The start of a new school year brings promise and new hope. It also brings a fresh set of students unfamiliar with your classroom policies. One of the best ways to help students jump-start the new school year is to teach them all about email etiquette!
You are missing out if you’ve never taught your new middle or high school students about email etiquette! It is usually one of my very first lessons of the school year, and I use it as an introductory lesson to help ease into the content. I use this email etiquette teaching resource with my students.
Here are three reasons why teaching email etiquette at the beginning of the school year is essential.
1. College and Career Readiness
One of the first reasons to teach students about email etiquette is that it helps provide students with college and career readiness. There are so many essential skills that students need to succeed in the future, and being able to communicate professionally and effectively is one of them. By teaching your students how to write emails in an academic and professional setting, you are helping students not just in your class but in all of their classes as well as their academic and professional endeavors.
2. Digital Citizenship
Another reason to teach email etiquette is for digital citizenship. In a world filled with abbreviations and emojis in text messages and social media, students need to understand their audience and decipher when to use formal language in communications and when informal language is essential. By teaching students about email etiquette and how to write an email to a teacher or boss, you are teaching your students to become better digital citizens. In doing so, they’ll become stronger and more efficient communicators.
3. Happier Emails
Finally, one last reason why all teachers should teach their students about digital citizenship is so that their inboxes are much happier places. After teaching students how to write an email, so many infuriating emails seem to disappear from my inbox. Instead, they are replaced with nice emails with proper formatting and asking a question. And in receiving happier emails that are to the point, teachers can respond to students more effectively instead of sending several emails back and forth to get to the point finally. Happier emails, happier teacher!
If you are still on the fence about whether or not you should teach email etiquette, check out this blog post about how to teach email etiquette. Once you’ve decided that teaching email etiquette is for you, I use this email etiquette lesson. It is also available in a digital formal.
