When I was a beginning principal, I possessed the same social media/email narcissism that can grip even the best-intentioned.  If I had a thought, I would send an email.  My poor faculty members suffered under the tyranny.  I would send out 2-3 emails to the staff every day, perhaps the same number to parents.

Then my oldest son went to preschool.  It was a 2 day a week program for 3 hours a day.  I would receive 4-5 emails every day.  I couldn’t keep up!  I began to ignore then delete the emails before even reading.  There had to be a better way, I thought.  How can I balance the need to communicate with all the other tasks?

So I began sending out one email every week to parents on Thursdays.  Then I sent out one email to staff on Mondays.  It was difficult to train myself to only send out a general email once a week.  But eventually I found that I received a better response when I was consistent.  I tried to make it personal, relevant, and scholarly.  Parents don’t have much time and so I feel like it’s my responsibility to be the lead learner and share what I’ve come across that might interest them.

This was the origin of Catholic School Matters.  I’ve been collecting articles about parent communication and they are divided up below.  I find exceptional value looking at the articles about problems and conflict since conflict makes up so much of our daily life.  Paying attention to perception and tone has been an area of growth for me and continues to challenge me.

Parent Communication Philosophy:

Parent Communication Problems:

Parent Communication Tools: