The school will teach children how to read, but the environment of the home must teach them what to read. The school can teach them how to think, but the home must teach them what to believe. - Charles A. Wells
Successful family involvement is not a sporadic activity. It is a sustained commitment to instill the habits of learning and to set high expectations. It is making connections to teachers and schools not only when trouble arises, but as a part of the everyday process of children’s schooling. - U.S. Secretary of Education
The above quotes express what all of this week’s authors seemed to agree upon- the importance of parental involvement in today’s school systems. In Lareau’s article she states that parental behavior is a major factor in educational performance, and that teachers have now made it a priority to increase participation (Lareau 1987). Hoover Dempsey and Sandler state that “parental involvement in child and adolescent education generally benefits children’s learning and school success (Hoover –Dempsey, Sandler 1997). There has been a lot of discussion about ways and methods to get parents involved in the education of their children, but I’d rather not focus on that right now. I’d like for us to discuss reasons why we think parents aren’t as involved as they could and should be.
Lareau mentioned three major reasons for the lack of parental involvement in society. The first was the culture poverty-thesis, which basically suggests that lower and working class families do not value education as much as middle and upper class families do. The second placed the blame on individual schools, saying that they make middle class families feel more welcome than working and lower class families. Also included in this second reason is the individual teacher and his or her leadership capabilities. The third reason mentioned involves cultural capital and differing social and cultural experiences among educational leaders and parents (1997).
Maybe we need to first start with what we think parental involvement should look like. One example is the Caswell County Training School, the focus of the article by Emilie V. Siddle Walker. The article described the school as being driven by parent and community involvement. Parents were involved in pretty much every aspect of the school, from student transportation to providing student and teacher resources, to facility expansion. PTA meetings at the school were frequently filled to capacity and teachers were required to attend. Mandatory attendance for teachers meant that parents knew that any issues they needed to address with their child’s teacher could be brought up before or after the meetings. Could this have led to a sense of empowerment for parents that may be lacking now?
What do you think? Is the Caswell County Training School an accurate picture of how involved you think parents should be, or is too extreme? Do you think Lareau’s reasons are valid in explaining the lack of parental involvement today? Do you think that parents have less of an influence on their children now than in decades past, so maybe they feel investing in their educations will be fruitless? I’m including this link to a 45 second video of a parent who puts the blame on educators- video. Do you think she's right? I’m interested to see what everyone thinks!
related links
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http://life.familyeducation.com/peer-pressure/self-image/36377.html
http://www.plti-alex.org/
http://www.hfrp.org/publications-resources/browse-our-publications/adolescence-are-parents-relevant-to-students-high-school-achievement-and-post-secondary-attainment
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11 comments:
There are many factors that contribute to lack of parental involvement in their child's education. As Lareau mentions, teacher leadership plays a key role in developing and maintaining meaningful home-school relationships. I would like to address what schools and teachers can do to break down the barriers that are hindering these relationships from forming. I think it takes understanding the community you teach in, the cultural context, and the many outside influences that come into play. Once these factors are understood, one is able to develop supportive roles for the parents.
R.C. asks, "Is the Caswell County Training School an accurate picture of how involved you think parents should be, or is too extreme?"
I think the success of the CCTS is an accurate picture of how parents can be involved. Since times have changed, parental roles would look somewhat different today, but we can take away the key factor that allowed for this to happen. That is the clearly-defined roles of the parents in the school. Parents knew their duties were to attend events, reinforce discipline at home, donate money, instill respect for teachers in their children, and get their children to school. Part of the problem in many of today's schools and communities is that parents and schools do not agree on the type or amount of support they should provide. Lareau emphasizes that administrators', teachers, and parents must agree on the partnership (pg. 76). I think this starts with examining the cultural make-up of the families and the the context of the community in order to form successful partnerships with the families in the school. I definitely think the CCTS model allowed for parents to feel empowered because they were active participants in their child's education and teachers and parents supported one another. Part of this empowerment stems from the school's ability to recognize what the parents were able to give, so the parents were able to provide the necessary support . Too often, we ask parents to give time, support, and resources that do not account for families' cultures, SES, and time, which only creates more barriers between home and school. A lot of times it may seem schools are providing opportunities for parents, but way too often these opportunities are limited and biased.
The following links provide examples of models aiming to develop partnerships between schools, communities, and families:
National Network of Partnership Schools
http://www.csos.jhu.edu/p2000/
School Development Program (Comer)
http://info.med.yale.edu/comer/
These programs offer key information as to how to create such relationships while keeping in mind the needs of the families.
Parental involvement must be appropriately defined by the school before parents can actually become involved. At the same time, teachers must have realistic expectations of their student's parents. Like Kate, this can only happen by "examining the cultural make-up of the families and the the context of the community in order to form successful partnerships with the families in the school." Until this happens, teachers and faculty may not realize the modifications they have to make in order to get as many families involved as possible. Do resources need to be in another language? What can schools do to encourage parental involvement at times that are more appropriate for the families being served?
It is often difficult for teachers to not take it personally when parents do not involve themselves in their child's education to the extent they see as appropriate. What happens when a teacher takes hours making modifications for parents (lets say for a parent teacher conferences or a holiday celebration) only to find that virtually all parents are a "no-show?"-which many metro Nashville teacher do find today (as I experienced during student teaching).
As Harry (1992) suggested, many parents from traditional cultural minority backgrounds do not expect to participate in decision making. In actuality, their apparent passivity is a sign of their trust in the school and of educational authoirities.
This is probably one of the most difficult aspects of education. It is important to realize, as a teacher, that basically all parents want what is best for their child but their opinion on what this means may differ greatly from our own opinion. What can parents and teachers do so that goals are shared, where involvement is encouraged but cultural differences are also understood?
I'm currently doing a senior project on this very subject. I'm trying to increase parent participation at KIPP academy. So far i am going to implement semester newsletters, and a schedule for both 1-on-1 parent teacher conferences, open houses, and guidelines for phone calls.
The parents in this school have been hard to reach, according to the principal, and this discussion really highlights that. While we can all see the problems, my question is what are the solutions? Should we make parent-teacher collaborations less formal, is there a way to integrate all parents without it seeming like we are questioning there situations and parenting methods.
The biggest resistance i have gotten so far in surveying parents about participation in the school is that they don't either have time, or they don't like the school making presumptions about them.
Maybe it is possible to give parents more choices in the ways that they can contribute to the school. At least as a way to introduce them into being involved. I would think of offering off-site meetings, such as at a coffee house, or options for setting the subject of the meeting (ranging from discussing student achievement, to discussing extra curricular interests of the student). Anyway I was selfishly wondering if any of you had better ideas?
I realize that our topic here is parental involvement, but I think we also need to look at the role of the teacher. Kate mentions this with her assertion that the teacher needs to understand the community and the cultural context of the school. This is a good point. In order for teachers and parents to agree upon the definition of parental involvement, teachers must understand what the parents are able to do and feel comfortable contributing.
As several of the reading this week suggest, one of the most important things for a teacher to do is to care and to demonstrate his or her personal investment to students and parents. I think this relates to what Kate is saying about understanding the community. In the CCTS situation, the teachers were actively involved in the community. As a part of the same community, the teachers were able to identify with the needs of students and parents. In the chapter from Schorr (What Works and Why We Don't Have More of It - I can't remember exactly) the programs that worked were the ones in which the leaders were actively involved in the lives of those they were helping. I think both Siddle-Walker and Schorr told stories in which the teachers or leaders attended funerals of students' family members and went to the same churches. There were instances in which the teacher visited students' homes. While this type of intense involvement on the part of the teacher may not be possible today (because of time or number of students or privacy issues), I think that parents need to know that the teacher is committed to each child. Mutual commitment is the first step toward educational collaboration between teacher and parent.
This is somewhat off-topic, but I don't know what I can contribute to what has already been said this week, and I think it's something worth thinking about. Why is it that all of our discussion, and even our readings, have taken for granted the fairly major disparities between maternal and paternal involvement in schooling?
I realize that this is an issue of role construction that, ostensibly, doesn't say much about school itself. In more well-to-do families, the mother is more likely to not work outside the home, and can therefore devote more time to the children's lives and concerns, including school. But there seems to be little change from this pattern even when mothers work as much as or more than their male counterparts, or when parents are separated.
Again, we could just say this is a separate issue and call it a day, but could it be productive to consider further? What does it say about our culture's view of education that it is lumped in with the other "domestic" elements of life commonly associated with motherhood? To me, it says that education is not part of the "real world," but preparation for it, and I think that is one of the issues we face when trying to talk about schools and education reform. We have "take your daughter to work day"; perhaps we should have "take your father to school day." Let's just wildly hypothesize: would it change our understanding of schooling, or even some aspects of student performance, if more men/fathers, who seem to represent business/earning power/social & political power, took a more active interest in their children's education? Can we imagine what those effects might be, and whether or not they are desirable? Maybe it's bad to play off gender role stereotypes (in this case, stereotypes that we like to say are outdated, but really aren't), or maybe it's good to take advantage of them where they exist. Any thoughts?
I would really like to respond to Nicole’s question about fathers using an example from my childhood (please bear with me). My elementary school had a lot of issues with parental involvement guidelines. The school was very happy to have volunteers in the classroom, but if a parent came in to express concern about a teacher or an item on the curriculum, it was a mess. The principle would not listen to parents at all, and dismissed them as “not knowing” what was best. As is understandable, this was intimidating and the parents gradually became less involved. All this was happening when my older sister was in school. By the time I started school, my best friend who lived in the neighborhood was in my class, and our parents started talking about the problem. Well, both our dads are fairly tall and intimidating looking (my friends dad is legally 7 feet tall), and they decided to go to a parent-teacher conference one evening as a team to speak with the principle. Ever since then, I remember my principle hiding from our parents at any conference (he would literally run down the hall if he saw one of the dads coming), but this spurred a renewed interest in parent involvement.
All I want to say with this example is that all of the research isn’t as black and white as it seems. The parents who wanted to get involved at my elementary school were discouraged from doing so by the administration, which shows just how much power a school has in certain instances. I am fairly hopeful that this was an unusual case, but I still think it shows that a teacher has a role in helping parents get involved, one that goes beyond just asking for help. The roles that are assigned to parents by the school need to be thought out carefully, because role-definition has the power to inspire or squelch any involvement by a group of parents.
I want to respond to Nicole’s question. I would agree with Nicole that we need to get more whole community involvement, not only “mother” involvement. I am reminded about the idea that many cultures hold; that it takes the whole community to raise a child. I am a firm believer that this is a good strategy. Why not bring in community members into the classroom on a regular basis to assist in the classroom. This could lead to mentorship programs, as well as the children seeing that as a society we do work together to benefit the community. I believe that if children see that they are valued in the community then they will want to learn and reach their potential. Also, by including all these people in the classroom/school environment then the resources accessible to these people can be utilized within the learning environment.
In addition to possibly meeting the needs of students and connecting to the student’s interests, it would possibly increase the likelihood of teachers and school community remembering the cultural context of the school. These connections will assist students in making since of their environment and ways for them to interact in it.
I do think parent/adult involvement in the school environment is important, but it is a complex situation that is never clearly explicit. I also believe that if teachers are willing to take the time and figure out the community, what resources are available, and have openness to different possible adult interactions within the school, we could possibly change how schools and the communities interact. The possibilities could be endless!!
I would like to add to Lindsay's comment on the role of the teacher. From an article that I read by Deborah Meier, I agree that teachers should be viewed more as "coaches"" and faciliators. Students need the adult contact from teachers in order to show that they truly care for the student, even when the school doors close. That means, attending sports events, participating in after-school functions like dances, fairs, picnics. From last week's Education Week, the first article emphasizes the importance placed on after-school programs for a student's learning.I believe that teachers should be active in them in order for the students to interact with the teachers. In CCTS, that is why the system worked. The teachers did not just go home when the bell rang
“It is evident that the system devised for parent participation is not merely a value-free conduit for communication between parents and professionals, but rather a body of discursive practices whose written and unwritten rules determine what will emerge as participation.” (Harry, p. 429)
I apologize for the near verbatim post here, but I believe it is appropriate as they are both on different shades of the same topic. In these series of posts, more than the other, the idea of context has come into play. Namely, that “it takes understanding the community you teach in, the cultural context, and the many outside influences that come into play” when discussing participation. Though this exact phrase has been used a number of times, it appears to me that all the proposed methods of solving the “parental participation problem” are based on white, middle/upper-class, American definitions of involvement, education, and family roles.
As I noted in the other post for this week, there often exists a tension between parental culture and school culture. The question that I find troubling is which should be embraced and which thrown away? The dichotomous view that we have drawn in these posts between “involved” and “non-involved” parents leaves little room for different values.
To restate the question another way, should we encourage students and parents to sacrifice their culture or their success? In what way could we encourage both success and preservation of cultural values?
Is it not possible to simply incorporate parental involvement on the local level?
I mean I agree completely Matt's comment, that we tend to look at things from the situation that works. Currently, that situation is the middle/upper-middle class suburban communities. Well, we obviously can't have that everywhere, so what are we going to do for those who can't fit into that mold?
By reviewing over everything I think what is required is a little extra work by the schools and government in order to help out the community. By pumping more money into the schools it seems to me that we can trace that money, and that it's in "a safe place." However I think the effort needs to be put into the Community and by developing the community we will establish a better parental norm. Encourage them more to come, do whatever is within our power.
But maybe thats the problem? Perhaps we don't feel and/or have the power necessary to make these changes beyond the classroom.
I'm more just rambling because I'm not sure what can be done about this, and thats a bit frustrating.
I agree with Daniel that something needs to be done "in" the community to actually make an impact on parental involvement. Encouraging a stronger relationship between schools and the community I feel like could only benefit students and families more.
I also wanted to comment on the video R.C. posted about the mother who felt like schools did not offer enough for parents to become involved. This alone is a huge problem. Sometimes there are opportunities available, like in case of the woman's children's school, but often times there is no acceptance or opportunities available. I thought Michelle's story was relevant about how her Dad and another father had to literally step up and vocalize the need for more parental involvement. Unfortunately, many parents do not have the time or effort to fight for the right to participate. Therefore, as future teachers I think we all need to be aware of how we offer parental involvement opportunities and how we encourage all parents, of all backgrounds, to be involved.
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