Help your students and their parents set, manage, and meet long-term goals within and beyond the walls of your classroom.

Providing quality education to students is a collaborative effort between children, teachers, and parents or guardians (remember, not all students have families that include a traditional arrangement or biological parent). Whether parents and guardians embrace their role in a student’s education or figure it is a “teacher’s job” to educate their kids, the fact remains that children will set and achieve their long-term goals more easily when supported by a nurturing home environment.

Though parent-teacher conferences are just around the corner, it’s not too late to reach out to parents and guardians. Through intentional communication, teachers can effectively teach students while reaching parents and guardians so they can work together toward children’s long-term goals.

Finding out what students and their families view and value as appropriate long-term goals is an important part of building a relationship with your students and providing a personalized learning experience. So how do you get started?

1. What Students Want

long-term goalsDedicate some class time to discussing long-term goals with students. Devote a few minutes to discuss objectives that everyone can work toward as a class. These ideas could include station-based learning suggestions, or a class book club, through which students choose a class-relevant book to read per week outside of their lesson-focused, assigned readings. Whatever your students emphasize as being important to them, include parents by sending an email or posting a social-media update to your class page.