Write a Letter to Your Child's Teacher

Author Margaret Trimer-Hartley and her husband sent this letter to their son's teacher when he was entering the first grade. After the article, EduGuide offers tips on how to write your own "Dear Teacher" letter.

Note: The “looping program” referred to in the second paragraph is a program at some schools that enables teachers to move with their students to the next grade. 

Dear Mrs. Emmons,

First, let me tell you we are thrilled that our son Nikolas Hartley has been chosen to be in your class and in the looping program! I believe your background and the consistency of looping will give Nikolas the stimulation and stability he so desperately needs.

Let me introduce you to Nikolas:

Nikolas started at Discovery in Mrs. Hughes’ Developmental Kindergarten — something I believe was a true gift to all of us. He has a late birthday (Oct. 5), and that extra year helped him develop the social skills and maturity necessary to succeed in Mrs. Graves' kindergarten last year.

He is an incredibly bright boy—and that is sometimes a source of difficulty for him and his teachers. He struggles to find peers with whom he can relate. While he has friends, we are eager for him to find a real buddy—or two! As an only child at home, Nikolas is usually surrounded by adults and older neighborhood children. He craves a peer group that he can hang out with.

That said, he typically gets along well with children at school and at childcare—which he will no longer attend this year. Nikolas started school as a pretty aggressive, bossy child, and that continues, though he is learning what is and isn’t appropriate in that realm. He will likely try to be your co-disciplinarian, alerting you to the misbehavior of others, but often dodging responsibility for his own misdeeds.

Nikolas is extremely hard on himself, and I suspect that some of that is internal and some of that stems from our high standards for him. We have backed off pressuring him to perform as we have seen it backfire. So we try to support, encourage and praise! At the same time, we do not want to reward him when the job is not done well! Our hope is that Nikolas will continue learning to cope with and learn from his mistakes. He tends not to volunteer much in class—perhaps out of fear of failure. And he struggles to try new things and new approaches to old things—again we think this is because he does not want to do something until he is certain he will do it perfectly. His holding back does, however, pay off, as he usually gets it right when he finally decides to go for it!

Nikolas once told me, “Mom, I’d rather exercise my mind than my body, so stop trying to get me into sports!” That all changed when he discovered gymnastics last winter! Nikolas is quite a performer in the Twistars gymnastics program—one of his extracurriculars.

We believe in the balanced approach to life outside of school. Nikolas can do one sport and one academic (or other) extracurricular per season. He loves science, art and inventing, and we expect to enroll him in something related to one of those areas in addition to his gymnastics this fall.

We value family time above all else, and strive to spend at least a couple of hours every night interacting with Nikolas. We talk about school, current events (we watch the news and talk about it with him), hopes, dreams and how much we love one another. As much as possible, we spend our weekends at our cottage in Higgins Lake, where we have uninterrupted, quality family time.

Nikolas has two dogs, one an aging yellow lab and the other a brand new standard poodle puppy. If anything motivates him, it is his love of dogs and his passion for monsters. Since learning to read last year, Nikolas has devoured monster books. He is currently obsessed with the adolescent series Goosebumps by R.L. Stine—the boy ACTUALLY is reading those books on his own. I do not believe there is anything we as parents can do that is better than reading to our boy—we have missed fewer than 10 days of reading to him since the day we brought him home from the hospital.

We know we will get to know you well over the coming two years, and we look forward to it. We are passionate advocates for public education and for our child. Professionally, I am the Director of Communications for the MEA and Nikolas’ dad is a professional photographer. You can count on us to support you and our child throughout the coming year.

Best wishes!!

Margaret and Daymon Hartley

Your Turn

Write your own letter with our quick outline. It’s best to send this at the beginning of the year. After you write one, you can just update it each year and pass copies along to after-school or other programs that work with your child on an on-going basis.

Beginning

• Tell the teacher that you look forward to working together as a partner.
• Share any big hopes or concerns you have for the year.

Middle 

• Give whatever details you would want to know if you were being handed this child to motivate, teach and discipline for the first time.
• Focus on particular areas where your child could use an extra challenge or support.
• Tell the teacher what your child seems to like or dislike about school.
• Share what seems to work, or not work, in motivating him or her.

End

• Say you hope sharing this info makes her job a little easier.
• Let her know that you want it to be a two-way street, and you would appreciate hearing what she learns about how to work with your child.
• Tell her that you’re committed to working to support your child’s education at home and will value any ideas she has to back up what is learned in the classroom.