It was after the long July - August vacation and Johnny had returned to school. During the first week his teacher, Miss Singh noticed he was disruptive during class time.She thought before it became a major issue she would call his mother. The mother's response was ,"I had him for eight whole weeks Miss and not once I called you!"
(Anonymous)
This tad bit of humour reflects how some parents feel about their involvement and responsibility when it comes to their childrens' education.Parental involvement is important to developing a well rounded child.I am quite sure many of us have had to deal with students who are disruptive or not performing in classes and when we attempt to call in parents, we discover their parents may be living abroad and the children are in the care of aged grandparents.
Joyce Epstein from the Center for the Social Organization of Schools developed what is known as "Epstein's Framework of Six Types Involvement".The six types are:
1. Parenting
2. Communicating
3. Volunteering
4. Learning at Home
5. Decision Making
6. Collaborating with Community
Epstein suggests having workshops on each of these types would lead to positive results for the parents, children and teachers. For instance,it would build awareness of the importance of school, parents would feel support from other parents as well as from the school and teachers be in a better positon to understand families background, culture, and concerns.
The reality is that most times the parents we want to meet are difficult to get in contact with when situations occur at school. Therefore, teachers are called upon to nurture these students and provide the best solution to assist these children to develop and become good responsible citizens.
Parents are perhaps the most influential persons on a child's early learning, hence educators have always highlighted the importance of the role of the family on children's learning.
ReplyDeleteThe term “family literacy” was first used by Taylor (1983), to describe parents and children learning together. It is also known as intergenerational literacy, and in some cases community literacy. The rationale underlying such work is that parents are
children’s first teachers, that much learning occurs beyond traditional school settings, and
that learning is a lifelong process. (OLRC, 2009)
As educators we need to brainstorm and find ways to get the parents involved in our students lives, becuse as you rightly said its the parents that we really need to work with are the ones who are the most difficult to get in contact with.
Hi Wens,
ReplyDeleteI have copied the Epstein's Framework of Six Types Involvement.This I will share with our school's PTA .This 6 types Involvement is validation/ confirmation of what we decided at our last PTA meeting for the academic school year. These areas of concern were raised by fathers as topics to be addressed in terms of encouraging Parental Invovement. Our Parents agreed that knowledge on these topics ( 6 types) will help them improve their relationships with their children.Thank You for the confirmation. I will research on the types.
Humour? Not really, this is the sad reality we operate in. I have often said "give me a good parent and I got a good child", never proven wrong in 29 years of teaching. Good parent means one who is involved in the life of their child, who asks questions and who provides spiritual and moral guidance (no Bsc required.
ReplyDeleteAs for the workshops, well it has proven to be of limited use since the targeted parents do not turn up. So for those 'disruptive' students we have to nuture alone, just like they say 'they don't call us, so why call them'
I absolutely agree with you Wendy, parental involvement is a crucial issue. Thanks for the information by Joyce Epstein about the types of involvement. Moreover, I think that the idea of workshops is an excellent one because people need to be informed in order to develop behaviours that enhance learning. Parents are shirking there responsibilities and the situation exists in many homes where "the tail is wagging the dog". However, as you rightly stated in times like those, we as teachers are forced to "parent" our students, since their well being is of greatest concern to us.
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ReplyDeleteI don't think that there is any one who would disagree with you that parental involvement is crucial to a child's progress or lack of progress at school. As a matter of fact I want to base my study on the role of parents' in their children's literacy development. What spurred me on is the same lack of involvement by parents at my school. I realize that many of them are not literate and as a result they do not place much importance on literacy,That is why I am so passionate about helping these students. If the parents can't and won't help then I feel it is my responsibility.I now share the views of President Obama with you. He feels that while teachers have important roles to play, those of parents may be even more critical.I now quote his exact words. "It remains absolutely true that you can have all the money in the world, you can have the fanciest classrooms in the world, the best computers in the world,nicest textbooks in the world, but you are not going to succeed if parents aren't instilling in their child at a very early age 'We are going to set high standards for you I'm going to make sure that you are reading books instead of watching Tv. and playing video games. I'm going to constantly talk to your teacher. I'm going to look at your report card and make sure that you are not settling for C's when you could be getting A's. Without that we're not going to be high performers." Maybe many of us can share his views with parents to make them wake up and smell the coffee.
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