Classroom Supplies and Tools / Dec 03, 2023
Simple Winter Crafts for an Awe-Inspi...
This year has been especially rough, especially when it comes to fun classroom activities. We’ve put together…
By now, we’re all aware of the important role of parents in education – but how to actually keep them engaged? This week, we’re sharing the story of Danielle’s success with engaging all the parents in her classroom. Danielle was discouraged with other tools but she finally went from overwhelmed to overjoyed after implementing ClassTag in her classroom. Thanks Danielle, for showing our community how to make the most of smart education technology.
Danielle Fugazzi is a first-grade teacher at Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City.
I chose to be a teacher to help children be successful at school so they get the best possible start in life. Despite my best efforts in the classroom, I know that was only half the opportunity. Parents are the first and most important educators for their kids, so I always strived to get them involved in my classroom to support my teaching, and to build a strong and thriving community.
But guess what? As perhaps many of you have also experienced, I was challenged to reach some of them, to channel their efforts to the right kinds of engagement, and frankly, to even build trust with a few. The biggest issue in my classroom over the years was that parents were not checking folders or getting all the information and extra work that I would send home. So, I used to have the same parents involved over and over, struggling to get the support and involvement that I, and my students, needed from the rest of them. All I would get from many were merely complaints: “I didn’t see this information” or, “I didn’t know I was supposed to do this with my child”.
These tools either created more work for me, were hard to use, or parents simply ignored them. As a result, after all these efforts—nothing seemed to improve.
I knew there was a better way and tried to find a tool that could help me achieve my objective to involve parents.
In the four years I’ve been teaching kindergarten class in New York City, I went from one solution to the other—without clear results.
These tools either created more work for me, were hard to use, or parents simply ignored them. As a result, after all these efforts—nothing seemed to improve.
This past year, I was invited to be a part of a pilot program, and I took another chance. I had my doubts going in, given my prior experience, but once I saw the platform I was very intrigued by its simplicity, very intuitive design, and fun feel.
What I discovered over the past year of using it completely changed my perception of what is possible and truly transformed my classroom. I build a close-knit community with my parents and kept myself very organized with a system that consistently delivers great parent engagement.
I used to think that parent engagement was a lot of work because of all the follow up e-mails I needed to send to get parents’ attention, weekly e-mails I used to write on the weekends to update parents, and the need to remind all parents at the pick-up about some important events. It was not only taking a lot of my time, but occupied a lot of my attention and mindshare.
I found that such a platform—I use ClassTag, which is free for parents and teachers—makes it easy to put a system in place, improve engagement and save time along the way. All of the families in my class signed up within days.
I had parents thanking me for this new way of communication, one even told me, “Now I feel like a better parent. I always know what is going on and it is so easy to get involved.”
There are so many features I love! Here are my favorite three:
I am very excited to use my favorite app/platform with my new class because I know we are not only going to achieve excellent results, but the parents are going to love it!
Here is how you can get started to produce results for yourself this year:
This is what got me the results last year, and I am very excited to share my lessons with you.
It’s truly transformational—I have never seen this level of parent support before.
I’m glad I persisted and gave it another shot. Are you ready to find and create a system that consistently gets ideal parent engagement?
– Danielle
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Your students deserve the ultimate tag-team. And we’re here to support amazing teachers like you. Let’s make it happen!