Shownotes:
Hold on tight as we dive into a mind-blowing episode! We have Crystal Frommert joining us, and she's about to drop some serious knowledge on parent communication. Prepare to have your socks knocked off as Crystal shares her practical and wholehearted approach to parent communication. Plus, discover the transformative power of gratitude as we dive deep into the art of expressing appreciation and uncovering the silver linings in every situation. Get ready to level up your relationships and infuse your life with boundless positivity!
About Our Guest:
Crystal Frommert, M.Ed, has over 20 years of experience as an educator in middle and high school. Crystal has taught math, computer science, and social justice in public, parochial, and international schools. Beyond teaching, she has served as an instructional coach, school board member, adjunct college instructor, technology coordinator, and assistant head of middle school. Crystal is a frequent contributor to Edutopia. She currently teaches middle school math in Houston, where she lives with her family.
Book: When Calling Parents Isn't Your Calling: A teacher's guide to communicating with parents
Website: www.crystalfrommert.com
Twitter: @mrs_frommert
Instagram: @teacherfeatureig
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is an educator, international consultant, podcaster, and TEDx speaker. She is the lead author of Evolving Learner and a contributing author of Because of a Teacher. Her latest book, Evolving with Gratitude, was just released. An experienced teacher and district leader, her expertise includes learner-driven design, community building, online/blended learning, and professional learning. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
Evolving with Gratitude, the book, is now available! Purchase here!
You can also get bulk orders for your staff (10 copies or more) at a discounted price! Just fill out the form linked below and someone will get back to you ASAP! bit.ly/ewgbulkdiscount
Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Hello, my friends. Welcome to the pod. I have a friend of mine, a new friend of mine and that is Crystal Frommert. Crystal, how are you today?
Crystal Frommert: I am doing well my friend, my new friend. Thank you for having me.
Lainie Rowell: We need to give a shout out to Darrin Peppard for connecting us.
Crystal Frommert: Yes, yes. I'm so grateful. And he's, he's a relatively new friend. I've, I've known him maybe for a year and a half now. So I'm really grateful for the people that I've met through, through Darrin, for sure.
Lainie Rowell: So Crystal has been in education for over 20 years. And an educator in middle and high school friends. I think she taught everything, math, computer science, social justice in public, parochial, and international schools. Like not only lots of different subjects, but in lots of different contexts. Is that fair to say?
Crystal Frommert: Yes. Different types of schools, mostly in international schools.
Lainie Rowell: And actually fun little side note that probably no one but me finds interesting is that I actually have been to your school. I got to work with your teachers a few years ago. So again, no one but me cares about that. But I thought that was fun.
And not only does Crystal teach a wide variety of subjects but she plays a lot of different roles.
So she's been an instructional coach, school board member, adjunct college instructor, tech coordinator. Oh my goodness. Y'all are gonna tell, I'm reading her bio because this is too much to keep in my brain.
One of the things I love is that she is a frequent contributor to Edutopia. So I feel a connection with her in that way as well. By the way, people have said that I'm a frequent contributor and Crystal makes me look like a real slouch because she has way more articles in, in like roughly the same amount of time.
So anyways, all of that. Crystal, please tell people more about how awesome you are.
Crystal Frommert: Well, thank you for the intro. Yes, I'm the kind of person who loves to try new things. If there's a new opportunity, I'm sometimes too willing to say yes. To the new opportunity. And that's probably why I've taught so many different subjects and had different roles.
When I was asked to teach a college level course, I was also teaching full-time at the international school as well. That was a very busy semester. So I'm grateful that I'm the kind of person who says yes, but I also, it could get a little overwhelming sometimes too.
Lainie Rowell: I think this might be an occupational hazard that a lot of educators have a hard time saying no.
Crystal Frommert: Right.
Lainie Rowell: Well, one of the things that I have not yet mentioned, and I want to make sure to highlight cause this is very important, is that you have a new book out When Calling Parents Isn't Your Calling.
Super clever title. I almost wanna say it again, especially cuz I just messed up there. Super clever. Oh my gosh, I can't speak. Crystal take it from here. You got the rest of the show, right? You know the questions, I'm just gonna put myself on mute. Tell us about your book When Calling Parents Isn't Your Calling.
Crystal Frommert: And actually the book came from an Edutopia article. My very first Edutopia article that I wrote in middle of 2020. Because of the pandemic, I was at home and I was bored. And so I started writing and that article was about how to connect with parents.
I wrote that because my, my own experience as a teacher when I started out in the early two thousands was that I was nervous and hesitant to talk to parents. I don't think I had enough confidence. I don't think I had the skills, and honestly, I was never really trained on how to communicate effectively with parents.
So I wrote this article for Edutopia. And then Darrin, he loved the article. He helped me to turn that into a book. And oh, you know, fast forward a couple of years later now, it's an actual book called When Calling Parents Isn't You're Calling it is geared towards the teacher who might be a little bit hesitant to talk to parents, or maybe they have talked to parents before and the parents maybe were angry with them, or it wasn't a pleasant experience. And I give a lot of how-tos, it's more of a guidebook a desk reference, if you will, to have it at your desk if there's a difficult situation. Or just some strategies on how to build that partnership.
Because I do believe, and I think most educators also believe that without that partnership, it's really hard for the child to be successful in school. And so that is what the book is about. So I recommend it for anybody who has any kind of hesitancy or any kind of nervousness around talking to parents for sure.
Lainie Rowell: And I have read it cover to cover and five star review already submitted. And I thought it was really helpful. And I hear what you're saying about, We want our learners to be successful and we want them to flourish as much as possible. And so when that home-school relationship is positive and strong, that's such a benefit to the learner and, to us too, right? Really.
Crystal Frommert: Right. Yeah. And, and, and the book goes through by chapter, different scenarios in which you would talk to parents. I mean, I think some of the most common right now are, you know, email. Some teachers who are much younger than me are probably texting and you know, obviously there's the traditional parent conference, there's the phone call, there's parent night.
And, and the book goes through chapter by chapter, all of those different scenarios and how to make those more successful for yourself and how to make them more successful for the family as well.
Lainie Rowell: Okay, so I'll date myself, emailing parents that was a new thing when I started teaching. And...
Crystal Frommert: Me too.
Lainie Rowell: ...we made every mistake we possibly could have and sometimes it's good just to, even if you've been doing this a while, it's good to go back and like, refresh on like, what are the, what are the ways that I could really do this the best possible. I hope everyone gets a chance to check it out. Again, I bought it as soon as Darrin connected us, I was like, Amazon getting it now. Very excited.
Crystal Frommert: Thank you. Thank you for reading it and thank you for the, for the great review as well at Amazon.
And I wrote it because connecting with parents is, you know, it's not something that we love to do in our job and I hope this book will help someone realize, okay, I may not love it.
That's okay, but here's how I can do it better.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And then you might end up loving it once you build those strong relationships. Right. So super practical, wholehearted guide, engaging, just a delightful read. That's, that's only part of my five-star review.
So Crystal, what does gratitude mean to you?
Crystal Frommert: You know, I love that question. I am the kind of person who writes a gratitude journal every morning. And I'm a little bit of a techie, so I do do this on my phone. I know that there's a lot of value in writing down gratitude pages, like by handwriting.
But my handwriting is not the best and so I, I do prefer to type this on my phone, but I do have an app that every single morning I write what I'm grateful for. And I have a teenage daughter as well, who is not always loving the 7:30 AM drive to school. And I do tell her on the ride to school, I tell her, oh, today in my gratitude journal I wrote about this, especially if it has anything to do with her.
And she rolls her eyes a little bit, but I, I think it's helping that she hears that this is a practice of mine and that she hears that often something about her life as part of my gratitude. And so that's how I do gratitude recording in my personal life and then beyond home, at school I do believe that giving gratitude to your students is extremely important as a teacher and given gratitude to your colleagues. No matter if we have a really rough day like right now it's, it's May and we're getting close to the final exam week and we're getting close to summer and the kids are just wild.
And I'm still trying to find things I'm grateful for throughout the day. And I tell the kids thank you, and I express that to them. And so I think that when we do that in our professional lives and in our personal lives, then we're gonna start to see the positive things that actually do exist in our lives.
It's really easy to just see the negative, but when you purposely seek it out and you purposely express gratitude for something, the good things will start to shine above the negative things.
Lainie Rowell: I wanna get to your book and I know you shared a little bit about it, but for me, and I, I hope the listener too, I wanna hear more about how you see this connection between building these positive relationships with families and gratitude.
And you and I have had conversations about this before, I won't pretend that we haven't, but I just wanna, I just wanna like dive deep into that cuz I think that's something that, It's really important and something that you're doing a great job of putting out into the world.
Crystal Frommert: Yeah. I was telling you right before we hit record too, in our, our pre-chat that right now I'm writing a blog post for Steve Barkley and I'm writing it for an audience of parents because my book is an audience for teachers. I am flipping it to how could parents communicate more effectively with teachers. And one of the sections, I'm still in draft mode of the blog, but one of the sections I'm working on is expressing gratitude to the teacher.
And that also goes the other way for the teacher to express gratitude to the parent. One thing I think that it's pretty common in just our culture is that when we write back an email, we say, thank you for reaching out, or thank you for emailing me. I guess it's how we write but really paying attention to that and being more specific about what are you grateful for that this parent has done and vice versa.
What are you grateful for as a parent that the teacher has done? I have the benefit of having really great parents that I work with, I really do. And many of them are just so grateful and so nice and they write little things like, thank you so much for taking the time to go over adding fractions with Sarah.
And that just means so much to me as a teacher that they see that and they're verbalizing that maybe in an email or saying it on the phone. And then to switch it again. I'm also, you know, like I said, a parent. And I try to remember to do this every year. I can't promise I do it every year, but I would send a note of gratitude at the end of the year to my daughter's teachers.
And maybe, maybe that's a gift, but sometimes it's just a handwritten note or it's an email to say, thank you so much for working with my daughter this year. Thank you for helping her to see how much fun science can be or something like that. Right? So finding something specific and I think that goes a really long way in helping someone feel seen and valued.
Lainie Rowell: Hmm. I agree. And I love that you're looking at this from both angles of, yes, as educators, we need to show gratitude to parents and families, which I don't think is necessarily a default. But the other way is really interesting to me too, because, it's a relationship and that's a two way thing.
What is the best to really develop that relationship is for it to be a mutually beneficial we're all seeing the good in each other and we're putting it in lights. We wanna make sure there is no missing this, right?
Cause at the center, between us in this relationship is this, this child.
Crystal Frommert: Right, right. And I, I put a story in the book and I was writing the book primarily during the pandemic years.
Right. I really tried not to focus so much on that part in the book because I wanted the book to be a little more timeless than just the pandemic. But there was a, there was a story that I put in there that I thought was just so meaningful to what it means for a parent to express gratitude to a teacher.
So. I'm not sure how it was in your area, but in my area it was really difficult to go grocery shopping during the pandemic. They would only let in like 10 people at a time. The grocery store shelves were pretty bare. It, it was just a rough time to get food and I was teaching online and one of the parents wrote me an email.
And said, can I go to the grocery store for you and your family because you are online with my child teaching him algebra and I'm gonna run to the local grocery store. Can I pick up some things for you? It was the nicest, I think to this day. It was the nicest thing a parent has ever offered to me.
I ended up declining, like I didn't really want the parent to know my grocery list. Like, yeah, some course light and Twizzlers, no, I'm just kidding. I don't. I don't really, but I didn't really wanna like express like, here's my family's shopping list.
Right? Maybe it would include Coors Light and Twizzlers, who knows? But I ended up declining.
Lainie Rowell: You cannot confirm or deny. Yes.
Crystal Frommert: So I, I ended up declining, but the, the gesture was just so meaningful because she even said in her email, because you are taking your time to teach my child, I wanna take my time to go to the grocery store for you.
And that, that just meant so much. And you know, I've had parents express gratitude in other ways and it doesn't mean a gift necessarily. Yes, I've gotten some nice, very thoughtful, generous gifts, but it doesn't have to be that. A handwritten note or just the word or just an offer to do something just means so much.
And I think the same thing goes around for a teacher that, it doesn't have to be just words of gratitude. You know, I know a teacher who, there was a brand new student at the school and he was really struggling to catch up with the curriculum because the curriculum was just a little bit more rigorous than where he had come from.
And the teacher said, you know, I have some free time on Sunday afternoon. Let's zoom with each other, and I'll just get you caught up on this particular chapter for 45 minutes. That right there shows that the teacher is giving her time showing gratitude for the kid wanting to learn more. And the family was grateful for that too.
So it doesn't have to be written. It can also just be through your actions as well.
Lainie Rowell: Mm-hmm. We want kids to be grateful for the opportunity to learn and we need to be grateful. So nothing should be taken for granted. We should be appreciating these things from all the sides.
Is there anything else, top of mind that you're like, I really wanna make this connection to gratitude or just in general that you wanna let people know about?
Crystal Frommert: You know, thank you for asking that. I think that one of the big takeaways from the book is to assume the best of parents, which is difficult sometimes to do because there is this unspoken contention sometimes between, well, the parents just want this and the teachers just want this, and that doesn't have to exist. We can actually just assume the best of each other. And I do tell a story about how we have parent conferences and they're very tightly scheduled every 15 minutes.
And if you miss one, I'm sorry. That's it. You're not gonna get your conference. It's a little harsh, but that's such a tight schedule. And I remember one year a parent just didn't show up at all. No email, no phone call, nothing. And the 15 minute time slot goes by and I still heard nothing. And so five o'clock at the end of the day, I'm exhausted.
I've had dozens of conferences and they walk up to my classroom and my first thought is anger. I'm feeling resentful. My body language is probably not very welcoming. And the parents said, we are so sorry we missed the appointment today. We saw a stray dog that needed to go to the vet and we took the dog to the vet instead of coming to the conference.
And we took care of the dog. Every bit of resentment and anger and fatigue that I had at that moment melted away. Mm-hmm. One, I'm a big dog person. I love dogs and anyone who's gonna stop and help astray dog is like, you shine in my heart. And those parents were like, do you have 15 minutes to meet with me right now?
I know it's five o'clock. I'm so sorry. And of course I'm gonna stay and meet with you. And not just because you saved the dog, but I should not have assumed the worst. Like, oh, these parents just don't care, or they just blew me off and, you know, that was my thought. And that moment changed how I saw situations.
There's another one that, that's not my story, but it's a colleague's story that she was director of a dance team at a high school and this girl on her dance team was picked up 45 minutes to an hour late every single practice. And it was really burdensome to the director because she's like, I gotta get home.
So she finally asked the girl, what's going on? Why? You know, why is your ride late every single time to pick you up? And she said, well, I'm not really supposed to tell you because my family doesn't like to talk about it. But I have a brother who is very ill and my mom has to wait for the caregiver to get there, to take care of him before she can come get me, but we don't really wanna tell people this. Mm-hmm. And the director of the dance team was like, oh, I had no idea. She learned something about the family's culture. She learned about the child's situation. So she just could have so much more compassion and move into a problem solving mode rather than a resentful mode.
And so at that point she worked with, you know, how can we help you arrange, cuz obviously going home an hour late, it's not gonna work. But how can we find a solution to this right? So that's the big message. I think that, that any educator or any parent, anybody can take away is, don't assume the worst, assume the best.
Yes, some people are gonna take advantage of you. That's gonna happen. But you're gonna live a looser, freer life if you just assume the best every time that you can.
Lainie Rowell: A hundred percent. I'm gonna put that out there as one of those lessons I have to keep relearning in my life because I have a tendency to take things very personally.
Someone not showing up for an appointment literally happened today and you know, I had set aside all this time and I was ready to have this meeting and my knee-jerk response is they don't value my time. They don't think this meeting is important. They don't value me. Like those are the things I'm telling myself, and then I have to stop and go.
Okay. This could have nothing to do with me. Mm-hmm. This could be that they have something else going on. I need to assume the best. I need to assume positive intent. I need to assume that they wanted to be here, that they tried to be here, that something interfered .Letting that go oh, that is, that is a huge weight that gets lifted off your shoulders when you stop making it about you. I'm talking to myself.
Crystal Frommert: Yeah. It's hard. I mean, it's, I know it's easier said than done but it's a practice that I I that I try and I fail a lot, but I keep trying.
So, you know, when I say this in the book, and I say this now in this podcast, it's not that I expect myself or anyone else to just instantly snap into, well now I assume positive intent. That can't happen. You have to keep practicing and it has to become a habit.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And I think the habit it's that you shift it, right?
Mm-hmm. It's like, okay, oh, I recognize what's happening here. I'm making this about me. I've told myself a story that is not based in fact. So that to me helps.
One of the things that I appreciate about your approach, Crystal, in this book is that you make it manageable and doable.
It's not this absurd ask of, okay, and now spend 20 hours on the weekend writing love letters to your families. You break down the process in a way that makes it, for me, it feels very manageable and doable.
Crystal Frommert: One big ask, and I know that teachers time is, is very limited. But one thing I recommend for every single teacher, no matter what grade you teach, is to start off the school year with a personalized happy note or welcome note to families.
And that could be sent electronically. Now some, I know that if you're teaching the little kids, sometimes they'll do home visits or they'll make phone calls because they have a smaller roster than a high school teacher with a hundred plus kiddos, right? But what I recommend a teacher do is send a personalized note to every family.
Take the time to find out their names and the honorifics. That's very important. Is it doctor? Is it ms? Is it Mr. Mm-hmm. Being very clear about that because that shows that you took the time to do your homework and you respect who they are and what their identity is, and sending a note to that family saying it is so great to have Lainie in my class.
I've known her for a couple of days now and I noticed that she has this great sense of humor and she really loves playing this particular game we played the other day, something like that. Very short, but it can be pretty specific cuz in a couple of days, you know, you know a little bit about your kiddos.
And one of the best things about this is when you have a, a kiddo that you know is probably not gonna be getting all happy notes, all year. That kid might be the one who's running down the hall or throws a pencil or whatever it is, right? Mm-hmm. Maybe that should be the first email you send. Yeah.
Because you want your very first contact to be positive.
Lainie Rowell: Mm-hmm.
Crystal Frommert: So if Daniel is in your class and Daniel is starting to get a little cheeky already, then send an email to Daniel's mom and dad or dad and dad, whoever they are and just say, I am so glad that Daniel's in my class. He has a great sense of humor and he, you know, is very social.
Something like that. I'm looking forward to seeing a parent night and then the next time if Daniel does throw the pencil across the room, then you've already established with his parents that you know him and that you see him for who he is and you like him because that's what parents really deep down wanna know.
Do you like my kid? Mm-hmm. That's, that is really, really important. And I know that one short little email is not gonna solidify that confirmation that you like their kid, but it is definitely an investment into that bank account of, you know, positive relationships. So that is my ask of educators.
Lainie Rowell: Again, I think that's completely manageable and doable.
This is not a every day, but this is a start off on the right foot and it is a huge return on investment. And one of the things that I try and remember is that not every parent had a great experience in school themselves. Maybe they didn't feel seen and valued.
And so when you start off with that, you're now shifting this relationship from, oh, this is gonna be the same old, same old to this parent going, oh wow. Like, I don't think this ever happened for my family when I was in school. This is totally different and it kind of resets the expectation, the dynamic, if you will.
Crystal Frommert: That's a great point. You're right, you're right.
Lainie Rowell: And another thing I just wanna point out, because I think this is a beautiful ask, is that you are saying reach out to every family and that is, not just the ones who raise their hand every time you ask a question and cannot wait to help you with everything.
And those kids are magical and they help our rooms run really, really well. And you're also talking about the kids who, and again, this will also reset with them, right? Because they're like, wait a second, this has never happened. I haven't gotten anything positive home yet. This is a different thing.
Maybe this is gonna be something new. But then also the kids who don't hear their names called very often. Because we do have some kids who can really fly under the radar, and I actually think that's maybe the biggest group of kids that we have. So when you're making this intentional thing to reach out to all of them, that's huge.
That's just so huge. And the fact that you're talking about the authenticity and the specificity is also really, really important because it's not like when two kids are on the playground. Oh, Mrs. Frommert called my family. Oh, she called my family too. What did she say? You know, they'll, they'll sus out pretty quickly if you said the exact same thing.
Kids are good at that. And actually, to be honest, so are families.
Crystal Frommert: So yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. The parents' WhatsApp will go crazy and say, oh, we all got the copy pasted email. You know? Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: And that could actually do more damage than good. So make it, make it specific and authentic and it doesn't take a lot, just a couple little things.
So it's unique and there's things coming along to maybe make that even easier, like, I don't know, ChatGPT maybe could help.
Crystal Frommert: ChatGPT will do that. That's right.
Lainie Rowell: I won't take us down that rabbit hole. But you know, Crystal and I actually have been been doing some writing together and we've got a little idea here.
We're gonna put out into the world in some way, shape, or form. And hopefully that'll be available to the world by the time this comes out. And we'll put it in the show notes because we do think there's some ways that maybe we can leverage still being completely genuine. Genuine gratitude, genuine connections with families.
Little easier on the time.
My friend. Who would you like to give a shout out to?
Crystal Frommert: There are so many educators out there who have shaped who I am as a teacher. I mentioned I don't really mention a lot of names in the book, but I mention people that I've worked with in the book who have taught me little nuggets of wisdom.
Right now I really am following a lot of the work and working closely with Starr Sackstein.
She is an author and she also appears on many podcasts as well. And I've gotten to know her as a friend. And what's great about Starr's work is that she's influencing me in, in the way of maybe shifting away from traditional grading.
And I know that's a whole different podcast conversation to have, but I am really starting to rethink how grading works in my middle school math class. And I'm so grateful for Starr for making me rethink some of those things. I'm also grateful to Todd Whitaker. Todd Whitaker is an author of many, many, many books.
He's brilliant and he took the time to chat with me very early in my writing process through Zoom. We chatted about his book called Dealing with Difficult Parents and he wrote this book in the early two thousands and I wrote to him and it said, Dr. Whitaker, I'm writing a book that is sort of similar to yours.
Could I ask you some questions? Yeah. And he was like, yes. And so there are so many people who have given their time to just, to help me to, to become a writer and to help me become the teacher that I am today. There's too many to list, honestly, that are, that are still shaping who I am.
Lainie Rowell: Well, you mentioned two that I truly appreciate.
I follow both Starr and Todd, and I wanna say something about the fact that you approached an author who wrote a book on the topic you're writing a book on, because I think that intuitively people would be like, oh no, they're not gonna wanna help you. But I think that's a testament not only to Todd Whitaker, but to most authors that I have come across that are actually really happy just to help and get the good stuff out there, not about themselves.
But just, this is the message and if you're gonna put this out, I wanna support you in doing that. And so I think that's something really lovely about educators and authors.
Crystal Frommert: So grateful for that.
Lainie Rowell: Yes. And also when you mentioned Starr, I see a real connection between those topics because to me, most of the points of friction between families and educators, has to do with grading. And so we can go to better creating practices. That will lead to better relationships.
Crystal Frommert: I could talk for two hours about I know, but I won't. I won't.
Lainie Rowell: It's a tough one for sure. I think we all have very strong opinions on it.
I do. Star does a beautiful job with this conversation, as does Tom Shimmer, who's also been on this particular podcast. He has a great episode on here. So I echo the, the gratitude to those thought leaders. All right, my friend Crystal, I will put everything in the show notes, but how can people get in touch with you?
Crystal Frommert: Twitter is a great place to start a conversation. That's @mrs_frommert, or if you just search up Frommert, F r o m m e r t that's how you can find me. If you go to Edutopia you can find some of my writing there as well. I'm on LinkedIn. There aren't that many Frommert in the US.
There are many in Germany, but not that many in the US so if you search up Frommert, you're probably gonna find me or one of my cousins, so...
Lainie Rowell: There you go. Alright. I bet they're delightful people too.
Okay, crystal, thank you so much for being here and thank you all for listening.
Crystal Frommert: Well, thank you. Thanks for your time.
I really appreciate it.