Working with Students’ Families

I am firmly committed to building strong, open, and productive relationships with the families of my students. These relationships,
when built thoughtfully and intentionally, serve to benefit students, families, and teachers alike.
• For families, this partnership gives them a window into how their children are spending their days; this contextualizes student
success, builds a sense of trust and reassurance in the people responsible for teaching their child, and empowers families with
a voice to advocate for their children’s needs.
• For teachers, this partnership provides critical information about how best to motivate their students, creates another means
of collecting feedback, and contextualizes any issues that arise in the classroom and make them more manageable.
• For students, this partnership helps to create a more responsive learning experience for them as teachers and family share
insights and wisdom.

Below are a few artifacts that demonstrate how I will initiate and maintain this partnership with students’ families throughout the
school year. These artifacts are:
• Welcome letter
o This will be sent out to all students’ families after Back-to-School night and before the start of school.
• Email follow-up to welcome letter
o This will be sent out to each family in the first three weeks of school. My aim is to initiate a dialogue, either over email
or phone, to encourage two-way communication moving forward.
• Email communicating good behavior/work in class
o This will be sent out to families regularly (ideally once per quarter) in response to a particularly good class period or
assignment from a student, to maintain a positive dialogue with family members. I will seek to identify a specific
behavior that had a positive impact on our class learning environment and communicate my appreciation of that
student.
• Email responding to academic incident
o This will be sent to families of students who are beginning to struggle in class or begin missing assignment deadlines.
This is a proactive attempt to learn about potential issues that students are facing, and also an opportunity to begin
problem-solving with families to improve their student’s performance.
• Email responding to behavioral incident
o This will be sent to families if a student has a behavioral incident in my class. This serves to notify the family of the
incident, as well as communicate my commitment to making a plan that can help the student be successful in the
future. Whenever possible, I will bring my own ideas for solutions to the meetings that result from these emails.
 Welcome Letter

Hello!

My name is John Leahy; I am so excited to be working with your child over the coming ( year / semester )! I love teaching English,
and I am particularly excited about the coming year. Our grade level team has been hard at work creating a rich and rigorous
experience for our students, and I’m really looking forward to putting it into action. I thought I would share some of the highlights
of our plans for the ( year / semester ). Below are a few of the reading and writing activities that I am most looking forward to:

We will be reading:
• [Sample Anchor Text List]
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
• And much more!

We will be creating:
• [Sample list of interesting performance tasks]
• Real life advertisements to practice persuasive techniques in writing
• Pieces of reflective and narrative autobiographical writing
• Slam Poetry
• And much more!

Something you should know about me: I place a lot of value on my partnerships with the families of my students. My mission is to
make our classroom a productive and stimulating place for all of my students to be. You are the experts on your childrens’ interests,
passions, and academic needs - therefore, I welcome input on my class and my door is always open! With email, you can expect a
response within 24 hours on weekdays.

My contact information:
• Email: LEAHYJ1@CHARLOTTESVILLESCHOOLS.ORG
• Phone: [Remind phone #]
• Office Hours:
o Monday - Friday: 8 - 9 am, 4-6:30 pm
o If these times do not work for you, get in touch with me over email and we can find a time that fits your schedule!
One last thing: if this letter was sent to an email that is not your primary address, or there is another person who would like to be
added to my communication list, please let me know! I want to make sure everyone is in the loop who wants to be.

Again, I am so excited to begin the school year! Feel free to reach out with any questions/comments, and expect an email in the
coming weeks as I get to know your student.

Cheers,

John Leahy

Follow-up Email:

Hello!

This is John Leahy, [ Greg ]’s English teacher. It has been such a pleasure getting to know Greg over the first few weeks of school! I
would love to set up a time to chat with you when you are available. This doesn’t need to take any longer than five minutes - I like to
check in with all my families to get a read on how my students are adjusting to the beginning of the school year (10th grade can be
tough!).

This is also an opportunity to discuss any considerations that you think would be helpful for Greg, or any interests/passions that
didn’t surface on our class surveys at the beginning of the ( year / semester ).

When you are able, respond to this email with a preferred phone number and a time that is convenient for you to talk. My office
hours are 8-9 am and 4-6:30 pm Mon-Fri, but I am pretty flexible and can work around your schedule.

Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Best,
John Leahy
 Sample Positive Behavior Email:

Hello!

This is John Leahy, [ Greg ]’s English teacher. I hope you are doing well today.

I just wanted to let you know how much I have appreciated having Greg in class! Today, we were having a class discussion and he
made several points about our class text that I had never thought about before, even after reading this text [ x number of ] times!
He is doing a fantastic job of thinking deeply about our work, sharing his insights with his classmates, and generally enriching our
class learning environment. We teachers always appreciate someone who not only brings fresh insights to our content, but is
generous with their insights as well.

Have a great rest of your week! Thank you for your [ son ]!

Best,
John Leahy

Sample Academic Incident Email:

Hello!

This is John Leahy, [ Greg ]’s English teacher. I hope you are doing well today.

I am emailing today to let you know that I’m a bit concerned about Greg’s recent engagement in our class. Normally, Greg is a
thoughtful contributor to our class community [ add in detail learned from family conversation(s) ]. Lately, however, I have noticed
that Greg seems distracted and disengaged with our class content. He also has not turned in our last two assignments.

I would love to set up a time to talk over the phone or in person so that we can problem solve and perhaps share some insights into
what Greg is feeling and thinking. Let me know what your availability looks like in the coming week, and we can go from there!

All the best,

Hello!

This is John Leahy, [ Greg ]’s English teacher. I hope you are doing well today.

I am emailing today to update you on a behavioral incident during class today that involved Greg and another student. No one is
hurt, but I wanted to check in with you about this uncharacteristic behavior from Greg so that we can do some problem solving
together. I want to figure out a way to help make sure that this doesn’t happen again, and I think either a phone call or a face-to-
face meeting would be best for this.

Please let me know what your availability looks like in the coming week, and we can go from there!

Respectfully,
John Leahy