This first point is important: you school should have a policy regarding parental communication. You should take time to understand it - in particular, to understand what it means to you personally. Do not accept or agree to a policy which you regard as unworkable. As an example, some schools may have a 'same-day-reply' policy for any parental contact which arrives before noon. This is not unreasonable, but it may be unreasonable if that commitment is extended to every member of the teaching staff.
If your school or department does not have a policy in place, you should establish your own. The principle should be to remove as much pressure (as much potential for stress) as possible. Here are some tips:
a) You should not publish your personal e-mail address, or respond to any work-related queries to your personal e-mail. Ask the sender to re-send the message to the school admin e-mail address.
b) You should not publish your profile on any social media sites, or respond to any work-related queries on any forums or social media. Ask the sender to re-send the query via the school office. Do not, however, delete the conversation.
c) You should keep your home telephone and mobile phone numbers private, and should actively discourage any communication from parents or students on these phones. If you choose to have a 'teacher's mobile' it should be kept entirely separate from your private life.
d) You should use your individual school e-mail address (eg mr_bigrush@beech.ac.uk) for internal e-mails only. For any external (eg parental) communication, you should use an impersonal address (eg sociology_admin@beech.ac.uk).
e) You should have an answerphone message on any phones in teaching (as opposed to adminstrative) offices. This should have a message like this:
"Thank you for contacting the Sociology Department at Beech School. If you would like to leave a message after the tone, a member of staff will phone you back within two working days. If your message is urgent, you should instead phone the school office on 01234 567 890".
You should deal assertively with Answerphone messages along the lines of "Can Mr Bigrush phone me back immediately, please, and explain why my Norman's crossbow has been confiscated." Where possible, get these handled by adminstrative or management staff.
f) You should consider an automated e-mail reply on your department e-mail account, along the lines of:
"Thank you for e-mailing Beech Comprehensive. For your information, here's how we reply to e-mails:
- you should get an automated reply like this to every e-mail. If you do not receive this in future, please phone the school office using the number below.
- a member of staff will reply to your e-mail within 48 hours during term time. If you do not receive a reply, or if you query is urgent, please phone the school office using the number below."
g) You should route any emotive or controversial communication through a member of the management team.
h) You should have a routine copy-reading system set up for all letters and non-trivial e-mails. This means that at least two teachers get to look at every piece of outgoing correspondence.