My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Rustin, taught me a lesson in communication that has taken me nearly four decades to apply. Mrs. Rustin sent 6-year-old me a yellow piece of carbon paper, called a "happy gram" (complete with smiley faces). The note arrived through the mail, its unopened envelope addressed to me with smileys peeking through the cellophane window. My proud parents put the delivery in my hands and we read together Mrs. Rustin lauding how I had shared my knowledge of dinosaurs with classmates.
By comparison, my next 16 school years featured a disappointing drip of communication, made less meaningful since it was more often told about me than directed to me. This litany of grades and sporadic third-person comments apparently influenced me more than Mrs. Rustin's words because I have resorted to that same mode of communication too often throughout my career teaching middle and high school students English. Sure, the medium changed from a combination of paper and voicemail to the digital iterations of the 21st century, but the core purpose remained the same: "Hey, parent, here's an update about your child." Whether the message slanted toward better or worse news, response rates were unsurprisingly underwhelming.
I changed that approach this past year in conjunction with a new policy that issued school e-mail addresses to all secondary students at my K–12 school. Now, I e-mail students directly and include parents in the cc: field. Shifting my audience forced me to change the tone and purpose of my communication for the better. I find my messages more focused on mentoring and less on dancing around potential hotspots. As I connect virtually with students, I'm seeing new two-way conversations emerge that stretch the limits of our classroom. Cursory parental acknowledgments and spotty follow-through are now replaced by students often taking prompt and meaningful action steps.
Of course, there's still work to do. Among the ongoing training requirements I've noticed is my middle school students' need for tips on how to manage one (or more) e-mail accounts and the increasing deluge in their inboxes. They need explicit pointers on the differences between writing formally to teachers and communicating casually with friends and family. They need guidelines for how frequently to send messages and timeframes for when to expect responses. They need experience writing to a wide range of audiences for purposes that matter. But when the payoff is authentic collaboration with students in their own education, the efforts are well worth it. I'm sure Mrs. Rustin would agree.