Encouraging parents to stay engaged in their child’s learning through Echo should be part of your school’s culture. Besides keeping abreast of student grades, teachers and schools can inform parents of activities through announcements, create self-paced courses for parents on topics from getting into college to becoming career ready.
Creating Accounts for Parents
Step one in getting parents to use Echo is to create accounts for them. For districts that have more than one school using Echo, we advise creating parents in the district domain to make managing their accounts more manageable.
Connecting Parents to Echo
Once parents have accounts, consider creating multiple communication strategies to get them connected. Parent orientation, back to school night, open house, a mailer attached to progress reports and report cards, and a link on your school website can all provide opportunities for parents to learn about Echo. Check out our Parent Letter Template and Parent Slide Template for examples.
Don't forget to promote the Echo Viewer mobile app as an easy way for parents to stay on top of student grades.
Ideas for Engaging Parents
- Hold teacher's accountable for posting a high quality agenda each day. Parents get frustrated when they see blank agendas. The school browser gives school leaders quick access to all the agendas. It's a good idea to work with your staff (and NTN coach) to develop a set of criteria for what constitutes a "high quality" agenda.
- Hold teacher's accountable for posting all assignments details in Echo. An assignment with nothing more than the title "Homework #3" doesn't help the student or parent know what the task is. The more information available to student and parents, the more value they find in Echo.
- During conferences with parents, rather than printing out grades, have the parent or student login to Echo and provide a live demonstration on how parents can easily see course grades, assignment scores and comments, the course daily agendas and the student's to-do list.
- Customize Echo's login page by embedding a web page with useful content for parents. Here's an example of a customized login page. This feature must be configured in the domain's theme settings by your Echo Admin.
- Create a few self-paced courses for parents that provide guidance on a variety of subjects (i.e. applying for and paying for college, advice and articles on raising children, etc.)
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