Professional Engagement
Standard 7: Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers, and the community

Notes of conversation with the supervising teacher, prior parent-teacher interviews, regarding sensitive and confidential engagement with parents/carers. 

The conversation with the supervising teacher shows our discussion around effective and sensitive communication with parents, which was later applied in a parent-teacher interview, demonstrating my ability to engage with parents in an effective way. Moreover, I communicated with parents in an effort to involve them in the educative process of their children, through collaboration with the supervising teacher in writing weekly emails informing parents about important updates and for assigning topic-specific homework. This provided me with additional opportunities to understand and apply strategies to work effectively with parents. 
Collaboration with parents and developing cooperative relationships is not only important in terms of compliance with the Code of Conduct for teachers, but also significantly improved my teaching practice by understanding the socio-demographic features affecting families, so I could align my learning opportunities with their needs. Moreover, effective engagement also allows me as a teacher to understand the resources that are available of parents’ skills and contributions to the school community, keeping in mind their busy schedules (Ground-Water, Ewing & Le Cornu 2015).