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Parent
Involvement:
Terrible Torture or Powerful Panacea?
by Katy Allen
copyright © 2006 Impact Training, Inc.
How I got involved in “PI”
A little knowledge is a curse. I spent two years studying parent
involvement in education, and I acquired a little knowledge, and I am cursed. Why?
Because there is A LOT of knowledge out there on the subject of schools and families
and how they connect and work together (or don’t work together). The result of the
two years was a book called, The Rosemary Project: A Resource Guide on School,
Family, and Community Partnerships, and because it is a
publication that gets out of date each time something new is published, I vowed to keep it up to date by revising it twice
yearly. I discovered after the second attempt at revision that I would have to spend
twenty to thirty hours per week reading what was new in order to accomplish my goal. Life got
in the way, so I gave it up.
However, I’m still cursed because concerns about parent and
family involvement are core when educators look at raising student achievement, and
yet, I find that few districts, schools, administrators or teachers are interested in
learning about school, family, and community partnerships. It seems that in spite of the
voluminous amounts of research and literature on the topic (plus the fact that it’s
mentioned about 250 times in No Child Left Behind), it’s pretty much a non-issue in the
educational circles that I frequent.
Why isn’t anyone interested in parent involvement?
There are all kinds of reasons for the overall disinterest that
I’ve encountered.
Many of the comments sound like this:
• “We already do it.”
• “Parents don’t care.”
• “Nobody has time.”
A fair number of educators are pretty cynical about parents and
families. Time Magazine devoted a cover story to “What Teachers Hate About
Parents,” in February, 2005. Not all educators are fed-up and negative, but enough of them
have been snake-bit by parents that they are not about to embark on a new initiative
to “do more parent involvement” when they expect it to be a lot of work with very
little to show for it in the end.
On the other hand, there are parents who are also pretty discouraged
with schools. They feel disrespected by educators who may talk over them, dismiss
them, or blame them for things they didn’t cause or can’t control. There
are parents who avoid discussing problems with educators for fear that they will sound
like complainers and that their children will be punished because they dared to criticize.
And then, there are the parents who just don’t show up.
I’ve been a teacher and I’ve been a parent, and I’ve
been snake-bit by parents and I’ve been dismissed by educators. Neither of these things happened
very many times, but because they were emotional and highly charged incidents, they
are memorable, and they left an indelible mark on my psyche (kind of like what happens when
you use a permanent marker on a white board).
I have a deep and enduring affection for teachers. I know that they
work hard and perform miracles. I also love parents. They do the best they can
with the resources at hand. So, if two groups of people who care about children are committed
to the success of children, how can there be as much discord and as little connection
as there seems to be?
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What teachers want and what parents want
The answer is simple: trust. It’s getting from where we are
to where we need to be to develop trust that is the problem. Jean L. Konzal and Anne
Wescott Dodd devote a chapter of their book, How Communities Build Stronger Schools,
to the issue of trust and respect. They make the point that both parents and teachers
want the other to trust them, and they do a good job describing what that looks like.
Trust is a willingness to be vulnerable to another person. It is
based on the belief that the other person is reliable, open, and concerned. There are
different levels of trust: predictability, dependability, and faith, and one must achieve one
level before one can achieve the next. So what does it look like when parents and educators
trust each other?
As a parent, I trust a teacher who will not wait until my child
is failing or about to be thrown out of class before contacting me. I can predict that
the call will come at a time when I can use my influence to improve the situation. I can
depend on the teacher to be concerned and open to my perspective on the situation.
As a teacher, I can trust that a parent will listen with an open
mind when I describe the problems that I am having with his or her child. I
can depend on the parent to try to help us solve the problem. I can predict that the parent
will share my concern and not blame me for the situation.
When trust is established, a parent will not jump to conclusions
when a child comes home and says, “Mrs. Smith doesn’t like me.”
Likewise, when a child whose parents usually meet expectations, comes to school without a permission
slip, the teacher won’t blame or display anger. He’ll think, “They
must be overwhelmed at the moment and it slipped their mind.”
When teachers and educators have trust, they don’t blame, and
they don’t jump to conclusions. They don’t avoid each other and they give each
other the benefit of the doubt. But that doesn’t happen overnight and, in today’s
world, it is no longer assumed to be an automatic part of the family-school relationship. Trust
is part of respect, and it must be earned, and that can’t happen unless parents and educators
come to know each other when there are no major issues on the table that spark defensiveness
from either party.
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The ghosts that haunt us
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot has written a wonderful book called,
The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn From Each Other.
She describes how both parents and teachers have ghosts that shape their
beliefs, feelings, and actions towards one another. If I’m a parent who was mistreated
by a teacher as a child, I may carry that ghost with me when I talk to a teacher about my own
child. Likewise, teachers are motivated by experiences from their past, and the ghosts
that linger for them generate their own set of expectations and attitudes. If, as a teacher,
I was verbally thrashed for suggesting a child needs a certain service, that ghost
might interfere when I’m trying to decide on a course of action for a child whose
parent is known to be hostile to special education services. So when teacher and parent meet to
discuss a child, they are never really alone in the room.
The only way to exorcize the ghosts so that they can’t sabotage
teacher-parent connections is to develop a relationship before the ghosts work
their way into the picture. That means that parents and educators have to see each other, talk
to each other and forge a connection before children overly influence the situation. It’s
easier for a parent to rant and rave about a teacher who is a stranger than it is when the teacher
has a face, a family, and her own life challenges. Likewise, it is easier for a teacher
to blame and accuse a parent who has never been met, than it is when the teacher knows
the parents’ situation, concerns, and hopes for her child. In essence, it’s impossible
to have trust and respect if there is no relationship.
No parent sends his child off to school to fail
In spite of evidence to the contrary, all parents want their children
to be successful in school. They may not have the knowledge to do so; they may not
have the resources to do so; they may not know that their actions actually promote
failure as opposed to success, but ALL PARENTS WANT THEIR CHILDREN TO BE SUCCESSFUL.
When I get to work with teachers on the issue of parent involvement,
I encourage them to change whatever tape is playing in their heads on the subject of
parents, and to put the words in bold type in its place, and to play it often.
Educators don’t realize it, but they have the upper hand in
this situation. I understand how it feels when a parent is steamrolling a teacher,
but in the majority of cases, it is the school or the educator who has the greater amount
of power. An embattled teacher has a bad day or a bad week, but parents who are shut out
of the school system have a lifetime of bad days and bad weeks if their child fails to
succeed. So when parents are difficult, it’s helpful for educators to play that tape
a few times before returning the phone call or inviting the parent to have a seat in the office.
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Parents can make a big difference
On the other hand, how a parent asks for (or demands) help is critical
to the delicate and precarious balance of trust and respect that may or
may not exist between parents and educators. When working with parents I tell them my
own “parent stories” and suggest that the best way to get what you need (or think you
need) is to start by saying, “We have a problem, and I need your help to solve it.”
Projecting the image that I, as a parent, am a team player and see you as a valuable ally,
sends the message that I am reasonable, open, and have faith in you.
Of course, the phone call or the office visit is much more likely
to go well when the two parties involved have had a chance to get to know each other
on neutral grounds in a non-threatening situation.
What does parent involvement look like?
One of the common assumptions that educators make is that if parents
don’t call, come, or offer to help, they don’t care. I can see how educators
can draw that conclusion, but I have learned that there are many ways that parents care that
are not apparent to school folks. It’s best if I make this point with a story.
I met Florenciano when I was writing The Rosemary Project.
Florenciano came to the United States from Mexico to do migrant work when he was
17. His first language is Mixteco, a native language that is not written. His mother does
not read or write Spanish, and only speaks Mixteco. His father speaks, reads and writes
a little Spanish. Unlike most of his family, Florenciano had completed his education
in Mexico before coming to work in the US. Thus, it was expected that when in the
US, Florenciano would join his family in earning money to live.
The Migrant Education Outreach Project, a Federal program attempts
to enroll the children of migrant workers in public school and to support them
in their educational efforts. Because Florenciano had completed ninth grade in Mexico,
he was eligible to attend high school here. In spite of the fact that his family had
anticipated his wages, they allowed him to go to school. Florenciano graduated from high
school and went on to attend junior college. Florenciano had a great deal of support
from the Migrant Outreach staff and from the faculty and counselors at his high school,
but he also had tremendous support from his family. His parents were willing to
forgo his earnings so that he could be in school everyday. This was a significant sacrifice
for them.
If we look at the common perceptions of what parent involvement
is, his parents fail miserably. I’m sure they never volunteered at the school.
I doubt they ever read a newsletter, or signed a permission slip, as neither of his parents
speak, read or write English. I’ll bet they never visited his school. They certainly
didn’t help him with his homework. If they saw his report card, they couldn’t have read
what was written on it. Yet their involvement was every bit as deep and strong as the most
“involved” parent. There is a picture of Florenciano at his graduation in The
Rosemary Project, and his parents are beaming. They are very proud, as they have every right
to be. Florenciano’s success is also their success. It cost them dearly for him to accomplish
what he did.
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So what should we do?
In the two years that I studied parent involvement and wrote The
Rosemary Project, I concluded the following:
• In order to have real school, family, community partnerships,
most schools will have to redefine what parent involvement means so that it more closely
reflects how parents see it. It’s really up to educators to make schools
accessible to families. We have to “take them the way they are,” not
wait for them to fit our definition.
• Educators and parents need ways to know each other as real
people. It’s the only way to overcome negative attitudes, preconceived ideas, and poor
communication, three things that derail family involvement efforts.
• The old adage that if we keep doing the same thing the same
way, we’ll end up with the same results is very true of parent involvement. If what
we are doing
isn’t working now, it’s not likely that it will work tomorrow,
so we need to read, explore, look at the research, and find out what people who are
successful are doing. That all equals change, and change takes leadership, time, energy
and money.
And why should we do it?
Educational success is of paramount importance, especially to the
children whose parents seem to be the least accessible. I do the work that I do
because I am so passionate about education. It’s the best hope we have for the well-being
of a democratic society. For so many children, it means the difference between success and
failure on multiple levels: intellectual, emotional, economic, social, and even spiritual.
That’s why teachers are so important to all of this, but as teachers all know, their
best efforts can fall short if parents are not present in some capacity.
Just about all of the research on parent involvement indicates that
children do better when their parents are involved. Some parents do it naturally
and effortlessly. Other parents are terrible at it, and instead of being angry or
frustrated with them, we (I count myself as an educator here.) need to reach out to them, change
the way we do business, and move forward.
I know that educators and schools are overwhelmed with expectations
at a time when resources seem to be diminishing, but one of the things that
happens when schools become successful at building partnerships with families, is that
the load gets lighter. Kids start doing better academically, parents become more supportive,
and approval ratings rise, making life a bit more enjoyable. It’s a paradox
really. By giving something away, you become infinitely richer. All it takes is a step in the
direction of trust, something certainly risky, but the payoffs, when they come, are
terrific.
Based on what I have seen, I would say, it’s worth the gamble.
See References
at bottom.
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