AIDET® in Action






- How does using AIDET reduce anxiety for the customer?
- Develop and practice your AIDET.
- What upcoming opportunities do you foresee being able to use AIDET?
Hello, I’m Robin Largue. I’m the lead consultant for Studer Education℠, and I want to talk with you just a short bit about AIDET® as a conversation for talking with our customers and our clients. I’m gonna provide some samples or examples of conversations that might occur in a classroom with parents and caregivers and then on the telephone with parents or caregivers. But before I do those samples, I want you to think about the beginning of school. The beginning of school is a very exciting time. Everybody is thrilled to be going back. We think it’s a new adventure where the students are gonna get to see their friends. We get to start all over again as teachers and educators, so it’s a very exciting time.
Continue to think about the parents and students at the beginning of school. They are very anxious about the teacher. Who is the teacher? What’s the year going to be like? Are we gonna get along? Will there be problems? Is my child gonna do well? All of those things make the beginning of school a very anxious time. The AIDET® conversation is intended to reduce that anxiety in parents and caregivers, and also to give them some confidence that there- that there will be success. And so that’s what we wanna focus on today as we think about the AIDET® conversation.
AIDET®. A stands for acknowledge, I for introduce, E for explanation, D for duration, and T for thank you. Now there’s some helpful tips with AIDET®. One of the things that I want to tell you is you don’t have to use all of the items in the AIDET® conversation, but you can pull those pieces that needed at particular times. You can also do them out of order. The important thing is to have that good conversation using key words that provide a reduction of anxiety and also provide confidence in you as the professional.
So, I’m a first give you an example of a middle school teacher at orientation or at open house.
So, the teacher is standing in front of the parents and care givers who have attended. “Good evening, everyone. I wanna welcome you to my seventh-grade classroom. I’m Robin Largue, and I’m the social studies teacher for the A-team at River Bluff Middle School. It is going to be a great year for every seventh grader at River Bluff. All the seventh-grade teachers work together as a team to plan and provide support and great instructional activities for students, to give every student an opportunity to be successful. We know it’s going to be a great year. This is my fifth year of teaching middle school, but my first year at River Bluff so I’m like your students. The first day of school is gonna be like a brand-new start for me, and I am very excited. I have a lot of expertise in history, do traveling, and do some writing in the area of history, so I am just excited to share my enthusiasm and passion for history and social studies with your children. At the beginning of school, as you know, we always have many forms to come home, so, each student is going to have a planner, and I’d like for you to check that planner each evening, but especially the first two weeks of school, If you could check it each evening following that once a week, and I’m gonna have a website up, and I’ll be sending that information home for you to look at. But I wanna give you a few minutes of additional information about what we will be studying this year, so if you’ll join me over here at the white board, I’m gonna give you just a few bits of information.”
So that would be my AIDET® for that evening. I didn’t use the thank you, but I would have at the very end after I had done my instructional presentation. So, you can see it’s just a easy conversation. It’s also, we also recommend that teachers call each student and parent caregiver before the beginning of school or at least within the first two weeks, just to offer an introduction, and AIDET® works well for that also.
So, this is- and you’ve seen an example of that AIDET® phone conversation, but I also just wanted to provide one as we sit here, and I don’t have my telephone, but if you’ll just envision that I’m holding a telephone. “Hello, Ms. Miller. This is Robin Largue, and I’m gonna be Zachary’s middle school teacher this year, his seventh-grade social studies teacher. Well the purpose of my call is simply to welcome Zach to the classroom and to tell him and to tell you that we are so excited about this year at River Bluff Middle School. This will be my first year at River Bluff, but I have been teaching middle school social studies for five years, and I am just so pleased to be in this community and a part of this school. And so, I wanted Zach to know that I have a place for him, and I am waiting for him on that first day of school. I am going to be sending home some information about our procedures. I’d like for you to take a look at those. If you have any questions, please let me know. I’ll have my email address and telephone number on that information so that you’ll always have a way to get in touch with me, and I hope you will if you have any questions. And I just wanna make sure I have the correct or the best telephone number for you or the best way to have a conversation with you. Is there so other way you prefer other than this telephone number? Well thanks, I’ll just keep this number on file and I look forward to our year and I look forward to you and I continuing to have continuing conversations about Zachary and Zachary in social studies. Hope you have a great day. Thank you so much for your time.”
So, that would be my telephone conversation with a parent. The reason we suggest a script is just so you can be very focused on what you want- on what information you want to give. This conversation should only be two or three minutes. So, I hope this is helpful to you. If you need additional assistance or you have questions at all, your principle has my contact information and should be able to provide that to you. I hope this works well for you and I look forward to hearing all the great stories about the start of school.