. This will help foster an atmosphere of openness and partnership with parents. As parents become more comfortable with their child’s learning team, they will more readily share information and perspectives that affect their child’s learning.
Sample strategies for encouraging parental participation
- Maintain an open door policy.
Let parents know that they are welcome to visit the classroom to observe and participate in their child’s learning. Provide information about how to do this during the first open house of the school year or through the classroom newsletter. Encourage parents to share their expertise and participate in special events, field trips and presentations, and other learning activities.
- Acknowledge the parents’ role and their contribution to their child’s learning team.
Parents need to know that school staff value their expertise and input. Children can act differently in various settings so to truly understand a child’s behaviour, it is essential to include parents’ perspectives and experiences.
- Be prepared to answer parents’ questions.
For example, parents might ask about the individual behaviour support plan for their child.
- How will we be involved?
- Do we attend all planning meetings for our child? If not, how do we keep informed about information shared and decisions made at those meetings?
- When are the meetings held, and how long are they?
- How can our child be a part of this process?
- What kind of special support will my child receive?
- Will my child always need this kind of support?
- How is the individual behaviour support plan this year different from the plan for other school years? Can we change it at any time during the school year?
- How will we know if the plan is effective?
- How can we arrange to visit the classroom to see how our child is doing?6
- What are we expected to do at home to support our child?
- What are our family’s responsibilities regarding homework?
- How are we expected to reinforce positive school behaviour at home?
- How can we communicate with teachers?
- What does our signature mean on the individual behaviour support plan and the individualized program plan (IPP)? What happens if we don’t sign them?
- What are our options if we don’t agree with the plans?
- How will progress be reported?
- Will my child always be on an individual behaviour support plan?
- Use parent–teacher meetings as opportunities to develop partnerships.
Make meetings personal and positive. When possible, offer parents a choice of meeting times and communicate directly with them through a written notice or phone call. Give them sufficient time to arrange their schedule. Make sure the meeting notice gets to parents. Since students may neglect to pass a message along, a follow-up phone call may be necessary. Always provide information about how to contact the school in case parents have to reschedule a meeting. If possible, share an agenda of the meeting ahead of time so parents have a chance to think about the kinds of questions they want to ask and the issues they would like to discuss.
- Make effective use of behaviour support plan meetings.
Allow time for questions and discussion. Share information about the child’s behavioural needs. The more knowledgeable parents are about their child’s behaviour and learning challenges, the better partners they can be. Resources might include copies of relevant articles and the addresses of new Web sites, and information about upcoming conferences or relevant parent workshops. Have someone keep a record of the action items and provide a copy to all team members.
- Ensure that parents understand the kinds of decisions that need to be made when developing a behaviour support plan and then ask them to think about which aspects of the plan they would like to have input into.
For example, parents may wish to share their child’s strengths, areas of need, information about how he or she learns best, medical information, successful strategies used at home and goals they would like to see addressed in the plan. Encourage parents to speak with their child about his or her strengths, areas of need and potential goals, and share this information as well.
Sample strategies for increasing parents’ comfort levels at meetings
- Consider convenience and comfort.
Arrange meetings at mutually convenient times and in a comfortable and appropriate place.
- Be sensitive about the parents’ comfort level.
Take this into consideration when determining how many school staff members will attend the meetings.
- Provide parents with information about the purpose of the meeting and what will be discussed ahead of time.
This gives parents time to think about the items to discuss and to collect relevant information to bring to the meeting.
- Think about the valuable information parents might have to share.
Include a list of questions with the meeting notice or proposed agenda. For example:
- Are there changes at home that may be affecting your child’s behaviour, such as a new family member, a change in a parent’s work schedule, new after-school activities or daycare arrangements?
- Are there new supports for the child such as time spent with a mentor or older student?
- Have there been recent medical or other types of assessments or treatments?
- Encourage parents to make a list of key questions they want discussed during the first and subsequent meetings.
- Use the arrangement of chairs and tables to establish an atmosphere of collaboration and equity to encourage discussion.
- Consider using chart paper and markers to record actions that are agreed on during the meeting.
This technique makes the process more visible for all participants.
- Value the information that parents provide.
Schedule time during meetings for reflection and discussion.
Resolving differences
There are a number of strategies for resolving differences that may arise between parents and school staff. The first course of action is to try to resolve issues directly with the people who are working with the student. This means meeting as a learning team and looking for positive ways to reach agreements that everyone is satisfied with.
Tips for handling conflict and resolving differences with parents
- Establish that the child’s interests must come first at all times.
- Make it clear that you want to resolve the differences for future mutual benefit (e.g., “I appreciate your willingness to …” or “I’m committed to finding a plan that will work for everyone”).
- Deal specifically with solutions to the identified issues and be prepared to offer alternatives.
- Focus on the issues, not the emotions and the personalities of participants or events from the past that are no longer relevant.
- Ask parents to state their understanding of the situation and then paraphrase what you have heard.
- Separate the behaviours from the student and, as much as possible, use neutral nonjudgemental language.
- Strive to accurately understand the parents’ concerns and perspectives. Sometimes a disagreement occurs as a direct result of a misunderstanding.
- Always clarify exactly what the issue is from all perspectives before jumping ahead to solutions.
- Decide what you can compromise on. Effective resolution often requires some form of compromise, especially when issues are emotional and complex.
- Be sure that expectations for the student and the programming supports are realistic and reasonable.
- Explicitly state that you are committed to the agreed-upon solutions and encourage parents to do this as well.
Home–school communication books
There are many ways for school staff and parents to communicate including:
- regular phone calls and e-mails
- informal visits and check-ins
- scheduled conferences and meetings
- home–school communication books.
When parents and school staff feel it would be beneficial to maintain regular and frequent home–school communication, they may choose to set up a daily or weekly communication book. It is important that parents and staff work collaboratively to decide what these communication systems should focus on and how they will be maintained. Ideally, communication should focus on the identified academic and social behaviour goals that the student is working on. This system should be a way to share good news between school and home.
Writing anecdotal notes to parents at the end of a busy school day can be difficult for school staff to manage, particularly if there are a number of students using this communication system. Writing unstructured ad-hoc notes can also deliver inconsistent messages. They may unintentionally overemphasize a single behaviour and/or under-report positive behaviour.
Checklists with scaled indicators (e.g., consistently, some of the time, seldom, not at all) of how the student demonstrated a certain observable behaviour at different times of the school day are the easiest to maintain and the most direct way to communicate.
The behaviour descriptions and data should be written in parent-friendly (and student-friendly) language. These checklists can provide useful feedback to students, and can include a self-reflection component that encourages students to evaluate and report on their own behaviour for the day.
It is important to develop strategies to make the communication system as stress-free as possible for the student, family and school staff. Students may need special reminder systems to bring the book back and forth between home and school or technology such as e-mail may offer some innovative solutions. In addition, students and their family’s privacy must be protected so no confidential or potentially embarrassing or damaging information should be recorded in the book. The tone should be positive and it should be a way that family and school staff can work together to support and encourage the student.
