Meeting my Goals & Improving Positive Parent Communication

I have to start by shouting from the rooftops that I am feeling so organized thanks to the changes I’ve made so far in 2013!  My first goal was to have all planning and prep work done by Friday for the following week.  Yay!  Last week, I finished every.single.thing. on that list.  It felt incredible to leave on Friday know I was prepared for this week!  It’s only Monday and I’m already almost finished with Tuesday’s to do list.  What a great feeling!

My second goal was to better organize the way my students hand in their completed written work.  I created a system of labeled baskets and switch these throughout the day according to subject area.  It has been an amazing transformation!  I anticipated a little confusion on my students’ part, but I wasn’t giving my little sweeties nearly enough credit.  They caught on right away and even had a little chuckle when I mentioned I needed a new system. Ha!  I left school every day last week with all work corrected!  What a huge change from having a cluttered pile of papers on my desk with absolutely no rhyme or reason.  Again, it’s such a good feeling to leave at the end of the day without that mountain of paperwork weighing on my mind. 

This week’s goal is to increase positive parent communication.  I feel that I communicate with parents rather regularly through both a weekly report card for each student as well as the weekly newsletter I send home.  However…I feel that the only parents that receive unplanned notes or phone calls are the ones whose children experience some sort of problem throughout the day.  I feel that ALL parents should hear about what their children are doing well throughout the week.  I want to start a system in which I can keep track of these notes and phone calls and can tell at a glance who could use a positive note or phone call.  Here’s what I came up with:

I will keep a new log each week (but I’ll save the old ones so I can refer back to them) to track how and when I communicate with parents.  My goal is to improve positive communication with ALL parents.  I’ll tally the number of communications I make each week.  For each communication I make, I’ll tally whether it was a note or a phone call and whether it was positive or negative.  Click on the picture to head to google docs for your free copy. 

The adorable border is from