TEACHER-PARENT COMMUNICATIONS TO FOSTER LEARNERS’ PERFORMANCE IN ENGLISH

Purpose : This action research aimed to determine the effectiveness of Teacher-Parent Communications in fostering the learners' performance in English of Francisco L. Adlaon High School, Carmen 2 District. It particularly examined the learners' performance in English before and after the intervention. Methodology : The study is quantitative and utilized a descriptive research design. A self-made summative test was utilized in the study. Eight (8) learners underperforming in English were subjected to the intervention through a pretest and post-test research design. With the help of their parents, learners were exposed to contextualized modules suited to their grade level. Findings : The findings revealed that there was an increase of 5.25 points from 80.88 which is “Satisfactory” to 86.13 which is “Very Satisfactory” on the learners’ performance in English. Practical Implications : This study provides valuable insights for educators, schools, and policymakers, emphasizing the need for fostering effective communication channels between teachers and parents to support students’ language learning and overall academic success. Originality/Value : The findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge by emphasizing the role of teacher-parent collaboration as a solution to academic problems and highlighting its significance in enhancing students' performance.


INTRODUCTION
The academic performance of students is at the center of the educational system. Any educational institution's success or failure is evaluated based on students' academic progress. Parents, in addition to schools, also have very high expectations for pupils' academic success since they think that higher grades may result in greater employment opportunities and future stability (Narad & Abdullah, 2016).
Academic performance, according to Narad & Abdullah (2016), refers to the knowledge obtained and designated by marks given by teachers. Academic performance in the context of education refers to the educational goal that must be met by a student, instructor, or institution during a specific period of time. The goal may vary from one person or institution to another and 25 | M i d d l e E a s t e r n J o u r n a l o f R e s e a r c h i n E d u c a t i o n a n d S o c i a l S c i e n c e s https://bcsdjournals.com/index.php/mejress is assessed through exams or ongoing evaluations. Academic performance is a measure of how well a student, instructor, or institution has completed their educational objectives.
With this, Deped Order # 18 s. 2020 was promulgated, developing the Basic Education-Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP) in order to guarantee that learning opportunities are safely supplied to our learners through various learning delivery modalities. DepEd provides blended and distance learning modes employing printed or digital modules, online learning resources, radio and TV-based instructions in order to avoid face-to-face contacts. The school implemented the printed Modular Distance Learning Modality in order to maintain educational continuity and to continue achieving each school's objective and vision, which is to provide high-quality education to every Filipino learner.
On the other hand, lack of time to monitor students' progress, which results in the learners' poor academic performance, is one of the difficulties teachers in the school experience when using the printed Modular Distance Learning modality. In addition, given that education is no longer provided in schools, parents did not fulfill their responsibility as the teacher's partners. When these things happen, the students can get disinterested in their studies, which could result in poor academic performance. According to records on students' academic performance in English, Grade 7 -Perseverance at Francisco L. Adlaon High School had the greatest percentage of students with low performance for the quarter, at 22.86%, out of the three sections.
With the aforementioned data, the researcher is inspired to carry out a study to address the academically challenged students. In order to help them achieve better in English, teacher-parent communications will be facilitated. The goal of this action research is to improve student performance by encouraging parent-teacher collaboration. During the orientation that was done for them prior to the commencement of the implementation, parents were required to follow particular instructions provided by the researcher.
From this study, it can be inferred that parents and teachers will work together to implement the right activities of the aforementioned intervention. As a result, the student's academic performance in English will improve.

LITERATURE REVIEW
This study is anchored to Vygotsky's social development theory which states that a child's cognitive development and ability to learn can be guided and mediated by their social interactions. His theory, also known as Vygotsky's Sociocultural theory, asserts that learning is a crucially social process rather than an independent journey of discovery. He elaborates on this by stating that a child's learning benefits greatly from being guided by a more knowledgeable member of the community, such as a parent or a teacher. Vygotsky, who believed that culture played a significant role in determining cognitive development and that, consequently, this development varied across cultures, suggested in his sociocultural theory that children internalize and learn from the beliefs and attitudes that they observe around them. Vygotsky also stressed the importance of language as the foundation of all learning (Gowrie Marketing, n.d.).
The community's and parents' support are crucial to the success of this alternate teaching approach. According to a study by Abuya et al. (2014) in Kenya, parental involvement via engaging and fostering open communication with children who are transitioning into adolescence dramatically enhanced learning results.
The said finding is concurrent with the study conducted by Mahuro and Hungi (2016) that found that parental involvement-including creating a supportive environment at home, monitoring students' academic progress, and paying schools a surprise visit-significantly improved students' numeracy and literacy. This suggests that parental involvement is crucial in encouraging kids to raise their academic performance. Furthermore, Drake (2000) shows that neither parents nor families are able to resolve the difficulties in a child's education on their own. In order to solve this issue, there needs to be more cooperation between the family and the school. Additionally, the narrative analysis of the parent-teacher talks revealed the necessity for instructors to keep in touch with parents to encourage more honest communication between the home and the school (Abulon et al., 2017).
Finally, the Private Education Assistance Committee (2020) emphasizes the importance of family involvement. Although guardians or parents lack the expertise to replicate the role of a teacher in supporting learning, their input is crucial to the success of modular distance learning.

Research Design
This is quantitative research utilizing the self-made questionnaire as the main tool in gathering the data.

Population and Sampling
The main participants of this study were the 8 learners in Grade 7 -Perseverance of Francisco L. Adlaon High School who scored poorly on the Academic Grade in English for the first quarter. These learners were chosen as participants because the researcher thought they were the ones in the class who needed urgent attention in order to deal with the various learning activities and enhance their performance.
The proponent used purposive sampling to get the study's participant count. The researcher was helped in identifying the study participants by a copy of the E-Class Record. Thus, a total of 8 Grade 7 Perseverance students served as the data sources.

Instrument
A teacher-made summative test was crafted to measure the performance of the learners for Quarter 2.

Innovation/Intervention/Strategy
The activities to be carried out in the implementation of teacher-parent communications are covered in this chapter. The aforementioned intervention is a joint effort by parents and teachers to improve the performance of the learners in English. The following initiatives are taking place in order to help the school overcome its problem.

Pre-Implementation
At the initial stage, the researcher identified the 8 learners of Grade 7-Perseverance to be the participants of the study. These were the students who have low grades in English for Quarter 1. Additionally, the researcher sent a letter to the school principal and to the class adviser as a courtesy to conduct the study. Afterward, a letter for conference noted by the class adviser and approved by the school principal was sent to identified parents. Text messaging was done to those parents who failed to act upon the letter. Besides, phone calls were applied to parents who still do not respond to the text message. Home visitation was the last resort for parents who did not respond to the above-mentioned communication schemes.
Upon approval of the letter, the researcher simplified the modules to be reproduced. These materials were submitted, reviewed, and revalidated by the school principal. In addition, the researcher crafted a checklist of activities as a tracking tool for the submission of learners' modules. Besides, an interview guide was prepared by the researcher to be used for the conference to generate data. Finally, a teacher-made summative test was crafted to measure the performance of the learners for Quarter 2.

Implementation
The parents were informed throughout the conference of the significance of their participation and contribution to the study. Parents were interviewed by the researcher about why their children delayed or didn't submit their modules. After that, parents were reminded that a modification to the way that school modules are distributed had been made and that they were still very much needed as partners in the activity. They were told that the teacher-researcher would distribute half of the module's student copies. Each subject from the four learning areas received two modules, which were distributed to the students in two groups. Students swapped modules with their classmates the following week. In order to avoid confusion, parents were reminded that they must return the exact copies of the modules for them to get another set of copies for the next week.
Besides, parents were encouraged to craft an Individual Parents Initiated Schedule that suits their availability of time to facilitate the accomplishment of the activities in the modules. Additionally, the researcher asked for the phone number or the FB Account of the parents to monitor the whole duration of the study. Throughout the study, parents guided their children in answering their modules. The teacher-researcher conducted text messaging or chat messaging every Wednesday to remind, monitor, and notify the parents of their duty to check their children's module performance. They were required to reply and be allowed to converse further via text or chat messages about the progress of the child in their modules. In the case that parents cannot still respond using those communication schemes, the researcher called the parents to conduct continuous monitoring of the process.
Moreover, parents were made aware that a checklist of activities was crafted by the researcher as a monitoring tool to track how well the pupils were performing the tasks. This was checked every Friday along with the module submission. In this case, parents signed the module before submitting it to confirm that they have reviewed it for their child and to validate their signature in the module logs. They were told that the aforementioned activities would last the entirety of the second quarter of the academic year.
Furthermore, parents were also informed that a summative test was administered by the researcher to evaluate the student's performance during those specific weeks after the first four weeks of the module's distribution. After the seventh week, a further summative test was administered to assess how well the students had learned over weeks 5, 6, and 7.
Finally, the parents signed a pledge of commitment in order to secure their complete support of their position as partners in the completion of the modules. Home visits, on the other hand, were a last resort in the event that parents would no longer cooperate in carrying out their responsibilities as partners in resolving the issue with their child's module performance. The summative test was used by the researcher to record the learners' performance after the intervention activities had been in place for seven weeks. Data collected in the first and second quarters were tallied, handled, analyzed, and documented. The paper was then finished in its entirety in preparation for oral presentation.

Post-Implementation
The findings of the study were disseminated to the school principal, district supervisor, and eventually to the Division Office. The program was cascaded at the school level through Learning Action Cell (LAC) sessions and In-service Training (INSET). The adoption and use of the implementation method across grade levels within the school setting were discussed. Through LAC Sessions and/or small group discussions, district-wide results were shared with all schools.

Treatment of Data
Frequency count and simple percentage will be used to assess the learners' performance of the students before and after implementing the Teacher-Parent Communications. The mean difference will be utilized to determine the effectiveness Parent-Teacher Communications in enhancing the English learners' performance

Ethical Considerations
For the security of all individuals and organizations engaged in the conduct of the study, the researcher made sure that all research protocols regarding the ethics of the research were followed. It is detailed in the table that as to learners' English Academic Performance before the implementation of the intervention, none out of the 8 students obtained "Outstanding" academic performance with a grade range of 90% up, and "Very Satisfactory" with a grade range of 85-89, 6 (75%) obtained "Satisfactory" with a grade range of 80-84, 2 (30%) obtained "Fairly Satisfactory" academic performance with a grade range of 75-79 and none got the grade range of below 75 with "Did not meet expectations" as the descriptive equivalent.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Additionally, after the implementation of the intervention, it was found that 1 (11.11%) student obtained "Outstanding" academic performance with a grade range of 90% up, 4 (50%) obtained "Very Satisfactory" with a grade range of 85-89, 3 (37.5%) obtained "Satisfactory" with a grade range of 80-84, and none obtained "Fairly Satisfactory" academic performance with a grade range of 75-79 and a grade range of below 75 with "Did not meet expectations" as the descriptive equivalent.
The findings showed that the majority of the students before the implementation of the intervention obtained "Satisfactory" academic performance. On the other hand, most of the students got Very Satisfactory levels after the implementation of the intervention.  Before implementing teacher-parent communications, the mean score for English academic performance was 80.88. After implementing these communications, the mean score increased to 86.50. The mean difference between the two is 5.63. The data revealed a significant increase of 5.63 points from 80.88 which is "Satisfactory" to 86.13 which is "Very Satisfactory" on the learners' performance in English. Hence, Teacher-Parent Communication is an effective intervention in improving the learners' performance in English. The increase in the mean score suggests a positive impact on the learners' performance in English. Thus, one of the most important variables for a child's academic success and a remedy to academic challenges is communication between teachers and parents.
This result is consistent with the findings of Abuya et al. (2014), who claimed that parental involvement via engaging and fostering open communication with children who are transitioning into adolescence dramatically enhanced learning results. Additionally, the said finding is also supported by Mahuro and Hungi (2016), who found that parental involvementincluding creating a supportive environment at home, monitoring students' academic progress, and paying schools a surprise visit-significantly improved students' numeracy and literacy. This suggests that parental involvement is crucial in encouraging kids to raise their academic performance.
Working on this action research solidified my opinion that parents, in addition to their individual instructors in school, can and do teach their children a great deal. As a teacher, I can conclude that teacher-parent communication is an effective intervention for raising students' academic performance. This intervention, where parents act as the teacher's partner at home, does not only contribute to the success of their children's academic performance but also elevated the parents' commitment to their children's education. Besides, it also strengthened the connections between parents and teachers towards making a difference in the lives of our learners especially those who are considered "at risk" or who are low performing.
The conduct of this study was advantageous to the students, the researcher, parents, and other teachers who were dealing with the same issue at hand. Based on their results in the second quarter of school, Francisco L. Adlaon High School students in Grade 7 showed a considerable improvement in their English after the series of activities. Additionally, the researcher & role as a subject teacher benefited from this because it aided in her professional growth, and the knowledge, she acquired was priceless. On the other side, it also raises the parents' spirits and makes them feel appreciated and significant in their children & education. More importantly, because this study is so helpful, it helped teachers from other schools who were having the same issue.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
This study suggests that fostering effective teacher-parent communication can significantly improve learners' performance in English. The findings indicate that implementing interventions that involve parents and provide contextualized modules can. Lead to substantial improvements in students' grades. Therefore, educators and schools should prioritize and encourage regular communication and collaboration between teachers and parents to enhance students' academic progress. This study highlights the importance of teacher-parent conferences as a valuable approach to addressing academic challenges and facilitating a child's overall success in school. By recognizing the significance of teacher-parent communication, educational institutions can establish stronger partnerships with parents, leading to a more supportive and conducive learning environment for students.
It was recommended that Teacher-Parent Communications intervention may be implemented in other schools or classes suffering from the same issue with low academic performance of the learners. Results of the study may be disseminated to the teaching community for replication through LAC sessions, and/or focused group discussion. Teachers and parents may collaborate with each other in order to improve communication between school and home, inform parents of their children's progress, and encourage their growth. A study may be conducted to confirm the results of this study and explore other strategies geared towards fostering learners' performance in English.