Positive Phone Calls Home: 8 Steps to Start a Praise Program

Q: How long does a positive phone call home take?

A positive phone call home can often be completed in two to three minutes, plus a short amount of time to document the conversation. Rather than trying to contact every family at once, teachers or schools can spread calls across the school year and set a manageable weekly or quarterly goal based on the number of students they serve.

Q: Should the teacher or the principal make the call?

Either can make a positive call home, but the calls serve somewhat different purposes. A teacher's call can strengthen the direct relationship between the classroom and the family. A principal's call can create a positive connection between the family and the school office. In a schoolwide recognition program, teachers can identify specific accomplishments while administrators help make the calls.

Q: What if a student never seems to do anything worth praising?

Look for meaningful improvement rather than exceptional achievement. Positive recognition might focus on an improved assessment result, an act of kindness, better attendance or participation, completing an assignment, or successfully managing behavior that has previously been difficult. Students who frequently receive corrective feedback may especially benefit from adults noticing genuine progress.

Q: What do you do if a parent raises a problem during a positive call?

Listen to the concern and arrange a separate conversation to address it when appropriate. Keeping the original call focused on the student's positive accomplishment helps preserve the purpose of the recognition while still giving the family's concern the attention it deserves in a dedicated follow-up.

By Jon Konen, Last Updated: August 25, 2026

smiling child with arms outstretched standing in a sunlit green wheat field

Positive phone calls home can be organized as a schoolwide system rather than left to individual good intentions. One principal's approach: ask every teacher for praise comments each quarter, have one person make the calls, and track the count. Eight steps show how it worked in his building.

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Step 1: Go Public with Your Philosophy

If an educator from another school asked what your principal believes in, how would you answer? Some principals go through the motions without ever saying their beliefs out loud. Others speak so freely that their philosophy contradicts itself by Thursday.

Build your philosophy from your own experience, your district's, and most importantly from the people you work with daily. If your staff's philosophy contradicts yours, start with small increments of change. If you believe in a positive environment that feeds on itself, tell your staff, tell your community, then set some actionable goals. Tell your staff:

"We are going to put more time into positive behaviors than negative behaviors. I believe we can start with everyone giving me one positive thing about every student in our school."

Step 2: Ask for Ideas, Get Buy-In

Ask your staff how they'd praise the good things students do here. Hopefully they can brainstorm plenty. If it's difficult, that's time well spent until they can. A healthy staff should be able to build a long list of ways to acknowledge the positives.

You probably can't put every idea into practice, but keep the list and add to it any time. Make sure you use some of them, so staff believes you care, that you can listen, and that you follow through. Buy-in is hard to get, but if you work at it and go with the "go-ers," the bus will start to move.

Step 3: Describe the Power of Praise Program

The program is simple. Teachers find specific things students are doing in the school that can be praised. They write them down with the student's name, using the form later in this article. Then the principal calls the student's parents with the praise statement. Every teacher takes part.

Step 4: Set Expectations

Decide who's giving you positives. All staff, or just instructional staff? In my school, I leave it open to anyone. A parent volunteer knew we were doing it, worked with a student, and handed me a positive comment on her way out.

In my building, I ask every classroom teacher for one positive comment about every student over the course of the year. Some students need more, either because they respond well to a run of positives or because they're at risk. For my rosters, that works out to somewhere between 5 and 9 comments a quarter. That number isn't a benchmark, just what makes the math come out in my school. Set whatever figure clears your own rosters by June. Some teachers write five a week, and those students end up with four to six positive calls home.

Why the Principal Makes the Call

A teacher can run this in a single classroom, and many do. But there's a reason to put the principal on the phone when you build it schoolwide. For most families, a call from the principal's office means trouble, and every positive call resets what that number means. By the time you do have to call about a real problem, you're not a stranger delivering bad news.

Step 5: Make Phone Calls

The conversation never includes the word "but." The call is only positive. If you need to talk about behavior, make a separate call later.

Lead with reassurance. A parent seeing the school's number assumes their child is hurt or in trouble, so say early that nothing is wrong and you're calling with good news. You would not believe the responses you get once that lands, and they're worth jotting down. I always ask how they're doing, which gives me some insight into the parent's mood. Here's the shape of the call:

"Hello. Is this Mrs. Smith. This is Johnny's principal, Mr. Konen from the elementary. How are you today? I am calling with some positive praise on Johnny (usually a good comment back here, but I have heard a gasp, or even a laugh here). Mrs. Tanner said that Johnny has improved 27 points on his last math test and she has seen vast improvements over the year. So, we are celebrating him here at school and hopefully you praise him at home. Have a great day."

Step 6: Celebrate Landmark Numbers

Celebrate landmark calls. After the 100^th call, I look up which teacher wrote it, send a school-wide email, and buy that teacher a beverage of their choice. Celebrating the count tells everyone we're working on this goal together, and it gets more comments into the inbox. Adjust the number if you want to hand out surprises more often, and track it thermometer-style on a poster outside the office.

Step 7: Hold Everyone Accountable

Reporting back each quarter on how many comments each person has turned in does two things. It shows staff you believe in this, and it tells them whether they're on track for every student to be recognized this year.

You'll hear the time objection, and it's fair. Writing a praise comment takes a minute; the call runs two to three. The load is small, and spreading it across a quarter keeps it from piling up in May.

You'll also hear a version of this: "Well, little Johnny gets into too much trouble, and he never does anything worth calling home." I challenge that teacher, because I was little Johnny. Look for improvement, an act of kindness, something small you can make into a big deal. That may be one of the students who benefits most from receiving positive recognition. Hasn't he already had plenty of the other kind?

My mom once told a teacher, "Well, do you want me to go down there and beat the cr*p out of him?" She was annoyed at all the negative comments. I was an "A/B" student in elementary school, and she was a teacher in the building. You'll be happy to know I grew up.

If a teacher won't take part, that's a conversation about district policy rather than something you can settle on the spot. If your district uses the Danielson Framework, positive family communication and related practices may align with relevant components, but whether participation can be required or evaluated depends on district policy and the applicable evaluation system. I've never had a teacher refuse. Under the 2022 Framework for Teaching, the practices this program draws on relate to three Domains and four Components:

1b: Knowing and Valuing Students
2b: Fostering a Culture for Learning
4c: Engaging Families and Communities
4d: Contributing to School Community and Culture

If your district is still on an earlier version of the framework, the component numbers and titles will differ. Check which edition your evaluation system actually references before mapping anything to it.

Step 8: Build On Success

This program can be started by a principal or run entirely by teachers in their own classrooms. Take the positives and build on them. Connect the number of calls you make each month to the number of office referrals written that month and look for a pattern. If there isn't one, increase the calls.

One of the best parts is telling teachers what parents said about them after I passed along the praise. It comes full circle, and many parents reply about the positive experience their child is having in that teacher's class. You can run the same thing for staff: have teachers praise each other, read those at meetings, hand out a treat or cover a duty.

Collecting hard data on a program like this is difficult, but it can be done. Track calls made during stretches of school-wide stress, because if the adults are feeling it the kids and parents are too. Track calls to your at-risk students, and track which teachers turn in forms. Making the intangible tangible shows what your school actually believes in. Where do you want to spend your time?

The Power of Positive Praise Form

Staff Member: _____________ Room: ________ Date: _______

I would like to make a positive phone call home to every student's parents at least once this year. Let me know which students you'd like me to praise from your class. Keep track of the ones you refer, so every student reaches the minimum of one call this school year.

#	Student's Name	Positive Comment(s)
1
2
3
4
5

THANK YOU for supporting me with this goal!

blank Power of Praise form with five numbered rows for students' names and positive comments

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a positive phone call home take?

Two to three minutes for the call, plus a minute for the teacher to write the comment. The time objection is the most common reason these programs stall, and the answer is spreading the load across a quarter rather than saving it for spring. Pick a per-quarter number that clears your own class rosters by June.

Should the teacher or the principal make the call?

Either works, but they do different jobs. A teacher calling builds a direct relationship with that family. A principal calling changes what the school's number means to a family that has only ever heard from the office about problems. For a schoolwide program, put the principal on the phone and let teachers supply the material.

What if a student never seems to do anything worth praising?

That may be one of the students who benefits most from receiving positive recognition, and they likely have the longest history of the other kind of call. Look for improvement rather than excellence: a test score that moved, an act of kindness, a day without an incident.

What do you do if a parent raises a problem during a positive call?

Listen, then set up a separate conversation for it. Keeping the praise call free of "but" is what makes the next call possible, and mixing the two teaches families that good news always has a catch attached.

Make it a system, not a habit - set a per-quarter number of praise comments that clears your own rosters by June, and treat it as a standing goal rather than a good intention.
One caller, tracked publicly - reporting the count back to staff each quarter is what keeps the program alive past October.
Never say "but" - a positive call that turns into a behavior conversation teaches families that good news has a catch.
Include students who hear from school least kindly - make a deliberate effort to recognize students who frequently receive negative feedback, too.
It can align with the Danielson Framework - elements of the program relate to areas such as knowledge of students, culture for learning, family communication, and professional practice.

Running a program like this across a whole building is administrator work, and most principals pick it up on the job rather than in a course. If you're weighing a move into school leadership, the sponsored programs on this page include educational leadership and administration degrees built for teachers who are still in the classroom full time.

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