The involvement of parents and families in schools is often cited as one of the most important ways to improve education. High levels of parental involvement correlate with :
- improved academic performance
- higher test scores
- more positive attitudes toward school
- higher homework completion rates
- fewer placements in special education
- academic perseverance
- lower dropout rates
- fewer suspensions”
(The School Community Journal, 2008, Vol. 18, No. 2, p.53).
With four decades of powerful,empirical evidence, few dispute that the connection between home, school, and community is beneficial for all. And yet, most educators and parents have had little training on how to work effectively with one another, creating a challenge for even the most zealous partnership advocates.
Creating and maintaining a partnership with parents is a process that requires both will and skill. Partnerships can only grow when they are based on mutual trust and respect for each others values, perspectives, and experiences. If we are serious about building a bridge and getting to the place where parents are true partners in their child's education, then we must find opportunities to share the ways we "view" the relationship.
I had a chance to do just that in a series of professional development workshops on the topic. I was given permission to meet with groups of parents days before my scheduled workshop with the school staff. The following reflection represents the voices and views of over 400 PreK -12 teachers and parents across three very different MidWestern school districts.)
I believe that the first step towards partnership work begin with awareness. The following exercise proved a powerful way to get the conversations started. Adapted from the work of Heidi Hass Gable on the Parents As Partners Ning. It is called the The "Appreciative Inquiry":
- I ask participants to think about a Parent-Teacher Interaction. (making sure not to lead them in describing a specific positive or negative expereince as I want to know which one comes to mind)
- Each participant is given an index card and asked to write or sketch a brief description of what the expereince was like for them.
- Participants are then asked to exchange their "Home-School Experience"stories with one another. (Depending on time, I try to them share thier story with at least two others.)
- At the end of each story interaction, participants were asked to choose two words to describe the stories they heard.
- I collected the "The Two Words" from both groups and used Wordle to display the results of our conversation.
Pre K-12 Staff (teachers, administrators, and instructional coaches) described their Parent-Teacher interactions in this way:
Parents in each of the three schools, shared their voices here:
Clearly, teachers and parents view the interactions and experience very differently. It was a powerful reminder that the work we do together is fundamentally an emotional task, carried out by human beings who come with different perspectives and experiences. The most profound effect of the exercise was the ability to move the conversations of partnership beyond blaming and presuming and toward strategy and action as we reflected on:
- the kinds of interactions that produced these perceptions
- the conditions necessary for more powerful interactions to continue or occur
- the qualities and traits needed from both sides to make this happen
Parent involvement from this view may help us understand why parents and schools do not always see "Eye-to-Eye, but I wanted the last conversation of the day to be about viewing the partnership on common ground; the place where we see things " Heart-to-Heart."
My final assignment to both groups was this: In two words describe your thoughts about a Parent- Teacher partnership. Here's what we got:
This view of parent involvement reminds everyone that children flourish when the adults in their lives agree. Children see themselves through our eyes, and it is important that the adults in their lives find their way here. As leaders, you are in charge of getting your staff and community to the place where they come together; heart-to-heart. You provide the conditions necessary for partnerships to flourish or flounder.
No matter where you are in the process – the hope of purposeful engagement and partnership begins with you. Give this a try at your school, and see where the conversation takes you!.
Related Posts:
- Obama's Call for Parent Involvement
- Parent Ed- Web 2.0 Study
- Parent 2.0 Wiki Space
- What Partnership Looks Like
- What Counts as Parent Involvement?
Photo on Flickr by jndollar
Angela:
Thank you so much for providing this opportunity, and I really loved the word pictures. As a parent, the parent side of the equation did not suprise me in the least. I was very surprised by what came out on the teacher side. I am a bit inclined to be suspicious--based on many negative comments I hear from teachers with regard to parents, uninvolved parents, parents who don't care, parents as the cause of low test scores and achievement gaps, etc. So--I am wondering if there was either some self-censorship, or if perhaps teachers make a divide between the "good parents" with whom they actually have conferences, etc, and the "bad parents" who are just out there somewhere.
But--I have been thinking about this issue and impass for some time. Most of time I think "parent involvement" discussions are beating a dead horse. What I mean is that most of us have an image of what parent involvement means that is built from specific tasks--coming to conferences, answering the phone when the school calls, agreeing with the teacher, seeing that homework is completed and turned in, etc. Even the inevitable bake sale. In many schools very few parents are compliant with these tasks. So the conversation tends to center on--how to get parents to come to conferences, how to get parents to support what the school does, how to rearrange parents thinking so that they find these things important.
I think all of this misses the point. I used to work for a director who was always challenging us to identify the "essence" of what we were about, and not to get caught up in tasks. The tasks are changeable. It is easy to put lots of time into the wrong tasks if there is no understanding of why they are important--why they are supporting a necessary essential contained in our work.
I think that in education we are ripe for some "essence" discussions about parent involvement. Personally I have moved through some vocabulary shifts, through parent engagement (which suggests to me a more active role) all the way to parent empowerment (which suggests to me a role with decision-making responsibilities). Now, I have heard empowerment mouthed--as in empowering parents to do the things that we believe that they should be doing--or "training" them to be "empowered" to accept responsibility for their child's education (not the education system, mind you).
But, I think that we need to arrive at some meaningful and thoughtful analysis of parent involvement for what? We may have to consider that parent non-involvement may be serving a function in some dysfunctional systems. It may serve to provide a scapegoat, an explanation for why things are not going so well. The parents, poor dears, are just so limited. We just have to do the best we can for their children. Accepting parents as co-equals, as partners, means including them in the discussions around improvement. It meanst that we expect improvement is possible. It means that we accept resposibility for improvement.
Bronfenbrenner talks a lot about the various connections between the various micro- and macro- environments in which children live and travel. An environment which is "developmental" and supports growth and learning is aligned with and strongly connected to the various other environments--particularly that of the home. For too long any connection beyond the weak one provided by the students themselves, has been one-way. Parents come into the school environment. Here they "receive" something--information about their student, training, recommendations. Seldom do school employees traverse the gulf to students' homes and communities, and almost never see these homes or communities as having anything of value to give to teachers. Aligning the environments boils down to an attempt to "fix" the home and community to match that of the school. This, of course, is overwhelming. Why bother? Return to the poor dears attitude. Try to teach kids that they should aspire to "get out" of their home environment in order to be successful.
Is it any wonder that we don't do well at educating kids in certain neighborhoods? What about the things that we are doing would lead us to believe that we have any chance at all of succeeding? Maybe it's time to lay aside all expectations of what it is that schools want parents to do and hear. Just go out and listen.
Margo-
Thank you for such a thoughtful and heartfelt response. Your comment sparked even more powerful discussion as I shared it here: http://tinyurl.com/czksof
Thank you again for taking time to share your ideas and passion with other readers!