Connections with Families

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Are you trying to maintain records of the conversations you have with families, including parent-teacher interviews?  Are you wanting families to have a copy of the notes from these conversations? Are you trying to share details of these conversations with your colleagues?

WeCollab can support efficient and transparent communication.


Within WeCollab, a workflow using Custom Team Boards, leveraging a meeting note template with built-in email notifications, and generating student meeting history reports, this information can be tracked and shared effectively.

Custom Team Boards

Custom Team Boards can reflect a representation of students - in this case, communication with families.

Details about the Team Board will need to be determined in the Custom Team Board set up.  There are essentially five components to creating a Custom Team Board, as seen below.

1 - Board Organization

2 - Student Selection

3 - Student Card Set Up

4 - Team Board Access

5 - Board Category Identification


It is the Board Category Identification that allows the user to create the necessary headings for a Connections with Families Board on which they can keep track of who they have connected with and perhaps how.  For example:


A custom board such as this might provide a quick glance of those families with whom one has connected, perhaps weekly or monthly, should it be "reset" to no contact and started over as a process for tracking.  

The coloured circle on the student card, when hovered over, will demonstrate the last time a student was part of a meeting record in WeCollab, and what kind of meeting record it was.  A green circle indicates that the student has been discussed in the last four weeks, a yellow circle shows between four and eight weeks, and a grey circles means that it has been more than eight weeks since the student was discussed.


 


Meeting Note Template within the Student Profile

When a connection has been made with a family, the notes from the conversation can be recorded in the student profile.



In the case of Family Connections, most districts have a meeting descriptor titled "Parent Meeting". In some cases, the notes taken for an individual student may actually apply to more than one student (e.g. a family update): siblings can be added as additional students.


Additional attendees, such as parent(s)/guardian(s) may be added to the meeting. Additional persons, such as the principal or the other teachers of the student, may be identified to receive a copy of the meeting notes.


Once the meeting is ended, a pop up window will ask if you wish to send email notifications to those identified. Click Yes and a copy of the meeting notes will be delivered to the inbox of those in attendance and those selected to have a copy of the meeting notes emailed. There is no need for a separate email after the meeting to attach a file - WeCollab does it for you!


For more details on how to "Conduct an Individual Student Meeting", please search the WeCollab User Support Site for the instructions.



Student Meeting History Report

The Student Meeting History Report allows a user to pull a single report with multiple meeting records included.  With respect to connections with families, it can be helpful to review all the Parent Meetings at once, for example.

Within the Student Profile, under the Print Student Report Button, a Student Meeting History Report can be selected.


You will be brought to a screen where the name of the student from whose profile the report was initiated is in the Selected Students area.  Generating the data report allows for the selection of the Start Date and End Date for the window of time for which the system should compile the meeting records as well as the meeting types to be included. In the case of connections with families, you might limit this selection to Parent Meetings.




For more on student reports, please search the WeCollab User Support Site for "Generate Student Reports".


Maintaining Connections with Families

While WeCollab can provide tools to track communication and to record details of conversations to be shared with those who need to be aware of the information, it will not serve to connect with families automatically. Relationships will continue to be at the heart of these connections: may we continue to pursue, build, fortify, and celebrate opportunities to connect with the families of the students whom we serve.






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