Evidence 13. REQUIRED EVIDENCE

APST 7.3 Engage with the parents/carers.

ARTEFACT: Powerpoint presentation advocating language study to parents and students

APST 7.3 Graduate: Understand strategies for working effectively, sensitively and confidentially with parents/carers.

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It is important for teachers to have a positive relationship with families in the school community. Student outcomes improve when teachers have support from home (Henderson, 1987). Henderson’s annotated bibliography shows that there are many studies confirming the positive role of family involvement in education, showing that there are many positive benefits for children, such as increased school attendance, higher academic performance, and improved attitudes about school (1987).

 

To establish relationships with families and the community I will communicate through email, letters and telephone when appropriate, not just to address problems, but, as teacher-performer Taylor Mali describes (2009), to let parents know about extraordinary – or just unusual – features of their child’s personality or to let them know about something special their child has done. I will invite parents and caregivers into the classroom to share what we have been learning and doing; have an open door policy for parents wishing to discuss their child’s progress; utilise expertise in the community to enhance classroom learning; and encourage different cultures within the community to share their culture so that students can appreciate diversity. The positive outcomes of this practice on the whole class has been indicated by several studies, including Irizarry and Antrop-González (2007) and Abdul-Adil and Farmer (2006).

 

The evidence I supply for this standard is a PowerPoint presentation that I created to advocate for language study, directed at school administrators, parents, carers and students. In particular I argued for the benefits of German over the far more complex Asian languages with different writing systems and few cognates, making their acquisition slow, frustrating and extremely difficult. In the PowerPoint I used a variety of arguments, looked at language from a number of vantage points, and used colourful and innovative images to engage parents and students. The wide audience meant that I had to be creative and varied in my approach, also showing my skills in differentiating, as Tomlinson describes (2017), and changing the mode and content of my presentation (slides, text and speaking and taking questions) and ways of engaging (just watching, or also asking questions), thus minimising barriers and maximising access, as CAST describes in the Universal Design for Learning (2010).

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This task also satisfies standards: 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, 2.1, 3.6, 3.7, 5.5, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 7.4.

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Because of the excessively large file size of the powerpoint presentation, I have uploaded it to Google Drive.