Writing letters to parents

At the beginning of the month I shared that one of my favorite ways to get to know children is to ask each parent to write you a letter about their child.  I have often ended the school year by writing letters to each of my students, it a wonderful way to let them each know that they have been an important part of my year. 

I think it would also be a really great tradition to start writing letters to parents.  I am constantly reminded that parents do not get enough credit for the wonderful things that they do for their children – if they get any credit at all.  It would be wonderful to let parents know that I recognize how hard they work to make sure their children are polite, or to let them know that I appreciate how much they have done to help their child learn to express themselves creatively. 

I also know that I have a completely different perspective of many of these children that their parents never have the opportunity to witness. I would love to take the time to tell parents how helpful their children are, how hard they focus on their work, and how persistent they can be when faced with a challenging task. 

I can only imagine how I would react if my daughter’s teachers sent home a letter like this, I’m sure it would have a huge impact and it would certainly make me proud and let me know that someone sees how hard I’m trying with her.  I probably wouldn’t even wait until the end of the year to send home this letter – in fact, if you do it before conferences you might get even better results than usual!

Let me know if you try it, I’d love to hear how parents react!