Parental Involvement

Your post is a little unclear. You’re gathering anecdotes from teachers about parental involvement?

I might suggest you take a peek at a good book called Other People’s Children. It’s filled with stories about this topic. All teachers will feel they’ve had parents who were over involved but that concept has always defeated me. How can parents be over involved really? Many teachers complain that parents are not sufficiently involved and indeed that seems to be a wide spread cry. In the face of it, why we deem any parents too involved?

Teachers like everyone else like to be left alone to do their job but that’s hard to accomplish when working with other people’s children. As children become older, they establish a growing indepedence and parents are less noticeable in their child’s life from a teacher’s perspective.

I think as teachers, including myself, sit in judgment on children, it puts into conflict with parents. Schools have ‘public relations’ that will always claim to value the individual child, to be nurturing but rigorous (how can we be both??)
but the truth is schools and classrooms are a group process.

I find most parents do the best they can in these trying times. Schools could motivate parents to become more involved if schools in our great democracy were more democratic themselves. Too often parents are relegated to cupcake baking and the like.

Thank you, Sara, I was trying to think of a polite, PC way of addressing this. Why should parents trust that teachers (or anyone else for that matter) who are with their child for, at best a few hours a day for 9 months or so, know best about the needs of that child?

I think that most teachers try their best, under often difficult conditions. But even the best of them are not experts on any particular child. The very best of them know that, and welcome parents into a partnership for the benefit of the child.

I try to be patient with teachers who are not experienced with my son’s less common LD. (NLD) Patience is sometimes hard when I see new teachers make the same mistakes and assumptions year after year while they “learn” on my child. I respectfully submit that teachers who feel that parents are “over-involved” accept that in most cases, this is likely a response to a school system that has not been meeting the needs of their child. Most teachers work with dozens of children each year. Parent only have one chance at making sure their child gets a quality education.

Karen

Lexi,

As a mom, there is no way I can be too involved with my childs’s life. All the teachers I know are very greatful to have partents that are involved with what is happening at school.

I am sure there may be parents that get on the teacher’s nerves at time, but we trust the most valuable part of our lives to teachers and want to know things are the best they can be for our kids.

Hi, Karen,
I agree with everything you said in your posting. My son is 8 and has just been diagnosed with NLD. I just started reading the book, “The Source for Nonverbal Learning Disorders” by Sue Thompson sold by LinguiSystems; www.linguisystems.com. From what I read so far, we, as parents, need to be very vigilant on what is going on in school every day; yes every day. And I feel there is a fine line between trying to make sure everything’s being done by the teachers and staff at school for our child versus being called a pest. I feel we are at the teacher’s mercy and hope that they do the right thing. Would you be willing to share your son’s experience with NLD so far and maybe we can help each other out. Please email me at: [email protected] Thanks so much!

I have to say that MOST of the teachers we’ve worked with have been great, and have really tried to learn about NLD and support our son the way he needs. But the few teachers who have NOT been willing to try to meet his needs have beel h—l to deal with.

I’ve e-mailed you off-list if you want to ask any questions!

Karen

Thanks, Karen! I sent you an email.
Toni

Lexi,

Practically every new teacher will tell you all about the parents who are over-involved. Too many, these new teachers will say (with all the attendant grimaces and eye rolling.) This would likely be an across-the-board response from both gifted and not-so-gifted teachers.

Ask a seasoned teacher about over-involved parents. The not-very-gifted teachers will continue to tell you stories about over-involved parents. But many, I hope most, seasoned teachers will tell you how there’s no such thing as an over-involved parent. At this point, a good teacher will have lost the arrogance of the young, will probably now have children of her/his own (is THAT ever an equalizer!), and will be greedy for input from parents because these teachers know that the parent understands her/his own child better than anyone else and will work unstintingly to help this child succeed.

Joan,

Robbie’s last year’s teacher, who I would consider a gifted as well as experienced teacher, did something I thought was great. At the beginning of the year she sent a short questionaire home to the parents asking for their children’s specific areas of interest, and asking the parents for any personal insights into the way their children learned best or other areas of concern. I thought it was such a great thing to do! It gave her a lot of information to start connecting with kids right off the bat, and at the same time made me, as a parent, feel that she not only cared about my child, but also cared about my input. I wish all teachers were so thoughtful!

Another thing she did that didn’t have anything directly to do with parents but to me showed this teachers level of committment to the kids: At the end of the year, we got home stacks of work for the kids’ on-going work portfolio and from their desks. Some of this I had seen at conferences, but there was one thing that I hadn’t even heard about until it ended up in my hands. She had given each child a journal with a handwritten note from her in the front. She told them that the journal as a private form of communication from them to her and back, and that they were not required to write in it, but could anytime they wanted, whether it was a question, a complaint, or they just felt like sharing something.

The notes back and forth between her and my son were very sweet. Somethime they were “how come” questions, sometimes, he clearly just wanted some moral support. Each entry had a response from her, whether it was a pat on the back, or a simple comment about how interesting the information he shared was. My first thought was how wonderful that she did this. My second thought wsa how in the wold did she find the time to do this for 20-odd children! That’s a teacher who really cares!

Karen

Your son’s teacher sounds like she’s on the ball. The journal idea is one that all teachers of kids that age ought to be using. It’s usually suggested in most child lit. classes at the college level and I think it’s one of the most fun things the teacher can do with kids. I’m surprised most teachers DON’T do this. In my kids’ school they kept a journal daily from 4th. on through 8th grade. It too was a dialogue between student and teacher. Those journals are priceless in our family now.

That’s great that your son’s teacher wrote that letter home to parents. She showed a real respect for them as the people who know their child the best. When I first started teaching, it was in a school whose principal liked to keep parents at arm’s length. That top-down approach was evident among most of the teachers. I moved to another school, a Montessori school, and that’s what I consider the beginning of my own education as a teacher. There I learned to trust the parents and to keep communication with them open and honest at all times. I think that often it really is the principal who sets the standards in these matters.

In our elementary schools (we have one for pre-school-2nd grade (3rd grade if your child is in Montessori) and one for 3rd-5th grade) the principal seems to leave the amount of parental involvement up to the individual teacgers. Of course they are always asking for parent volunteers to do copying and stapling, or work in the library or run fund raisers. But whether you get to actually work with the children in the classroom is very individual.

The teacher my older son had for most of Montessori 6-9 didn’t really want parents in the classroom on a regular basis. I was invited in a few times to do science projects with the kids, but wasn’t in the class regularly. The teacher who took over the class in the middle of my older son’s 3rd grade year, and my younger son’s 1st grade class is the exact opposite. She has parents in the classroom regularly. I spend a couple of hours in the class every Tuesday helping the children with their writing projects on the computer. Other parents come in at other times for other purposes. We just finished putting on 3 short plays, and one other parent and I ended up there almost every day for two weeks, either rehearsing different groups of “actors” or working on props and scenery. (Can’t say I’m sorry THAT’S over though ;-)

Robbie’s 4th grade teacher had “writing lab” twice a week, and a “math lab” once a week, and any parents who wanted were invited to come and help with these activities. But we were lucky from what I’ve heard. I know that other teachers don’t want parents in the classroom at all. You have to get an appointment, approved by the principal to visit your child’s class.

In 5th grade, from what I’ve seen and heard from other parents, they don’t want parents in the classroom anymore, right across the board.

Karen

When my son was in first and second grade he had the same teacher. She was young, energetic, fun and great at communicating with parents.

Day one of school each year each child got a journal she wrote in each one daily. Sometimes it only said “good day” other times several lines. At the end of the year we got the journals. I treasure these books they remind me of special events in our lives.