In times of peace, harmony prevails in classical Christian schools and homes. That is the time to invest in proactive communication and open dialogue between teachers, students and parents. Fortified bonds will withstand the inevitable conflicts that will emerge in a fallen world and will allow everyone involved to conquer them with grace and unity. For that to happen, home and school must share a unified direction.
Communication during peacetime, between the teacher and student as well as between the teacher and parent, especially earlier in the school year, should be seen as an investment.
This investment results in the strengthening of ties between the teacher and student as well as the ties between the teacher and parent. As fallen human beings, wartime better known as conflict, is inevitable. The best preparation for these times of war is the investment in peacetime instruction with parents and students.
Peacetime instruction to parents needs to provide clarity on the idea of a partnership between parents and teachers, the stronger that partnership, the more fruitful it will be in the lives of the students. A partnership between parents and teachers is a relationship of cooperation and mutual investment that is aimed at a common goal.
The foundation of the partnership depends on some basic principles such as the school’s:
- mission statement
- Statement of Faith
- Portrait of a Graduate
Those are living documents that should be talked about often. The school is to be proactive in talking about the Portrait of the Graduate as a shared goal. Most importantly, schools cannot move students toward the Portrait of the Graduate if homes are pushing in the opposite direction.
In other words, a classical education at school is dependent on a classically-oriented home. Home and school must be facing the same direction. The school needs to name the direct threats to the ‘Portrait of the Graduate’ such as time spent on the screen, social media and habits of texting.
There must be honest communication between the school and the home. It is better, to tell the truth in small doses and early instead of saving things for one big conversation at parent-teacher conferences. To build up trust with parents, a teacher should not know anything important about a student that she does not quickly share with the parents.
We can have some practices that can strengthen the partnership between home and school:
- It helps when parents know the teacher as a person. Using time with parents in the room to help them get to know the teacher strengthens the partnership between home and school.
- Clearly stating expectations and naming the threats to the partnerships could alleviate heartaches and headaches in the future.
- Most of the stresses and breaks in the relationships between home and school happen when the expectations are not aligned.
- One way to alleviate these stresses would be the use of paper to communicate about class logistics.
The wise teacher will be depicted as a shepherd who guards the sheep, feeds the sheep, puts them in the right pastures and seeks after the lost sheep. All this is done when the teacher defines the boundaries of the classroom. It takes discernment and wisdom to know how to guard this boundary in relation to authors, curriculum etc. There may have to be a boundary on phones and smart watches etc. The teacher builds an infrastructure not just for efficiency but to create a space where conversations are easy to have, with times of work and rest.
A flourishing school life for the community of students, teachers and parents is not a community without conflict, for such a community does not exist in a fallen world. It is a community of peacemakers who have learnt how to be prepared during peacetime so that the times of conflict may still be God-glorifying and community-flourishing.
Investing in communication during peacetime strengthens the bonds of the community.