How much should parents be involved in their child's education?
Have you ever had a student failing or falling behind? If so, are you able to contact the parent and have positive communication about helping the student succeed? Some of the districts with professional parents expect more from their child. If their child has a 94-95, the parent is contacting the teacher wondering why their child has not scored higher. These parents have unrealistic expectations, even though their child's score is an A, it is not high enough for the parent. The opposite is true in my district. A lot of my students' parents commute to New York or New Jersey, leaving their house at 3-4a.m. and not returning until 7p.m. When I have a student with a D or F on tests, the parents do not contact me with concern and I have a hard time contacting them to discuss my concern.
Is it easier to deal with parents who are overly involved in their child's education or not involved at all?
http://integraonline.com/~familyscience.org/pdfs/nsta_article.pdf is an article that discusses teachers and adminstrations find parent involvement as their greatest challenge and cause the most stress in their job.
http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/05/parental-involvement.html is a blog discussing parent involvement. Some teachers feel they do have enough parent involvement. Some teachers feel their job would be worse without parent invovlement. Some wonder if parent involvement should be in moderation.
With parent involvement, everything in moderation.
ReplyDeleteI have worked at two public schools and a private school. The clientele at all three schools differed. Undeniably, the tendency was: the more educated the parents, the more pressure on the kid and the teacher to get high grades.
I also find that teachers unjustly complain about parents, though. If they call or e-mail, many are quickly annoyed. If they don't call back or respond to e-mail, they are in the "like father like son / what do you expect" category.
My own working class parents were afraid to contact my PhD teachers, even when one slammed a book on my head, and I didn't want to go to school any more. That is foremost in my mind, and I try to be encouraging and inviting to parents. I am sure you are, as well.
On the other hand, I expect some to be helicopter parents, who will try to blame me for their child's failure to thrive. Gets me angry for a moment, and then I try to realize that they just feel helpless and haven't yet learned to put their emotions in perspective. And sometimes, they are even a little bit right, and I really need to adapt something I'm doing, or not doing. Having support from your principal is key to this. If you're offered up for slaughter by admin once, it will scar you for a long time.
Parent involvement is part of my job. I may have only 10 students (note: I'm supposed to have only 8!), but I spend more #*&%*(@ time dealing with the parents than I do one-on-one with my students. For many, I have to drag out the information like, "Oh, Johnny had a seizure last summer (mentioned in March after Johnny freaked out when he was caught stealing)", or "Did I tell you that we changed Sammy's meds? (after Sammy started crying, 'Heil Hitler' in the cafeteria", but more often the conversations go like this:"I don't care if it was a real fire, you can't say 'move your ass' to my child when she wants to eat!' or "No, (this is the child's psychiatrist), the parents didn't tell me Billy was having hallucinations about killing Peter." or "You have to watch my daughter more carefully, she is having sex with a man she met on the internet. I see on her e-mail log that she is e-mailing him at 12:10 when she's in school."
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, the parents who are MOST involved are the most demanding and create the most stress for their children. It is this stress that the child is dealing with in school. The child is not accepted for who he is at home. That being said, and since I'm as demanding as the next mom, the parents of my students, even the least involved (in my class this generally means having the fewest number of year in college, if any) try as best they can to help their children. We do not always see eye-to-eye, but I've never seen such support as I have for my special ed kids. And yes, it helps tremendously when the administration is on your side.
At the high school level, parent involvement should be minimal unless the student is struggling. The problem becomes though many teachers do not contact parents until it is to late, or after the student has made a huge decline.
ReplyDeleteI find the best way to keep parents from being to involved in the classroom, is for you as the teacher to make the contact first - and be too involved with the parent.
What I mean by that is this. At the start of every semester or school year I send a letter home and email to every parent. I provide my contact information, syllabus and basic homework outline for the first 6 weeks. (I collect all parent information from students - the stuff they don't even give the office on notecards the first day offering extra credit for every student who fills it out accurately)
Then, as a student does something extremely well I have postcards I mail home, even if it is a small improvement. Within the first 6 weeks I have usually spoken, emailed or sent a postcard to every parent on top of the initial contact. Now they assume I will contact them when something negative occurs, which I will.
Parents that normally struggle to get involved, they respond well to me because I've reached out at the beginning and to notice something positive about their student. Which may have occurred very little before.
As a college teacher I have little involvement with parents, so I can't add too much to this discussion. Some of my colleagues have dealt with pushy, annoying, or otherwise unfriendly parents, but I've been lucky in that respect and I can't recall any incidents worth writing about.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I am a parent of a kindergarten graduate who will start first grade in the fall, so I can comment from the parents' perspective! Even there I feel I'm lucky in that our child's K teacher was really excellent, and the school works hard to involve parents at all levels. Sometimes they try too hard! We got weekly recorded phone messages and emails from our daughter's teacher, as well as a school newsletter maybe once a month or so. We also had a parent teacher conference once a semester.
Like Aristotle said, everything in moderation. I hope to stay in the sensible middle and not get too over-involved. At the same time I feel that the parents who don't care and let the school "take care of education" or doing a disservice to their kids.
Its sad to say, but the best way to handle these situations is on a case by case basis. You will never please everyone. That always has to be on the back of your mind. I find what works best for me is to just ask the parent...."What do you want me to do?" Most times, its not worth fighting over and the parent is caught off guard just by the simple fact that you are willing to work with them. If that means the child might get neglected....so be it. Its what the parent wants. Its a losing battle for the teacher from the beginning and this way you at least establish some type of diplomacy with the parent. By fighting a neglectful parent...the teacher never wins and it just ugly for everyone. So I just find that unfortunately parental involvement is generally predetermined.
ReplyDeleteParent involvement should be in moderation. I teach fifth grade. This is when students really need to take more responsibility for their learning and begin to break the phase of having parents do it all. It is important for me to stay in constant communication with parents, but I always stress the fact the their child needs have more control of their actions. I appreciate the parents who want their children to perform well in school. It is a matter of giving the children the reins to strive and do their best. It cannot always be handed to them, in order for them to appreciate the outcome they need to be active in the learning. on the other hand, it is sad to see the children who struggle with no parent interaction. As teachers, we need to assess the students and their family life and take the appropriate actions to help them. The students learning and achievement is most important, the parents are only one part in a child's academic success, whether they be too overbearing or absent completely.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of whether you think it's easier to deal with over-involved vs. under-involved depends on the teacher. Personally, I might be annoyed by a parent that is over-involved. I will be angered, though, by a parent that is under-involved. To me, the under-involvement is worse because there are more serious consequences, like neglect. Being honest and diplomatic with both extremes is important.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ms. Shirley and remember always hearing this from administrators, it is always good to provide parents with positive feedback, not just negative.
ReplyDeletemsqanda mentioned Special Education parents being overly involved. I didn't think to add that in my initial comment, but I agree. Special Education parents are definately overly involved to make sure their child is receiving everything in their IEPs.
Does anyone feel uncomfortable dealing with special education parents because of their IEPs?
I don't know that one is necessarily better than the other, but I do believe that it is imperative to find the positive in the situation.
ReplyDeleteOne of the top students in our building was able to graduate after his junior year because of his parents pushing him academically. From my perspective, I'm glad to see him going to college at the other end of the state. Being the youngest of three extremely bright children, I was concerned that he was aiming to please his parents and older siblings, and not find what he was truly passionate about.
At the other end of the spectrum, I become very frustrated when I attempt to initiate contact with the parents of a student who is not doing well in the classroom and do not get a response in return. Oftentimes, I do not hear back from them until it's too late. I made multiple attempts for one student who was failing miserably. I did not hear from his parents until the last three weeks of school, and they wanted to know what their son could do to pass for the year!
I'm very thankful that the majority of my students' family involvement falls between these two extremes!
Audrey
You bring up something near and dear to my heart. I am an over involved parent and do a lot with and for my child’s school. This is often frowned upon and I never understood why until this year. I have a friend who is also a primary teacher and she had an overly involved parent this year. The parent made her doubt her own abilities and questioned most of her actions. This teacher has been teaching for over seven years and is quite good with the younger children. The parent’s reason for being overly involved was because of the age of the teacher. I think if a parent chooses to be overly involved it should be for the child and the child only not because they have an issue with the classroom teacher. I also think that at some point parents need to cut the umbilical cord. My husband and a few of his friends are in higher education and you would not believe the high level of parent involvement; when does autonomy kick in. However, I think there are times when parents should be involved especially if there is an academic, behavioral, or health concern. As a former counselor, I needed parents to get on board and not depend so much on the school system to nurture their children. I think this is similar to the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears; I want parent involvement that is just right; not to cold and not too hot. Although my child is a preschooler, I have learned to back off a bit and let the teachers do their jobs.
ReplyDeleteI have personally reached both extremes while teaching honors students and co-taught/general ed students. The extreme on the honors students is that parents are either micro-managers of their child and will send a series of emails in one serving before I could answer their first. Other parents want their children to have quality, rigorous education, so they recommend their child to take an Honors course, however, they are not equipped for the reality that their child is not motivated or qualified for a hard-earned A and then will attack the teacher. On the other hand, the non-existent parents are incredibly harmful to their children and could care less what their child's progress is in school, especially if they never graduated themselves and it repeats a very vicious cycle. In this case, I try to work much harder in maintaining an understood interest to the student because, for many, it may have been their first concerned individual in their lives that expressed interest in what they did. Sometimes this works, but, unfortunately, not all of the time and I painfully watch them join the ranks of other drop-out students.
ReplyDeleteI always liked my parents' approach and I feel like it worked. They were involved in what I did and made sure I did it well and thoroughly and if I didn't, there were consequences at home to be paid, usually grounding, no TV, no friends' sleepovers or get togethers, etc. I didn't have a cell phone then, but I'm sure that could be potentially successful, as well as all of their other gadgets. The only time they engaged with the teacher was if there was a legitimate concern, or a behaviorial/academic issue. It was never to berate the teacher, but rather find out what they could do on their behalf at home. I think this type of parental involvement is an example of moderation because the expectations were hanging on my shoulders.