How Teachers Connect with App-Enabled Parents

Toni Madison, 7^th-grade math teacher

To connect with my students’ parents, I have been using the Moments app within ClassFlow since the end of August. To get started, on “School Business Night,” I made sure that I added Moments to the syllabus. Several parents signed up and registered their students that night. Moments has been a game-changer for parent communication. I can quickly and easily send them a message through the Web version of ClassFlow. (Although a teacher app would make my life even simpler….I hear one is coming!) The message goes straight to their device with the app, and most respond pretty quickly.

We have been awarding badges in class for certain things (showing a growth mindset, working hard, meeting goals, etc.) and the notification about these badges gets pushed out to parents using the app. I’ve also been adding announcements on the class homepage that gets pushed out to parents.

I’m hearing from many parents that they love the ease of contact. It’s so much quicker and less formal than an email. Parents like getting the notification from badges and class announcements as well. In the very beginning of the year, I had several parents ask me why the rest of their children’s teachers weren’t using this and I explained that we were working on it. I’ve proposed a schoolwide demonstration of the Moments app on our next professional learning day in November.

Using Moments in tandem with ClassFlow has simplified my life as a teacher immensely! I love being able to use one program and not have to have several apps or websites that I’m constantly going between. As soon as I make an announcement or give a student a badge, the notification to the parent is almost instant, and I don’t have to use an additional form of communication.

Jessica Meacham is a 1st-grade teacher in the Southern Door County School District in Wisconsin. You can subscribe to her blog here.

Toni Madison teaches 7^th-grade math at Post Oak Middle School in Spotsylvania, VA.