Building Trust with Families: Part II
Relationships, Dependability, and Good Intent
This article is part of a series on building trust with children, families, and staff in schools. The first article can be read here. This is Part II of an article on building trust with families - and you can read the first part here. In each article, I apply Steve Chalke’s trust equation to our work in schools.
+ Relationships
“Parents absolutely must trust a teacher’s intent—both for their children and for themselves as parents—before they can feel safe and supported.”
From Tending the Light by John R. Snyder
John Snyder distinguishes between two different types of trust in our work: trust in competence and trust in intent. This gap between our vision and practice—what we intend to do vs. what we produce—means that parents have to both believe in our competence (our ability to effectively guide their child) and believe in our intent (our deep love, care, and goodwill towards their child). Trusting in someone’s intent is the deeper and more vital element upon which our feelings of safety depend. This trust is built through relationships.
It is important to understand the different here, because sometimes people will confuse the two, misreading a minor incompetency as a moral failing. Knowing the difference as a guide helps in those moments when you have to take accountability and work towards rebuilding trust. Once again, communication is the skill that helps us navigate these critical moments. As Snyder says, “Through patient, skillful communication one can sometimes bring [parents] to see the difference between one’s intent and one’s ability to consistently produce what one intends.”
I appreciate how Donna Bryant Goertz describes this facet of relationship and trust building in relation to a parent-teacher conference:
Individual parent teacher conferences are such a rich opportunity for building a relationship that I like to hold a conference very early in the year with each parent of a new child. I reserve an hour and a half for each new parent. This is a time to let a parent feel the full force of my delight in having her child in my class. Parents need to know that their child is a wanted and treasured community member. Before I approach any hard work with a parent or with a child I like to have initiated a trust based on the parent’s introduction to our living and learning culture, my knowledge and skill as a guide, and to my fondness of the child. Every parent deserves to hear in one piece the issues we plan to address, the positive characteristics of the child upon which we plan to build, and the shining goal toward which we aim.
From Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful by Donna Bryant Goertz
Relationships with families need a similar level of understanding, thoughtfulness, consideration, sensitivity, forgiveness, support, and time that we give to the children.
I also appreciate Snyder’s comment that this should not be “soft-pedaling, sugarcoating, or New-Age happyspeak”—we must be very intentional and purposeful in the way we frame our conversations and communications with parents, rooted in our Montessori perspective. He reminds us that all our conversations are rooted in the shared understanding that:
All behaviors—even dysfunctional ones—are ultimately driven by healthy needs. Recognizing the need allows to see and ally ourselves with the good in children, regardless of their behavior.
Everything children do and say (including what they do not do and do not say) is a communication. Children are driven to communicate until their feel heard and understood.
Children are in the world to learn and to challenge themselves to move beyond their current capabilities. That is their nature. Children intuitively know how to set the right level of challenge for themselves and will do if we let them.
We are not privy to the child’s innermost thoughts, feelings, and need or what it is like to be them. We only work with the periphery. Even our understanding of the periphery is always provisional and open to modification based on further evidence from observation.
From Tending the Light by John R. Snyder
By framing all our communications with parents in these terms, we can discuss challenging issues with them in ways that inspire hope and confidence in their child and themselves.
÷ Self-interest
I have worked in both public and private Montessori environments, and in these different contexts experienced vastly different parent communication norms. In the private school I worked in, managing parent communication was 25% of the job. What always made me deeply uncomfortable in this environment was the way in which as teachers were sometimes viewed as service providers in a transactional relationship, rather than partners in the education of a community of children. This definitely informed the issue with the family from Part I—the father kept complaining how much money they had invested in the school. In Steve Chalke’s “Trust Equation,” self-interest is the denominator that undermines everything else. I would argue that private schools have to go out of their way to address this fundamental issue.
On the flip side, I would love to see more of an investment in family relations in public school environments. In the public schools I worked in, parent communications accounted for closer to 5% of the work. At first, I thought this was great after the deluge of parent emails in my previous school, but upon reflection, I think perhaps there was an issue here too. Sometimes a lack of communication with families is informed by latent classism and racism that assumes certain families didn’t want to be involved in their children’s education. There is also sometimes a transactional nature to these relationships too. In systems where teachers and their classrooms are driven by external expectations—exam results, literacy tests, curriculum benchmarks, behavior expectations—developing deep, trusting relationships with all the children and their families can feel a roadblock to the job, rather the central focus of the work. As teachers we have to care about more than just our jobs, we have to care for our community.
+ Dependability
The stronger the bridge - one built over time - the more it can withstand little bumps and bruises. It takes time and focused effort to build a very strong bridge.
From Tending the Light by John R. Snyder
I’m not sure if this is comforting or not to early-career teachers, but it is worth recognizing that these issues can happen with teachers no matter how experienced they are or how much trust they have in the bank. Trust is fickle. As a new guide, you are initially afforded what John Snyder calls “transitive trust” — a “trust inherited by the virtue of your association with trusted institutions or people.” It’s the benefit of the doubt. This is a good starting place, but it doesn’t last forever and must be built upon and maintained with a strategic approach to trust and relationship-building through clear, consistent, and compassionate systems of communication.
One of my favorite tools for building positive, trusting classroom cultures is making certain to make a quick call/email to parents when I notice something positive about their child - progress with a skill, an act of kindness, a funny story, etc. This was something parents could depend upon.
The classroom is often a black box for parents, and as teachers we too often assume that parents know what is going on. Oftentimes, the only information about the classroom that parents get are negative reports from their own children who are just looking to offload at the end of the day. Or they only get contacted by teachers when things are going awry. We have to be more proactive in helping parents to see the wonderful things that their child is experiencing and achieving during the school day. Parents are hungry for this good news. As a practice, set aside 10-15 minutes each day to share a positive observation of the children in your environment with their parents. Keep track of these communications to ensure equity in keeping all parents in the loop, and be extra vigilant for positive moments for those students who are struggling the most. Flood your community with positivity. This small change can work wonders.
Final Thoughts
Building and maintaining trust within school communities is a complex endeavor that requires deliberate effort, clear communication, and genuine relationships. By applying Steve Chalke’s Trust Equation—balancing credibility, dependability, and relationships while minimizing self-interest—educators and school leaders can foster an environment where trust thrives. In my next article, I want to explore how trust is built with individual children and communities of children alike.