Hey, I’m Anne Marie, 31 y/o, a school teacher
I used the SENSEWIRED Workbook because I needed support to face the complexity of building mutual understanding with the parents of my pupils. The ongoing use of multiple digital channels for communication creates uncertainty, confusion and distrust. I often see parents and myself falling into a sense of false belonging when we constantly contact online.
The SENSEWIRED Method helped me discover fundamental self-insights and gave me a thorough structure to make better decisions on why, when and how to use online and face to face contact to build effective and reliable relationships with parents.
Why it matters? Our constant and disarranged use of social apps creates misunderstandings, hinders interpersonal communication and information exchange which have a negative impact on the child. More importantly, I get distressed frequently for being recorded and the use of social apps end up mingling my teaching activities with my private life and personal time.
My SENSEWIRED realistic check-up. For me it’s essential to build a reliable partnership with parents. I’ve felt overwhelmed by using multiple channels of digital communication at school. I was enthusiastic to make things more efficient but often efficiency came with misunderstandings and distrust. Besides, I didn’t feel safe when the system keeps records of all my interactions with parents as the school has no clear ethical guidelines, and not even gives proper training on how to manage online contacts. In fact, I prefer face-to-face contact as I’m not good writing emails or messages to explain difficult situations. I like texting for the exchange of information on procedures or organization, but not for one on one or group discussions. Parents can become very aggressive through text communication. I’m more effective with calls. They’re direct, clearer and effective. In general, constant online communication can be very stressful to manage because of the blurring boundaries between my work and leisure time, in particular now during the pandemic. Eventually, my interactions become more superficial and distant to avoid conflicts and preserve my well-being. Unfortunately, this attitude damages my engagement and has a negative impact on child tutorship
A vicious circle. At my school, authorities seek efficiency in the teacher-parent partnership through enabling multiple digital channels of communication. We all have different online and face-to-face preferences, abilities and needs to connect. This is a main source of uncertainty, disappointment and stress. However, authorities frequently miss to provide training and ethical guidelines that help us build confidence together using both off and on-line social interaction.
Who’s to blame? At school, publicly I don’t dare to say no to digital communication but I, as many of my colleagues, avoid to use it as much as possible. I’d like to have more discussions with the school management on the priority of offline contact over online contact to improve the collaboration and well-being of both parents and teachers.
Different behaviors and preferences. I deal with all kind of parents’ personalities, cultures and educational backgrounds. This is a complex task that consumes a lot of time and effort, but indispensable to build a trustworthy and effective partnership with parents.
Invisible effects. The lack of shared understanding on how to communicate with each other via text (email, instant messages) makes things quite complicated. For instance, I fear that I’ll be misunderstood or they are not receiving the information. Sometimes parents react aggressively and demand for an immediate response. I emotionally fail to deal with these types of issues once and again within a 24/7 schedule.
Learning from my own stories was fundamental to understand what can be changed immediately and in the longer run, together with parents and the management. I learned that looking into specific situations makes it easier to decide and organize the use of offline or online communication with each other.
In my case I want a teacher-parent partnership that is mindful about the pros and cons of face-to-face and online communication for our relationship and emotional stability.
The challenge was first to clarify my off and online needs, intentions and abilities to develop trust and mutual understanding with parents, then to set up a discussion to explore and find points of agreement.
The results. I became aware of my off and on-line ways of connecting, interpersonal skills and biases and how they can have a positive or negative impact on building confidence with parents. As a result, I defined some ethical guidelines for online communication. We agreed to have more voice calls and organize more face-to-face gatherings. Also, the arranged discussion with parents was a vehicle in itself to build trust and personalize forms of contact when needed. We traced a new path to mutual understanding in a less stressful collaboration.
What I valued the most was the easy-to-understand structure of this method. SENSEWIRED is unique in that offers the possibility to reflect on and integrate both off and on-line needs, abilities and preferences in regard to specific situations. This is essential for the sake of child tutorship and each other’s well-being.