Matthew Hurwitz

ED405
5/7/14
Entry #3
Family involvement is something that is undeniably a good thing to have in
the classroom as a teacher. Family involvement, having parents involved in
chaperoning field trips, coming in to talk to students, and staying in contact with the
teacher about their students progress is an essential part of helping all students
achieve their maximum potential. What teachers have to decide however, is to what
extent parent involvement should be integrated into classroom teaching, and what
the teacher/parent dynamic should be. To me, parent involvement should be
supplementary, and not necessarily complementary; Parents are a great resource in
assisting the teacher, especially in a students social and political development, but
should not be involved in the actual academic teaching of content.
Having said that, there are a lot of benefits that parents can provide in a
supportive role: they can make information and material more engaging and fun for
students by giving them a personal connection and interest in learning, as well as
access prior knowledge that I as the teacher am not aware of. Parents can also play
an important role by coordinating and communicating with teachers about what
their kid is learning in class, so they are better able to support and monitor student
learning and assignments at home. Having a good relationship with the parents
gives the parents a reason to be extra careful about the work that their student is
turning in, and to care whether the kid is getting the most out of the homework or
project that they are working on. On campus, parents are a good resource for
accessing and reaching out to parents who are hard to reach in other ways, either
because of busy schedules, community commitments, or language barriers. Having
an ally who will help you reach and get to parts of the community and people in that
community who I would be hard pressed to reach any other way helps me assist
some of the students in my class who are most in need.
When reaching out to parents to get them involved, either at school, on field
trips, or in home learning, I think its important for the teacher to approach the
teacher/parent relationship from a professional standpoint, but also from a
standpoint where I make the first move and reach out to parents, showing and
telling them that my main objective is the success of their kid. I think that if parents
understand how much you care about the success of their children, and the teacher
approaches them for help in that in a way thats not condescending or dismissive,
that half the battle is already won. Its important to me though that the relationship
be friendly but still professional. Parents and teachers have to work together and
coordinate home and school learning, but I think the teacher still has to have final
say over content and the teaching in the classroom. Weve read several articles that
put forward the idea that parents should be partners in developing the curriculum
and lessons that are taught to students, to better incorporate prior knowledge and
make ones teaching more culturally relevant. I think this is a good point, but I think
a certain distance has to be maintained between teacher and parent, where parent
involvement is encouraged, but not in a way that might bias or swing content in a
way that benefits or pays attention to one student at the expense of another.
Ultimately, teachers are the ones who are held accountable for results, and are the
ones who are versed in the subject area, and while parents should be involved in
supplementing that learning with additional material, they should not be involved in
replacing the teacher in terms of content development.
While I dont think they should have a lot of say over academic decisions,
parents are incredibly useful in promoting student learning, and especially in
helping those students who are ELL or struggling readers. Stephen Krashen, in his
Monitor Theory, talks about how students, as they get older, start putting up
internal barriers, or filters, to learning, making it harder for students for students as
they get older to fully comprehend the second language that in many cases, is the
only language used in instruction. Family involvement is critical to students like this
who dont feel comfortable in the classroom, and thus find it hard to learn in a
language they dont fully understand. Having families involved helps students feel
comfortable in their learning environment, and thus engage more in their learning
and lower their affective filter which is holding them back. Parents in this way can
help the classroom environment and help create a more conducive learning
atmosphere. They can also not only directly help students, but also assist students
by adding a personal and cultural relevancy to material being taught in class that
makes it more relatable and understandable for students, who often feel
disconnected or alienated from historical facts, concepts, countries, and people that
they have no sense of connection to. Bringing family members in to give a talk about
their own experiences, like a parent talking about their own experience as a
construction worker when the class is studying the emergence of skyscrapers and
new building techniques at the beginning of the 20
th
century allows students to see
another perspective as well as see the material connected to something, someone,
that they understand. This emphasis on creating culturally relevant lessons and
tying the material into prior knowledge is the basis of the Socio-cultural and socio-
historical theories, which have relevancy and historical connections as their base.
Schools and classrooms cant simply pretend that they are in a bubble, and
that students can and should only learn during the 6 hours that they are on campus
everyday. Parents are an important part of the learning process, and are incredibly
influential in their childrens academic lives, since much of what students learn
about the world they learn about by talking with their family, not with the teacher.
Therefore, parents should be invited by the teacher and encouraged to help bridge
the gap between home and school, assisting students in accessing their funds of
knowledge, providing a gateway into greater content understanding through
cultural relevancy, helping students, especially ELL students, feel comfortable in
their learning space, and helping the teacher reach out to parents and family
members who are hard to get a hold of. While parents should not in my opinion be
involved in the curriculum development and lesson planning, teachers should use
them as a resource that will help students succeed in school and out.