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Uniting adolescent support systems for safe learning environments

Educational Forum, The, Winter 2003 by Strom, Paris S, Strom, Robert D

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Communication is further eroded by ineffective methods that schools sometimes rely on to contact parents. Most parents are employed, so they cannot be reached at home during the day. Some do not have electronic mail, answering machines, or voice mail. Others are unable to talk on the phone at their place of work or check e-mail promptly. When parents cannot speak privately on the telephone at their job, it is unlawful for teachers to leave messages about student behavior with a coworker. A related problem is that misbehaving students come home before their parents, so they can intercept messages from school. Circumstances that deny parents information they need support a false presumption that good grades are synonymous with good conduct.

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Teachers also face limitations. They have classes most of the day, making repeated efforts to reach parents impractical. Using electronic mail during class can be difficult, and occasional down time of computers prevents teachers from accessing the system. Phone tag is tiring and timeconsuming. When the other party is finally contacted, conflict might ensue. Teachers are reluctant to speak with parents who react to bad news by getting upset and confrontational (Hyman and Snook 2000). Given these obstacles, the wise approach may be to send and receive some information without dialogue or confrontation.

Erosion of communication with parents generally produces unfavorable results. When parents get information late, they cannot offer a timely, well-reasoned response. On the other hand, lack of information leaves them unable to respond to misconduct or exemplary behavior of an adolescent. Poor communication from the school can motivate parents to withdraw from their corrective guidance role and expect teachers to take over for them. Teachers may try to address the misbehavior but, lacking support, eventually give up. No one benefits when teachers and parents look the other way in response to student misconduct. Without the synchronized efforts of adults, emotional and social needs of adolescents remain unmet (Burstyn et al. 2001; McCarthy 2000).

APPLICATION OF NEW COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

To build more effective school communication systems, we began with a field test conducted in cooperation with Motorola. We chose a high school with 1,800 students from low- and middle-income households. We asked faculty members to volunteer for the project; they would learn how to use personal digital assistants (PDAs) to record notable behaviors of students and report to parents by pager messaging. The boys and girls to be observed reflected the full range of student conduct rather than being limited to individuals identified as troublemakers.

Fourteen faculty members, selected from the pool of volunteers, represented varied subjects and amounts of classroom experience. An assistant principal and counselor were included on the faculty team. We chose Palm Pilots (m100, 2MB memory) as the PDAs because of the low cost ($150 a unit), ease of use, immediate access, and ability to interface with school computers. Most importantly, their portability allowed teachers to record events in class without having to walk back and forth from their computer sites. Such convenience made for less conspicuous, regular record keeping that could be done anywhere at school.

Uniting adolescent support systems for safe learning environments

Educational Forum, The, Winter 2003 by Strom, Paris S, Strom, Robert D

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