My role in our TLLP is different. I am an Instructional Coach, so I no longer have a class of my own. I will tell you about an experience I had, and a practice that worked well when I had my own classes. In my final years as a classroom teacher, I maintained a drastically reduced focus on grades, and had some great results with both students and parents. I found that key to working with the parents was to give them some other type of feedback that they could understand and relate to. I did this by having the students email their parents every two weeks. This was usually a two paragraph email with the first paragraph outlining what was going on in the school. We usually brainstormed a few things that were going on in the building and the students could choose a few that were relevant to them -- or pick other ones. The second paragraph outlined what they were learning in my class. The learning goals were posted, so they could use these s a starting point. Students who wished to elabora...