Call home before there's anything wrong

Most families only hear from a teacher when something has gone wrong, so the relationship starts in deficit. Reverse the order. In an experimental study, Kraft and Dougherty (2013) found that daily phone calls home increased homework completion and class participation. You do not need daily calls to get the useful part: a parent who has already heard you say something true and positive about their child will take a later problem call as a partnership, not an accusation.

In practice

• In the first fortnight, make two short positive contacts a day and work down the register; sixty seconds and one specific detail per family is plenty.
• Name the behaviour, not the child's character: what they did, when, and why it mattered. Generic praise sounds like a script and earns nothing.
• Log every contact. When a difficult call becomes necessary later, open by referring back to the earlier good news.
• Use whatever channel the family answers: call, text or note home all count. The medium matters less than getting there before the first problem.