Education - Parental Involvement
by: Jerry Price - Aug 1, 2005 - comment
One of the keys to a child’s success in school is a healthy belief in themselves. Parents can help their children acquire a healthy self-concept by using the following guidelines:
- Look for the positives and focus on what is good about your child. If we’re not careful, we can overlook the good things our child does and focus on the negatives.
- Have faith in your child, so she can have faith in herself.
- Children with flimsy self-beliefs must be shown their progress in highly concrete terms to help them believe they are improving. Just saying, “You’re getting better!” isn’t enough. Samples of actual work, tape recordings, or videotapes of the skill over a period of time are powerful evidence that helps kids see they really are progressing.
- Reinforce your child for trying. Our kids need to believe we love them whether they succeed or fail. Every effort your child makes increases the possibilities that he will succeed.
- Compare your child’s current work only to her previous work-never to the work of her siblings or classmates.
- Remember, success breeds success, so create opportunities for your child to succeed.
Michele Borba, Parents Do Make a Difference (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), 27.
“Today’s teachers increasingly look elsewhere—particularly to parents—for critical support in the effective education of students. Among teachers themselves, parental involvement is perceived as having many advantages and few downsides. In all, 81 percent of fourth grade teachers and 74 percent of eighth grade teachers said that on average, parents are an asset to them as teachers. Indeed, parents are welcome by most every subset of teachers surveyed.
“Among fourth grade teachers, for example, approximately 9 in 10 teachers from suburban schools (89 percent), and from schools drawing on middle incomes [sic] populations (90 percent) or high-income populations (93 percent) felt that parents were an asset to the process. Fourth grade teachers from schools drawing primarily on minority populations felt less strongly, but still 70 percent of that group said parents were an asset. The same patterns occurred among eighth grade teachers. Teachers from suburban schools (79 percent) and rural schools (76 percent) felt more strongly than teachers from urban schools (63 percent) that parents were an asset. Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of eighth grade teachers from predominantly minority schools felt that way, a drop of more than 10 percent.
“Not only do all these groups consider parents an asset, but many of the teachers surveyed considered them the single greatest factor in determining student achievement. From a list that included the student, teachers, peers and parents, 35 percent of fourth grade teachers and 36 percent of eighth grade teachers named parents as having the greatest effect on a student’s level of achievement in school, tops in each case. (19 percent of fourth grade teachers and 11 percent of eighth grade teachers volunteered that it was in fact a combination of influences that prevailed).”
Christopher Barnes, What Do Teachers Teach? A Survey of America’s Fourth and Eighth Grade Teachers, (Manhattan Institute) September 2002
There are many ways parents can be involved in their child’s education. The following are a few examples:
- Parents can become active in the parent-teacher organization and in events it sponsors.
- Parents can be active during school hours in their child’s classroom and in the special-area classrooms such as art, music, or the library.
- Parents can be active at home in ways that support classroom work.
- Parents can use their particular talents and interests to make a contribution to the school.
- Parents can be part of school-based teams of decision-makers who work through issues that affect the school community.
Lucy Calkins with Lydia Bellino, Raising Lifelong Learners (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 1997), 294.
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