I sat in a meeting this morning and one of the topics discussed was how to connect parents to schools. I realize at the elementary level, this is fairly easy to do. Parents come to Christmas concerts (are they still called that?), parent-teacher interviews, and any and all events that occur at the school (literacy nights, BBQ's, etc.). How do we keep parents connected at the high school level? In my experience, parents who are connected are the parents of the children who are doing excellently (on the sports teams, in the drama production, etc.) in school. However, the parents who we need to connect with are the parents of the disengaged students. They don't come to parent-teacher interviews. They don't come to SCC meetings. They don't come to extra-curricular activities. In some/many instances, they don't even come with their child to register at the school. How do kids see the value in a high school education when the support from home is such?
I believe in many situations, the parents of these kids were disengaged in high school and/or dropped out of high school. This is the "status quo" for high school education. How do we break that cycle? According to Putting Faces on the Data: What Great Leaders Do!, there are 14 parameters to successful change initiatives in schools. One of these areas is connecting parents.
If anyone has any great ideas to connect disengaged parents, I would love to hear it!
Blair,
ReplyDeleteThis is a very common problem at my school as well. Over the course of two nights of parent teacher interviews, I only had10 parents visit me. Of course, as you stated in your blog post, these were the parents of students that are doing well.
Our school has a specific liason who tries to connect with parents on the reserve which feeds into our school. Some of these parents do not have phones, let alone internet. Therefore, home visits are the best way to contact some of these parents.
I would love to hear if anyone else has any good ideas related to this topic.
Lastly, I read the book Putting Faces on the Data in the summer and I loved it! It is a good read.
Good points Tina. By the time students hit high school parent apathy definitely sets in.
ReplyDeleteGreat article Blair. I loved the 14 points and how they showed how schools can make a difference. There was only one point about parent/community involvement and the rest was stuff that the school could do.
Too many times we hear that poverty is the problem and there is nothing we can do. This article is a reminder that we don't have to just throw up our hands. There are ways we can still help kids even if their home life isn't ideal.