Children Need Parents To Be Partners With Their Schools
Parents — the most influential people in a students’ life — are too often the least well-informed about the need to partner with schools in a productive way.
Life itself is a risk-taking adventure and with young children and adolescents, it is even more so.
How many times have you heard of “good parents” who lost their child to drug addiction or the ultimate of losses, suicide? No one is totally immune. The best we can do is reduce the risks as much as possible, in every way possible. And for that, we do need partners.
Schools continue to be an institution whose role in many students’ lives is second only to their parents. But have we done all we can to foster parental partnerships with schools? Are we even consistently informing parents as to what their constantly changing role in education is?
In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education came out with this statement:
To Parents from a Nation at Risk (p.35)
“You have the right to demand for your children the best our schools and colleges can provide. Your vigilance and your refusal to be satisfied with less than the best are the imperative first step. But your right to a proper education for your children carries a double responsibility. As surely as you are your child’s first and most influential teacher, your child’s ideas about education and its significance begin with you. You must be a living example of what you expect your children to honor and to emulate. Moreover, you bear a responsibility to participate actively in your child’s education.”
This presidential commission on education studied secondary schools (middle, junior, and high schools) and made recommendations for this often overlooked and misunderstood age group. And they had much more to say to secondary school parents:
“You should encourage more diligent study:
► monitor your child’s study;
► encourage good study habits;
► encourage your child to take more demanding rather than less demanding courses;
► nurture your child’s curiosity, creativity, and confidence;
► be an active participant in the work of the schools;
► exhibit a commitment to continued learning in your own life;
► help your children understand that excellence in education cannot be achieved without intellectual and moral integrity coupled with hard work and commitment.”
Clearly understanding our roles and responsibilities for every “stage” of our children’s education is a good first step but only if the information is correct.
Too often parents hear that teenagers don’t want them “involved” at this age, Not true. Involvement in their lives will take on different forms, yes, and partnerships are Continue reading: Children Need Parents To Be Partners With Their Schools - The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People
