When it comes to parent involvement, too many educators love to play the blame game. And if they’re not carping, they’re probably emitting hot air. It’s fundamentally arrogant, based on the assumption that parents don’t get it.
Here’s the pattern I’ve observed: Schools and districts appoint committees and task forces to organize parents or to study the issue. Some schools make parents sign contracts promising to come to meetings. Some set up classes for parents to teach them how to be involved in their children’s education. Perhaps they change policies so that parent teacher meetings can be held at more convenient times. They might even provide baby-sitting services at ‘back to school’ night.
If schools began involving parents at the most basic levels in the early grades, things would be different. And not with high-falutin’ pedagogical concepts and principles–but with real stuff.
Here are a few simple examples: 2nd grade teachers could tell the kids to write five sentences about your Mom’s favorite food (or your Grandmother’s). What happens next? Duh, the kid gets the parent involved.
The next week’s assignment: Interview your parent or grandparent about her favorite colors. Find out why. What are your own favorite colors? Why?
And so on, every week.
Make it a bit more complex in 3rd grade. Those teachers could regularly assign homework that requires the child to write about his/her parents or grandparents.
Week one: interview your mother and write a paragraph about the first movie she remembers seeing.
Math can be part of this as well. Go shopping with an adult and compare the prices of several products in different stores. Do the math. Ask an adult how much a movie cost back when she was a kid. What’s the difference between that price and the cost of a ticket today? Compare other items. Do the math, and then report to the class.
Week two: interview your father or grandfather and write a paragraph about the first house or apartment he lived in. Ask an adult how much he or she earned per hour in their first job. Do the math to figure out how much that would come to over a year.
Week three: ask your mother or father what their secret dream was growing up. Write a paragraph about that, and about your own secret dream.
You can bet that the parents and grandparents would want to see the homework, probably before it’s turned in, and certainly afterwards to see what the teacher wrote about it.
And so on ….. These sample topics can be much more imaginative, of course, and the tasks for kids in the higher grades would be more complex, but you get the idea.
Soon ‘parent involvement’ would be in the fabric of the curriculum, and most parents would be intimately involved in their children’s day-to-day schooling. Educators would have to find something else to complain about.