Back to School Newsletter Reflection

I am quite happy with my back to school newsletter for parents. This tool has allowed me to communicate directly with the parents in an approachable fashion. It not only gave me the opportunity to lay a foundation of expectations, standards, and highlights, but more importantly it opened up a very important line of communication between myself and the parents. Parental involvement is critical for the educational success of students. By demonstrating to the parents I am a teacher who is happy to answer questions and supportive of suggestions from both students and parents I make myself more approachable.

Just as the content helped to determine the effectiveness of this newsletter, the appearance of the newsletter was equally important. Some parents may have had negative experiences with educational settings. By providing a newsletter that is visually appealing and upbeat in nature, I help to negate any potentially negative expectations. Furthermore, the information is organized in manageable pieces with distinct headings. This helps to ensure the parent reads the important information, but also avoids overwhelming the parent with unnecessary words and sections.

This back to school newsletter was so successful that it inspires me to create one for the students. It is important that the parents are involved in their child's education, but it is also important that the students benefit from the feeling of a classroom community as early as possible in the school year. By extending this tool to my students, I would be communicating to them that they are important to this process and community. Using the newsletter tool for both parents and students has the potential to be a good tool to introduce new books we will be reading in class as well.

The in classroom applications of this newsletter are limitless as communication tools should be. In addition, it has helped me as a professional to determine what is important information and what is not so vital information that might bog down the brevity of the text. I've also discovered new ways in which to work within a word document to make the visual aspect of the document more exciting thereby setting the tone for what I write and the reader's expectations.