Parent Involvement
I am a college student majoring in Elementary and Special Education. I am currently working on my Senior Honors Project, researching parent involvement. I would like to get the first-hand opinions of various teachers on the following questions:
1. Do you feel that your students’ parents are as involved as they should be?
2. What do you, as a teacher do in your classroom to involve parents?
3. Does your school district try to involve parents? In what ways?
4. How would you describe an involved parent? An uninvolved parent?
5. How often do you communicate with parents, and in what context? (Positive, Negative, Informative, etc.)
Additional comments are welcome, and will be appreciated. I am looking forward to your replies. Thank you in advance.
***Information provided to me will be kept confidential.
Dear Lexi
I am not sure if this information is timely or even helpful- but here it is.
Parents are very difficiult to involve. These days many are busy holding the family together (monetarily, etc.). Hopefully they are not as uncaring as many appear to be.
1. No my parents are NOT as involved as I would like them to be.
2. I try to involve parents right from the start through letters, phone calls, daily contact through point sheets or planners.
3. The district tries to set it up so that parents come in at least once during the school year. The very first parent-teacher conference. They encourage us to keep contacting parents. There is at least one IEP meeting a year.
4. An involved parent is one that cares about their student’s progress, maintains comfortable contact with the school or teacher, returns calls in a timely manner, supports the classroom rules, and discusses problems with the teacher before believing everything the student says
An univolved parent doesn’t respond to the school or the teacher, doesn’t return phone calls, etc
5. I have at least daily contact with the student through the use of the planner. They do not always have them available- then contact is dailly or weekly as needed. Try to have good and not so good information. Results have been all three.Karen