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BY REQUEST... March 1999 PDF version How Does Parent Involvement Help Kids? Walking the Talk: Implementing a Parent-Involvment Program Dealing With Difficult Parents Potential Pitfalls: What To Watch For |
Introduction
Finding common ground between parents' love for their children and intense desire for them to succeed, and teachers' love for their students and intense desire for them to succeed can be a difficult task. Though both share the same desire for student achievement, parents are naturally devoted to their child, while teachers and schools must consider all students when making decisions. This is where challenges often arise. Parents must advocate for their child—if they don't, who will? And educators must contemplate a never-ending stream of demands, technicalities, politics, and regulations in determining how they interact with students and parents. These conflicting demands can be the source of much confusion and frustration for both parents and educators. Sadly, suspicion and ambiguity or apathy often prevent parents and educators from forming alliances that can maximize children's success in school.
It is difficult to dispute the benefits parent involvement can have upon children's school experiences, yet parents and educators often hold one another at arm's length, unsure of the role each should play. Compounding these uncertainties are the perceptions educators and parents often have about the roles the other should play. Some teachers love to have parents intricately involved in their classrooms, while others feel that too much parent involvement violates their sense of professionalism and prefer to have limited communication with parents and receive visits only at predetermined times. Similarly, some parents try to be at their children's schools on a regular basis and are willing to do just about any task needed, while others are rarely available. Obviously, it's difficult to create a situation that is suitable to everyone.
In this booklet, we will examine the current status of parent involvement in schools, taking into account specific definitions, recent research, and different types of parent involvement. We will also look at ideas for implementing parent-involvement programs, explore the potential pitfalls of such programs, and investigate what several Northwest schools are doing to involve parents successfully.
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