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Ask the Parent


A drawing of a skull with a striped background At the beginning of every school year I would ask my parents to fill out a survey that gave me very important information. It was sent to parents separately from the packet of papers the office needed completed and returned, usually on brightly colored (yet easy to copy or read) paper. I bribed my kids to get it back to me promptly.

Why send out a separate survey?

Some of the information was redundant with the information the office wanted but this way I had it for the file I created for each student in my class.

I didn’t always get information about health or allergy concerns promptly because someone in the office had to go through hundreds of packets to extract that information.

If I wanted to schedule parent help in the classroom or volunteers for a field trip I might miss a parent who could help at home or on the trip because I didn’t ask the question and get the answer.

I was sometimes surprised when a parent took a student on a week long vacation and, at the last minute, thought I could put together ten days of fun and interesting assignments. ( 😉 Here’s what I would do about that situation!!)

Click here to download a Wordâ„¢ document of my survey that you can use to get you started creating your own parent survey. You’ll find the questions are short like “Are you able to volunteer?” or “Does your child have a health concern?” and I would follow up at another time for details. You might add lines for the information to be included on the form.

Leave what you need in the survey, delete what doesn’t apply, and add what’s missing for your teaching situation!

Let me know if I’ve missed something obvious and I’ll update the resource!