Working with Parents: Strategies for Positive & Productive Interactions

Most schools and trusts run their own CPD programmes. This programme is being run by River Learning Trust with places offered to colleagues in other schools in partnership with OTSA. Do you have any spare places on school or trust led events/programmes that you would open up to colleagues in other schools? If so, please get in touch (info@otsa.org.uk).

Working with Parents and Carers: Strategies for Positive and Productive Interactions

This session is designed for teachers and support staff who engage directly with parents and carers, especially in meetings that may involve sensitive or challenging topics.

During this session you will:

• Build confidence in handling potentially difficult conversations with strategies to reduce conflict and de-escalate tense situations.
• Understand the bigger picture, exploring why complaints and challenging interactions are on the rise and why effective communication with parents is crucial.
• Learn practical approaches to foster positive relationships, including self-awareness, active listening, awareness of others and their feelings, and building relational trust to create meaningful partnerships with parents.
• Gain actionable tools to apply immediately in your interactions, supporting smoother, more constructive engagements.

Learn how to create opportunities for collaboration and mutual understanding from even the most challenging discussions.

This session is suitable for teachers and support staff in all phases.

About the facilitator | Paul James

Paul is the Chief Executive of the River Learning Trust, a multi-academy trust comprising 28 schools (9 secondary and 19 primary). Paul started teaching in 1994 and over the past 30 years, including serving as a Headteacher, he has developed extensive experience of working with parents and carers.

Accessing the online event

Following registration for this event you will receive an email from Eventbrite confirming your place. If you do not receive the email within a few minutes, please check your junk or spam folders and check that the correct email address was provided at the time of booking. If you did not create an account at the time of booking or someone else booked on your behalf, you will need to create an Eventbrite account. Open your booking confirmation email, select ‘Claim Your Order’ and then choose a password. Make a note of your email address that was used to make the booking and your new password – you will need these to access the Eventbrite page containing the link to the event.

A minimum of 48 hours before the event begins you will receive another email from Eventbrite containing a direct link to the event and to the Eventbrite Online Event page. Login to Eventbrite, using the same email and password you used to create your account. You will now have access to the online event link and any pre-event materials. This link must not be shared with other people.

Please test the link the day before the event to make sure you can connect. If you need help please email info@otsa.org.uk or call 01865 647999 in good time before the event begins. We will be unable to help during the event itself. Please note, if you unsubscribe from Eventbrite before the event takes place you will not receive any further emails from Eventbrite and therefore will not receive the email with the link to the event.

We do not provide refunds if you are unable to access the event due to technical issues that are beyond our control.

Participation in online events

In all cases, at the beginning of the session to confirm your identity please ensure that your camera is on, your username matches the name you registered with and that you register in ‘chat’ with your first name, second name and organisation. This is for security and registration purposes and we may remove, without refunds, participants who have not confirmed their identity as described above.

Our online events aim to be interactive and at times you may be expected to have your camera and microphone on during the session, although usually your microphone should be muted.

We may use ‘Raised Hands’, ‘Reactions’, ‘Chat’, ‘Polls’, shared whiteboards and shared screens during the session. We may also use ‘Breakout Rooms’ to allow you to work in a smaller group.

This event will not be recorded for copyright and privacy reasons.

Refunds

No refunds will be given with less than 30 days notice.

In the event of a refund request, please note that the Eventbrite booking fee of 6.95% plus 0.59p per ticket is not refundable.

To keep our event fees as low as possible, we are not able to issue invoices for payment by cheque or bank transfer and we are not able to reserve places without payment.

We strongly recommend that you take out ‘event ticket insurance’ which may cover the cost of your fee should you be unable to attend the event.

Technical difficulties

Should an online session encounter any technical difficulties we will do our best to continue with the session, this may be on a different online platform. In the event that we are unable to do this we will rearrange the session, if you are unable to attend the new date a full refund will be given.