8 ways to make a connection with your kid's teacher

Establishing a good relationship with your child's teacher goes a long way to ensuring your child's success in school. However, that may be easier said than done, especially when you are dealing with individual teachers' personalities and teaching styles, and your child's own temperament and skills. So how do you stay actively involved without coming across as an overbearing pain in the you- know-what? We asked teachers, parents and students for old- and new-school strategies that make the grade.

Elementary school
This is the time to get good parent-teacher communication practices in place for – gulp! – the next 12 years.

1. Connect early
If you can't make it to curriculum night, contact your child's teacher to introduce yourself and share any information about your child, such as a family situation, that might affect him or her (a new sibling or a recent death in the family, for example). "I love it when parents can give me some insight into their children," says Kimberley Smith, who has been teaching elementary school in Dartmouth, N.S., for almost 30 years.

Tip: Ask the teacher how she'd like to keep in touch – by phone, email, agenda notes or face to face – and exchange contact information. If you're separated or divorced, inform the teacher and let her know how you wish to handle the sharing of report cards and other school information.

2. Don't prejudge
When Toronto mom Jane Duke found out her oldest daughter was going to have "the dreaded, most awful teacher," according to schoolyard gossip, her heart sank. "Then when I met her in September, she didn't seem that bad," she says. "In fact, my daughter had the best year ever."


Page 1 of 3 – Find more tips for parents of elementary school kids on page 2.