Communication has become highly important for me as a teacher (who knew?!).  At the beginning of the year, I hosted a survey asking parents what form of communication worked best for them.  I had given parents the option of a phone call, text messaging, email, and the Remind app.  There was a mix of responses, however, not many people preferred an immediate phone call.

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I have noticed, though, that a phone call works best when you need to explain a situation to parents and get their feedback.  I've had this happen a number of times, and I can always end a phone call positively (even when the subject caused heated debate).  

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There is an instance I can remember where I had to conference with a mother of a SPED student.  This student has Asperger's syndrome, and as a result has a difficult time in social circumstances.  I had a failure of a group project that involved him, and had to seek her guidance on how to handle him better in the future.  After initially being upset with how I had handled the group assignment, she understood that I had followed all laws regarding SPED and his IEP and was able to counsel me with works for him regarding group projects.

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In this way, I was able to communicate effectively with a parent to better serve her child by understanding and following his IEP more closely.

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Alternately, my school is rural, and we have a very high low-socioeconomic percentage.  The procedures I've learned in my college and graduate classes regarding Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning unfortunately are very difficult for me to implement.  Because I have high school students without ubiquitous technology like smartphones or WiFi, it's often difficult to teach using models that require a lot of outside research.  I've been able to communicate with parents and guardians about these issues and modify assignments accordingly to help students gain well-rounded educations.