Navigating the education technology backlash—and any other big parent concern—starts at the morning drop-off for Waterloo Elementary School Principal Rachel Edoho-Eket.
The principal stands outside the Howard County, Md., school every morning “rain, shine, sleet, hail, heat, whatever,” greeting parents and students.
Sure, she could be in her office, answering emails, but Edoho-Eket believes that the more visible she is to parents and caregivers, the more she gets to know their kids, the more families will trust her—or at least listen to what she has to say with an open mind—when something like rising concerns about the overuse of technology in schools emerges.
“Inevitably, you’re going to have a situation with a parent that you are going to need to problem solve,” Edoho-Eket said during a panel discussion at the ISTELive 26 + ASCD Annual Conference in Orlando, Fla., earlier this summer. “If the parent doesn’t know you outside of you sitting in your office, then it’s going to be a harder lift to have that collaborative problem solving.”
Like educators around the country, Edoho-Eket has heard criticism from parents about the amount of screen time students are experiencing in school, she said.
Most of her parents seem comfortable with the amount of learning technologies their children use during the school day, Edoho-Eket said.
But a small segment have told her that they feel tech tools are overused at Waterloo, or that they worry about their kids using artificial intelligence in class.
Edoho-Eket doesn’t shoot down their concerns. Instead, she gives them a glimpse of how technology fits into overall instruction at Waterloo.
“What I say to families is ‘we agree with you, we don’t want students just consuming information, we want them to produce’” their own creations using technology, Edo-Eket said.
Inevitably, you're going to have a situation with a parent that you are going to need to problem solve. If the parent doesn't know you outside of you sitting in your office, then it's going to be a harder lift to have that collaborative problem solving.
Then she’ll ask parents if they knew, for instance, that their child’s 4th grade class used tech tools—including AI-powered platforms—to produce personalized stories.
She’ll offer to show them their child’s project and to put them in touch with the teacher who initiated the assignment.
“And then all of a sudden it is, ‘Oh, this is a good skill,’” Edo-Eket said.
To be sure, some Waterloo students seem to have too much screen time at home—they share stories about spending hours watching television or playing on a tablet.
In those cases, teachers and school leaders might suggest a screen-free activity that relates to their interests—say, reading a book about Minecraft instead of playing the game for another hour.
District leaders and school board members can help build trust too
While district leaders and school board members can’t show up to every daily school drop-off line at every campus, they can work to build trust—and not just around technology, other educators on the panel said.
Sometimes, that might mean hearing parents’ concerns about hot-button issues like screen time without jumping in to correct misperceptions or getting defensive.
“It’s just listening and allowing space for people to tell their story, to feel like you care about their situation,” said Robyn Lady, who was elected chairperson of Virginia’s Fairfax County Board of Education in July. “It does develop trust that you will do what you can to help them navigate it, remedy it, work through it.”
Lady, a former school counselor, said her district—like many others—dealt with the tech backlash this past school year, in part because its outreach about the use of digital tools in instruction wasn’t as strong as it could have been.
“It’s been a rough year,” said Lady. Back when she was a school counselor, she used to tell people: “I don’t speak Techlish, so if I’m going to [need to know] something that involves a computer, I need you to break it down for me.”
The Fairfax County schools “needed the same thing with communication” about technology, she added. “We can say this is on our website, our acceptable use policy, our digital literacy, it’s all somewhere, but how are we communicating it out? How are we breaking it down? How are we making it digestible for all of our parents?”
In response to parent concerns, Fairfax has created an education technology review committee to consider screen time restrictions, Lady said. It is also allowing families to opt their children out of taking a device home.
But she’s worried that these actions came before giving parents the opportunity to see firsthand how digital learning tools are used for teaching and learning.
“We got the cart before the horse in too many ways,” Lady said. “I don’t think we’ve given enough examples of how we’re using technology that parents can see.”
She would like to hold an educational technology “showcase,” where kids can demonstrate “how they use technology to leverage their own learning.” Lady believes “that’ll create more trust [with] parents.”
Parent trust can also grow out of teacher trust, said Jose Dotres, the superintendent of the Miami-Dade County schools in Florida, another panelist.
But for that to work, teachers also need to see a clear intent behind the use of technology.
“Teachers have to feel that the technology that we’re bringing to them is connected to the pedagogy, it’s connected to instruction,” Dotres said. “It’s not something you’re just going to throw in there. If they see that, they can be also a voice and ambassador, because at the end of the day, the parent [may] trust the teacher” more than a district leader they’re not as connected to.
