6 Tips to Make Difficult Phone Calls Home More Manageable

I may have found the one thing both new and experienced educators can agree on: Making phone calls home is not always fun. As a former special education teacher of 21 years, I’ve had to make my fair share of calls, and luckily I’ve learned a few strategies along the way. These six tips for parent phone calls have helped me not only have better conversations but start each call with confidence.

1. Start off with the key phrase ‘They’re safe’

When a parent or guardian sees a call coming in from the school, their first instinct is often to wonder if their child is hurt. Start the call easing this concern by explicitly saying that the child is safe. Not only does this ease concerns, but also it gets the parent or guardian in the mindset that you are approaching this call from a point of care, even if you aren’t transmitting positive information.

Here’s an example:“Hi Ms. Smith, this is Principal Coleman from Abbott Elementary. How are you? I have some information about an incident today involving your child. They’re safe, and I wanted to give you the particulars of the incident.”

2. Relay the incident with nouns and verbs, not adjectives

Your goal is to objectively state what led up to the incident, where the incident took place, what you personally observed, and what the student is doing right now. Adjectives are subjective, which leads to misinterpretation and arguments. You want to get off the phone without giving the parent or guardian an opportunity to get into a back-and-forth with you or claim that you misunderstood or exaggerated their child’s behavior.

Words like disrespectful and disruptive are vague and don’t inform the parent or guardian of what the student actually did. Think of how to describe incidents only by using direct quotes and actions of the student, like “Cooper told the sub to shut up” or “Ava was playing videos on her phone when Ms. Howard was instructing.”

When you describe events without describing their child using negative adjectives, it cuts off opportunities for the parent or guardian to escalate by claiming you are attacking their child’s character.

3. Don’t ask the parent to ‘talk to’ the student

When you ask a parent or guardian to talk to their student, you and the parent or guardian may take a completely different meaning from that simple request. You believe you’re just asking them to help reinforce school consequences and be part of the team to model good behavior for the student. However, in the parent or guardian’s mind, they believe you are implying that they don’t already talk to their child about behaving appropriately.

This will cause them to feel like you are judging their parenting. It is a given that a parent or guardian would speak to their child about a major incident involving them at school. Your only job is to let them know this happened.

4. Stay focused

There is only one purpose that can be effectively achieved when calling home, and that’s relaying information about the incident and informing the parent of the school consequences. Nothing more. This is not the time for an over-the-phone functional behavior assessment, an interview about their home life, or threats about removing them from a field trip if they keep this up. The parent or guardian may be in a state of shock and need time to pause and reflect. Overwhelming them with other tangents on the call will cause them to get flustered. Once you have accomplished your objective, wrap up the call.

5. Try to add one positive about the student on the call

The parent or guardian is having their day interrupted with one message: Your child did something bad. It’s important to let them know you believe that while this was not the student’s best choice today, you know they have the capability to do better. Reference a prior example of when the student did make a better choice, so the parent or guardian knows this is not the be-all and end-all on how you view their child. If you’re an administrator who doesn’t have a ton of prior interaction with the student, quickly ask their teacher for an example.

It doesn’t have to be something big. A simple “I know this is really out of character for Aiden, because I know he makes good choices and follows directions in the cafeteria” or “This is inconsistent with how well Tyler treats his peers at recess” will suffice.

6. End the call with a thank-you

The best way to wrap up these calls is with the following statement: “I thought you would want to know this as soon as possible, and I really appreciate your taking my call.” I have found that saying something positive catches the parent or guardian off guard and melts down defensiveness. It lets them know you don’t view them as an adversary but as a partner in educating their child. The parent or guardian will often follow up with a “No, thank you for calling!” It ends a negative interaction on a high note, which is what they will remember most.

To help you get started, you can make a copy of this sample parent phone call script.