Providing a way for teachers to stay in communication with students and their parents is often difficult to do.

With teachers in class most of the day and many parents working into the evening, there isn’t much time left for direct communication. Also, many teachers do not have regular office hours or access to phones in their classrooms, so telephone calls from parents, in particular, are often hard to accommodate. The Faculty Message Center helps facilitate communication by providing a 24 hour a day vehicle to share information.

Similar to voice mail, teachers are issued mailbox extensions on the Faculty Message Center that allows people to contact them day or night. Each teacher has a personalized greeting on the Message Center for callers to hear. Greeting messages can be changed whenever needed from any touch-tone phone. When students or parents call the Message Center they will be able to leave a message in either of two ways: they can access any teacher’s mailbox by pressing the appropriate four digit code or they can use the "spell by last name" directory. Messages can be left for more than one teacher during one phone call if the caller knows the four digit code or teacher’s last name.

What are some of the benefits of having a Faculty Message Center?

	Provide a vehicle for communication to those faculty or staff members without regular access to a phone
	Free up front office staff from taking messages for teachers
	Provide a way for students to communicate with teachers outside of classroom hours

Teachers will never be quite as accessible as students or parents might like, but with the Faculty Message Center the teacher can be only a phone call away.