515. Effective Communication Methods

Effective Communication Methods

A great deal of a teacher's planning involves not only what to teach, but how to teach it. The same principle holds true for effective communication methods with parents, other teachers, students, and administrators.

However, this part is difficult to remember when a teacher suddenly finds him/ herself in particularly challenging and/or difficult circumstances.

The good news for all teachers is that effective communication methods can be taught to a seasoned and new teacher alike, and they can hopefully result in positive relationships to develop between students and teachers, administrators, parents and even between the learners themselves.

Before Communication Measures

Mistakes are not always mistakes. Before judging or jumping to self-defend yourself, gather the facts about the specific classroom situation. This might mean gathering the student's first and second semester's grades and all the criteria that went into their calculation. You might need to refresh yourself and gather some notes you took about that particular student's performance in class during several sessions.
Have this information at the meeting or while you are on the phone. Not only does it reinforce the validity of your information, it can be helpful for those tricky spots where you suddenly feel you are loosing objectivity.

Methods of Communications

• Be sympathetic. Restate the problem using your own words. One way to start is to say: "If I understand you correctly, you ..." This gives you time to think of your next steps while thinking of practical solutions. This also has an effect of calming the waters for both adults and children.
• Offer your help instead of showing any anger, dissatisfaction or contempt.
• Be organized. Discuss follow-up communicative measures in order to monitor a specific ongoing problem. Such alternatives can include: an email, a follow-up note, a fax or a monthly school visit.

Communicative techniques should also be at the heart of your approach and should carry over into the classroom. Communicative interaction encourages cooperative relationships, promotes the children's security, allows them to share ideas and opinions and makes them feel that they are doing something useful. As part of this approach, errors are seen as natural to the learning process and are corrected only when studying grammar.

Over to You: In which situations did you find yourself struggle with effective communication?

Was there a "forgiving" element in the communication?

At which point did the communication break down?

What did you do about it?

Let's hopefully open a discussion.