A Strong Support System

Suppose teachers must feel motivated and manage their resources in the best possible way, promote balance and energy, they need to have good colleagues around. Being part of a healthy, well-functioning learning environment reduces stress. It provides greater joy and makes everyday  life more comfortable with a sense of togetherness and community.

 

When having professional sparring partners close by to listen, support, and give feedback, the teachers appear as a cohesive unit rather than just a single - more vulnerable – one. It makes them better equipped and no longer exposed to criticism from parents, students, or management. When the purpose is clear and leads to better pedagogical work, learning and well-being teamwork works the best. 

 

Teams are often composed of each grade level or based on subjects and didactics in Denmark. In those teams, teachers can structure interdisciplinary courses, put together annual plans and take over each other’s teaching by, e.g., illness, doubt, conficts, if necessary, where they use each other’s resources to the greatest joy and beneft of the students.

In a good school-home collaboration, the school and the parents have clearly defned roles, respect each other, share knowledge, and work together with a common interest in their professional, emotional, and social development. To build a healthy collaboration, teachers must consider parents as partners, who they need to work well with to best support and stimulate the students well-being. This means that the teachers show confdence that all parents can contribute and be a positive resource, they too can communicate with and keep misunderstandings or quarrels away. A strong school-home collaboration gives the students’ better-learning conditions and deprives teachers of burdens that shut down empathy. There is a strong tradition of cooperation between school and home in Danish schools. The School Act states that parents play a central role in students’ schooling, learning, and development. The collaboration may concern the individual student, or it may focus on entire classes. Therefore, the collaboration is characterized by several diferent activities and areas of cooperation, such as dialogue with the school, parent meetings, conversations between school and home, joint exercises, and ongoing dialogue with teachers. 

 

There are some areas a teacher must consider when a well-functioning partnership between school and home is to function optimally

Trust is an essential element in a well-functioning collaboration. If parents do not trust the teacher, parents hold back critical views because they worry that it may harm the student. A trusting relationship creates profts to deal with problems and conficts when they arise. Therefore, it is important that the teacher always contact the parents about everyday topics and continuously communicates about the student’s strengths and

potentials. 

 

The ongoing contact can take place, for example, when the teacher writes weekly updates to the parents at the schools intra communications tool in an informal and personal way. In this way, they show a commitment that helps to give the parents security and trust. In the younger classes, the teacher can be in class in the morning when the parents drop of children (See exercise E2.1), and take the time to small-talk with the parents. In the older classes, a short phone call can allow an informal talk about the student.  The work of creating a trusting and cooperative relationship is strengthened by the teacher continuously showing care for the student and patiently focusing on the student’s learning and empathic well-being

To support a good collaboration between school and home, teachers and management must understand the parents’ values, perspectives, and expectations for the collaboration and, at the same time, set a clear direction for the collaboration. The school’s responsibility is to frame the collaboration, develop a dialogue with the parents, and create shared understandings.

If teachers are to succeed in developing forms of cooperation that are fexible about the parents’ prerequisites, it requires strategy and management. Management is of great importance for teachers’ attitudes towards parents and for maintaining an empathic approach. It focuses on opportunities and resources rather than barriers and shortcomings. 

 

Three key elements should be anchored (and often handed out as a folder to parents, when their child begins in school, because it is the responsibility of management to formulate):

 

 

• Helps their child meet the school’s expectations.
• Shows interest and loyalty in collaboration with the school.
• Is informed about the school’s activities.
• Actively participates in promoting a good environment so that everyone thrives.
• Understands and contributes to their child being part of a community.
• Makes demands on their child by its ability.
• Teaches their child to strengthen friendships and build up good manners.

The strategy must clarify the resource framework for cooperation. In short, it is the management’s task to create clarity about resources and time for collaboration.

• Responsibility - consider each other as whole people, take co-responsibility, and are credible in word and deed.
• Attitudes - make demands, and have expectations of each other, maintain healthy traditions, and use humor.
• Care - creates security for all, respects each other, and uses disagreement constructively.
• Community - has a good working environment and commitment to daily work.
• Ambitions - prioritize social, creative, and highly professional learning environment and use each other’s competencies.