SchoolCEO Podcast Season 4, Episode 41: Positive Two-Way

Summary: 

Read Talking Back: Why Your District Needs a Two-Way Communication Strategy for more tips on beefing up yours. 

Check out SchoolCEO Magazine’s survey What Parents Want for more insights. 

Subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.schoolceo.com/subscribe-now/. 

Visit us at schoolceo.com and connect with SchoolCEO on LinkedIn or X/Twitter @school_ceo. 

If you have a story you’d like to share with the SchoolCEO team, email us at eileen@schoolceo.com or schedule a call.

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Script

Welcome to the SchoolCEO Podcast. I’m your host, Eileen Beard. 

Let me ask you a question: When your teachers initiate two-way conversations with families, outside of planned parent/teacher conferences and the like, what’s typically the reason? I’ll bet it’s usually because something is wrong. Maybe a student is missing assignments, their grades are slipping or they’re misbehaving in class. So a teacher or principal reaches out to discuss how they can work together to address the issue. Those conversations are often necessary and important. But what if teachers communicated just as often about what a student is doing right? 

At SchoolCEO we talk all the time about how to share positive district stories with your stakeholders—on your website, in your newsletter, via social media—whatever mass communication channels you use. But how often do you tell individual parents about positive classroom moments with their kids? 

This is why I ask. Our What Parents Want research found that the more parents PERCEIVE school communications to be positive, the more likely they are to be highly satisfied with their schools and—perhaps more importantly—to trust their schools. At the same time, the more relevant communication is to their children, the more likely they are to be highly satisfied with their schools. Neither one of these findings are very surprising. Everyone likes to hear good news more than bad news—especially about themselves. And what’s more relevant than reaching out to a parent personally? 

But again, sometimes reaching out with a negative message is necessary and ultimately in the best interest of both the parent and child. Here’s the tricky thing, though. Most parents will interpret comments about their child, whether positive or negative, as comments on their parenting—even if that isn’t the teacher’s intention. Magazine editor Melissa Hite wrote about this in the Winter 2025 issue. I’ll throw a link to it in the show notes. 

She writes that negative feedback can feel like an accusation of bad parenting, but positive feedback can feel like validation that they’re doing a good job. I’m sure we can all relate. In our personal lives we prefer to spend time with supportive friends over ones who are overly critical of us. If we even keep those critical friends at all. And what you definitely don’t want to do is push away your parents.

Receiving negative updates about your child is discouraging enough, but feeling like you have no ground to respond or ask questions is even worse. When you have to reach out with a negative update, it’s in your best interest to make that communication two-way. You want them to respond. You want them to be willing participants in a joining plan to improve their children’s grades or behavior. You’ll have a much harder time convincing them if you only ever reach out with complaints. 

Balancing necessary negative conversations with positive ones not only keeps families satisfied with the district as our research indicates—it also builds the kind of positive relationships that encourage families to communicate back. That way, when teachers do need to address falling grades or misbehavior, parents are more likely to engage in that conversation with trust.

And one last note: positivity works two ways. If they hear positive feedback from you, you’re more likely to hear positive feedback from them. Two-way communication makes it easier for parents to share positive feedback. And with all your teachers do for students, they deserve to hear more from satisfied parents. After all, satisfied teachers are necessary for a district to truly thrive. 

Thanks for joining me.