I hope that the first half of your child’s year has gone well. I want to share with you some thoughts from an article that I read recently in Teacher magazine. The article was entitled “Parents Are From Mars, Teachers Are From Venus.” The author, Bill Ferriter, throws out the idea of writing a book to improve communication between parents and teachers and to help them “get what they want” out of one another. He is not seriously considering this idea, but he does suggest some strategies to allow each group to “score points” with the other.

In the section entitled “Scoring Points with Parents,” Ferriter suggests to teachers that they do the following:

• Recognize that parents are valuable partners.
• Communicate early and often.
• Admit your mistakes.
• (Don’t worry! I’ve shared the link to this article with teachers so that they have already had the opportunity to read the article.)
• His section on “Scoring Points with Teachers” suggests that “teachers are rarely the incompetent, bumbling scatterbrains that you see in your nightmares.” He recommends the following ideas to foster a positive working relationship:
• Recognize that teachers are professionals.
• Give your child’s teacher the benefit of the doubt. It recommends making an appointment with the teacher to get the teacher’s perspective on the issue or incident.
• Say “thank you.”

If you would like to read the full article, please email me at glidet@marist.com, and I will send you the link. In the near future, I hope to set up a webpage of my own on the Marist website with links to articles of this type so that you can access them there.

Online grades: Please remember that we will no longer be sending midterm progress reports home with high school students. You will need to set up parent-teacher-student conferences online as in the past, but you will not receive a hard copy of the midterm report. We will send home a final grade report at the end of each term, since the report card is an item that is usually kept in a memory book or chest or displayed on the refrigerator. Foundations students will continue to receive both a midterm progress report and a final report card to bring home to you.

Midterm progress reports and departmental rubrics of classroom progress and behaviors were supposed to go out Friday, January 18, but due to classes being cancelled for January 18, they actually were distributed at the end of the day on Tuesday, January 22.

Grade updates: The remaining Term II dates for teachers to update grades are Monday, February 4, and Tuesday, February 26. Grades should be updated by noon on those dates. Please contact your child’s teacher if you have questions about the grades or if they have not been updated.

Awards lists: Once again, congratulations to those who earned Blue Awards, Gold Awards, Honor Roll, and Dean’s List for last term. Certificates were given to students on January 16; the lists of awardees for the four awards can be found in the Downloads section of this newsletter.

Final exams: Final exams will be given February 27 through 29. The schedule will be posted on the Marist website as soon as it is available.

I know that you and your children are looking forward to spring break. It won’t be long now!

Mrs. Tricia Glidewell
Academic Dean