School Open House (24/8/2013)

Dear Parents,

Greetings!  My name is William Jones.  I am Canadian.  I have worked as a teacher and as a manager at many different schools in Thailand since 1994.  I have two degrees:  a Bachelor of Arts in English with a Minor in History, and a Bachelor of Education.  I am the Head of Social Studies at Wells.  I have worked at Wells since August 2007.

Please contact me at william@wells-school.com if you ever have any questions or comments.  In the title of your email, please make sure you write the name and NICKNAME of your child as well as your child’s homeroom, e.g., Somchai / TON Grade 6Y.

If you feel you need to speak with me in person about your son or daughter, please request an interview at william@wells-school.com and suggest a day and time.  I will let you know by email if I am free or not.  Unless I reply to your email to confirm a date and time, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to speak to you when you arrive.  Thus, if you try to arrange a meeting through the office staff, I can also not guarantee that I will be free to meet with you unless you contact me personally.

There are two main things that you, as a parent, can do to ensure your child is doing well in my class.  In addition to talking to your child regularly, please check my blog for homework and check PowerSchool for overall academic performance such as grades and missing assignments.  I will now explain in more detail about how the above two recommendations will help you monitor the success of your child or children.

Parents and students should visit my blog regularly at www.ajarnwilliam.wordpress.com to view assigned homework, to read the instructions about how your child can complete an assignment or project, to see study guides for tests or quizzes, to read class news, to see future projects, to see the standards, etc.  Parents, my blog will help you to monitor whether or not their child has homework.  (As a joke, I can honestly say that my blog cannot ever lie to you.)  On the most part, I usually assign homework for every class.

I believe in middle school that both parents and students are jointly responsible in making sure that homework is completed and brought to class on time.  If a student is not doing their homework regularly for whatever reason, I believe that parents must check daily to see that their child is completing their homework.  In my opinion, this means checking my blog to see what homework there is and then asking to see the completed homework as well as making sure it gets put in the school bag for the following day.

In my opinion, PowerSchool should be checked once a week to see if there are missing assignments.  A red “L” means that an assignment was/is late and a yellow “M” means the assignment is missing because your child did not turn it in.  If you see that an assignment is missing, please insist that your child completes it (as I will also insist at school because I log all homework that is not done).  If we work together, your child should be able to achieve greater success.

If you have any questions about why your child got the mark that they did, you can also ask to see your child’s social studies portfolio that they are expected to keep in proper order.  You can also check the contents of the portfolio on my blog in the link above homework to see if your child is missing any assignments in their portfolios.  Some assignments may be online and you can ask your child to show you their online work.

I apologize, but I cannot give out my phone number as that is against school policy.  However, if you check my blog, PowerSchool and look at your child’s portfolio regularly, you should have a very clear idea about how your child is doing in my class.  If you have any questions or concerns, I would prefer you contact me by email at william@wells-school.com because it is a quick and clear way of communicating.  Please do not pass any notes to your child because notes often get undelivered.

I look forward to working with you this year and helping your child to practice skills they will need to succeed in life.

Sincerely,

Mr. William, B.A., B.Ed.