'Dear Parents' - a letter about relationships in my classroom

Below is a skeleton of a letter you can change to fit your own situation. Its purpose is to get on the front foot and let parents know some of the things you will do to create a culture of kindness in your classroom. It's a bold statement of intent, but I believe teachers need to set expectations for both parents and students.

Dear Parent,

This classroom is a community. In any community, as well as great times, there are also moments of frustration, tension and jealousy, which can lead to occasional unkindness and even anger between students. As you’d understand from being alive for a while, that’s how communities work. Schools are not magical oases of beauty and peace – they are real communities.

Although not everybody will be friends all of the time, we know that classrooms where students feel connected to each other tend to have better learning outcomes. Relationships are essential, but when left to form without any intervention from grownups, we can see the formation of ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’. When classrooms become overly cliquey, problems are more likely to occur.

I will conduct confidential *social metric work to gauge students' feelings of connection to one another and to identify areas that may require improvement in relationships. I will also be:

• Teaching social skills to the class – formally and incidentally through regular circle time

• Giving all students direct, honest, but kind feedback about their social skills (which they won’t always like)

• Encouraging all students to try to find ways to deal with their problems and, when needed, scaffolding this with restorative approaches

• Discouraging parents from becoming overly involved in their child’s quarrels and issues

• Discouraging parents from grilling their children about their social life at school, particularly when their child is in the middle of sorting something out for themselves.

When parents sometimes step back, it promotes their child's resilience and lowers their anxiety as kids develop a sense that they can handle more of their problems.

I will also be:

• Insisting that students work with all other students in the class at different times, even if I'm aware that some tension exists between students

• Creating seating plans to give all students a chance to work near all other students, and these seating plans will be subject to change at my discretion.

• From time to time, I will ask your child to go out of their way to show kindness and acceptance to a student who may be struggling to achieve a social footing in our class (just as I would ask another child to take care of yours). (This is known as ‘required helpfulness’ and is a powerful resilience builder in young people).

There will be bumps along the way – that’s life in a classroom.

I look forward to expanding on this in conversations with you and working in a resilience-building way with this class and your child.

If you have any concerns, please do me the courtesy of making a time to chat with me before going over me to a member of leadership. As your child's classroom teacher, I'm best placed to assist with any concerns.

Regards,

Teacher

*A Book Called "Friendly Kids Friendly Classrooms" (McGrath and Francey, 1991) contains excellent social connectedness surveys and social skills lessons

. If you have a dig through the dustiest shelves of the teacher resource section, you may find it! I have a copy in my office.