Teaching is not as easy as we think; it merely doesn’t mean giving information or assigning homework.
Building engaging & connected classroom environment and healthy student-teacher relation requires continuous and effective communication. Teachers need to learn the art of interacting and communicating with the student effectively especially in this digital world.
For effective communication that might result into impact on student learning, here are some key tips to keep in mind.
Clarity in Communication
Communication is both expressive and receptive. Educators should be skilled in listening and understanding in thoughts and ideas of their students and elaborating things clearly. Educators need clarity in communication while talking to their students. They should be able to break down complex things into simple steps. Educators must be able to “read” their students mind. Effective communication also includes converting a boring conversation into interesting using good presentation and communication skills.
Personalizing Communication with Emotions
A good educator conveys honest affection and commitment to their students. They keep a deep concern about their students’ progress.
A teacher, who is keen to know about their students, learns their name and addresses them with their name. They always try to understand their students’ dream, their biggest fear, hopes and preferences; all this is possible with effective and continuous communication. Teachers must celebrate their student’s success and recognize them for their work; and this is a great way to highlight student’s strengths and create impact on their learning.
Communicating With Parents
A great educator does not only need to communicate with students, but should know the art of communicating with students’ parents as well. They need to be perfect in expressing themselves to parents to collectively work on the students’ progress. Teachers are required to make sure that parents understand their kids’ learning strengths, patterns, problems or behaviour.
If you are new into teaching profession, here, are some effective tips on communicating with parents.
Build Relationship: A lot of teachers underestimate the value of building trust with parents but it is very much important. Building trust with parents is a steady process. First of all teachers have to prove parents that they have their good interest at their heart. Secondly, they need to let them know you on personal front. Also go an extra mile to help students and let parents know about it, such things build trust and relationship on positive note.
Listen to Parents: There are times that parent have serious question and concern about their kids. In those times, if you are defensive towards their question then it may create doubt in their minds about your intention and teaching ability. Instead of being defensive, try to satisfy their concern, even if it’s your mistake, accept it and handle things calmly. Listening to them rather than defending your point is more important here.
Document Every Communication: Being a superb teacher, you should not underestimate the relevance of documenting communication with parents. Well! Documenting communication means writing down the parent/student name, date, and a brief summary about the conversation.
Talk Often: Regular and effective communication takes time but it is crucial.
It is tough for teachers who have so much to do, to manage effective communications, but with the growth of technology and available tools the task gets less hectic. Today, educators have various options to communicate with students and parents using technology to meet them where they are active, on their phones.
Use of Technology for Effective Communication between Teachers, Parents and Students
Use of technology makes communication effective and easy. Teachers who use technology have various options to reach out like phone calls, emails, newsletters, e-cards, chat applications, video conferencing as well as social media tools. But organizing all this is not easy either.
There are a number of apps and platforms that enable teacher- student & parent communication, but Arch The Way is one of the great tools that we recently explored which organizes the same really well with great simplicity.
It is a simple to use tool that connects educators, students and their parents in an effective way. Learn more on how Arch The Way can be useful for you.
Connect Effectively: Educators can make classroom environment interactive as they can stay connected with their student effectively by sending messages. They can share multimedia files & documents, time tables, and notes using Arch The Way.
Safe & Simple: Arch instantly delivers all your updates directly on the students Phone without asking for your or your student’s number. Working without the hassles of contact Exchange makes Arch completely safe & simple.
Feedbacks: Educators can receive & respond to feedback privately which helps them stay in sync with their students.
Free: Arch is a completely free service specially designed for Educators.
Here’s what educators are saying about the platform:
“Arch is a step towards Teacher-Student centric Communication which facilitates customization in learning & evaluation.” – Dr B Londhe, Deputy Director, Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies
“The concept of this tool is similar to what I always dreamt and had in my thought process. This application is need of the hour and will inspire the students to learn more at their suitable time.” – Dr. M. KANTHA BABU, Professor, Anna University
Why don’t you give it a try?
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