How to Help Parents Help Their Children and Encourage Parent/community Involvement in My Classroom

Problem: parents get in the way/teachers know their job, parents interfere (classroom as a personal fiefdom).

Many teachers believe that students who struggle do so because of a deficit in the parenting methods used in some communities. Parental involvement is a very important predictor of student success in school, but many parents feel disconnected or unable to support. Many times it is not bad parents, but no attempt to make parental involvement easier. Teachers need to actively reach out to parents to make supporting children an attainable thing. Parents who speak languages other than English need communication in their first language, parents who work non-traditional hours need to have opportunities to conference at convenient times, and teachers need to learn from parents about their students.

No matter what the family situation is, Nieto argues parents can support their student's learning by having high expectations and encouraging school success. Even when the content is beyond parents' capacity to help in the understanding and the language is a different language, parents can still do these two most important things. As a teacher, I need to communicate this to my students' parents and I need to show that I value that kind of parent support just as much as volunteering in the classroom, helping with homework, or coming to conferences. For parents who do speak a language other than English in the home, I should also encourage the use of the first language with the student, as it is important that first language development continue as a basis for second language development.
As a teacher who believes in connecting school learning with home realities and ways of learning, I also have another important role for parents: that they teach me. They know a lot more about their communities and their children than I ever will, so I can ask them to help me connect the content with their home realities. Rather than being an interference in my job, parents then become a resource for me to do my job better. I can use calls home, conferences, emails, and parent visits as opportunities to receive feedback on my teaching to make it more congruent with the needs and realities of their children!

In short, I have two goals with parents: 1- to value and encourage their support of success in their children and 2- to learn how to do my job better from the people who know my students best.

Sources:
Nieto, Affirming Diversity

My self-assessment Rubric: Do I value and encourage my student's parents?
Problematic

• Parents get in the way, I avoid them like the plague

Working on it

• I keep the parents in the loop about their kids behavior problems
• I enjoy meeting parents and seeing where my kids come from

Transformative

• I communicate with parents in their preferred language whenever possible and encourage them to encourage their children to succeed in school
• I look for opportunities (phone calls, email, classroom visits) to get feedback from parents about how to connect classroom learning with student realities