How Teachers Can Make a School-Home Connection in ESL

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Laura from youngwritersworkshops.com and I'm going to talk about how teachers can make a school-home connection in an ESL classroom. One of the important things to remember in making a connection, medi...is that you most likely need someone to help you kind of mediate this connection. If you are going to be meeting with a family of your students, to make that connection, it's quite possible that you will need a translator or someone, unless you're fluent in the language that the student's family speaks. And that person can also help you a little bit, possibly, if this is an unfamiliar culture that you're beginning to connect with. There may be some social norms from that culture that you will need to know more about, so being aware, not just language, but customs and norms that are different will really help you make, be able to meet on level ground. One of your goals is to not, to not come off as an authoritarian. You don't want to come off as talking down to the parents, so think about how to arrange whatever area you're going to be meeting, if if they're coming to the school, arrange this chairs in a circle, or in a way that they'll feel more at home than comfortable and not like you're preaching to them or talking down to them. Food is always a good way to make people more comfortable, make people feel welcomed, so think about incorporating, you know, finding out a little bit about what what kinds of foods that might be good to serve and offering refreshments, sharing that while you're talking to make it more of a social, and less rigid structured meeting time. Just in again, another reminder that there are going to be customs that you may need to be aware of so that you don't create more of a barrier instead of making a connection when you're really trying to forge that cooperation and a good relationship. So those are some ideas about how teachers can make a school-home connection in ESL."