So, if parent involvement is as important as we say it is, what are we currently doing to encourage it? What can we do to increase parent involvement levels? What constitutes "parent involvement"?
Friday, January 30, 2009
Parent Involvement
I've been thinking a lot about what we can do to increase parental involvement. These thoughts have been spurred in part by The Big Picture (see list at the right) but also by conversations with another teacher. Those conversation centered around how we notify parents of incomplete assignments, the effectiveness of our efforts, and whether it is really impacting the student. Our conclusion was that most of what we call "parent involvement" is nothing more than trying to gather a signature.
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3 comments:
I'll go ahead and comment with what some of my early thoughts are on the subject. First, I think the majority of what we are doing in the area we call Parent Involvement is nothing more than signature gathering. We get progress reports signed, missing homework notices signed, and we send emails or make phone calls when parents need to be informed of their student's behavior.
I think parent involvement ranges from all those things to visiting in the classroom regularly, assisting with teaching their child's class, even making curriculum decisions when possible.
How we go about increasing parent is another question. It has to be REAL, whatever we do. It will require that we seek that involvement outside normal business hours for most of our parents. Any other ideas out there?
Parental involvement...Does that mean calling a parent to complain about what the kid has done? Does that count? When I had kids, I quickly became a better teacher. I began thinking thoughts such as, "Would I want someone yelling at my girl right now? I mean, I know what they did was silly, but with my own kid, I take into account their personality, etc. Have I thought about what this child is truly like...this child that is now crying in front of me and I don't stop because I've heard the same lousy excuse 45 times today? But MY child, my flesh and blood, is not number 45 with a dumb question. No teacher better talk to them that way...." Makes you stop and think. Anyway, you'd better put your thinking cap on to follow this thought, because it might be rather obtuse. Now that I have children in school, I have a different opinion about parent involvement. I recently received two report cards from my daughters' teachers. Both report cards are acceptable, and both teachers said no conference was requested. WHY NOT?? Is this not the best time to have a conference? Most of our parent involvement passes as e-mail or notes (going back to Guthrie's signature collection) and most of that is negative. So, the best time to have a parent conference is when the report card or progress report is good. Let the child lead the conference and brag on themself. It increases confidence on the part of the child, teaches ownership of their work, let's them practice running a meeting and allows them to grow skills in public speaking. Why are we afraid to meet with parents? Is it the amount of time required? This is my first comment, so forgive me. I now realize that I have no idea what is really going on at my daughters' school and classes. I'd love to be involved. My wife has time to be involved, but you have to beg to even volunteer for anything other than the usual chores. I'd love to see us embrace parents as the partners they are, fling back our classrooms, and invite them into the process of educating. Difficult? Yes. A pain in the ass? Yes. Worth it? You answer that by looking at the research. It will speak for itself, then we have to answer why we don't do it. The answer is potentially embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. We haven't tried it and that makes us feel awkward. It should only be embarrassing if we choose not to try it because it is a pain.
Baker brings up a great point. Why do we only want to involve parents when things are going sour? Is because we are playing CYA? On our hall we send out progress reports every week. What if gave parents the option to schedule conferences in the middle and/or end of every quarter to talk about their child's progress the way Baker suggested? It may sound like elementary school, but does that make it wrong? Couldn't we do that with our Eagles nest? Will it be more work for us? Yes. Will it positively affect the student? Yes.
How can springboard off these ideas and come up with a good pilot program to try this out?
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