Teacher World

As promised, here is the last blog I will write about Arne Duncan’s speech to the Annual National PTA Convention in June. He made an interesting comment concerning the roles parents should play in their children’s education: they should be “partners in learning, advocates and advisors who push for better schools, and decision-makers who choose the best educational options for their children.” It is the last role I wish to address in this blog.

Clearly, it is every parent’s decision where their children will attend school. And I think it is safe to say that the majority of parents send their children to public schools for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that public education is free. But what do parents do when they become disenchanted with the school of their choice? Unfortunately, in my experience, a lot of these parents do not take the time to actually connect to their child’s teacher and principal in a constructive way to try to reach a remedy to whatever issues exist. Instead of trying to work out existing problems, some parents even threaten to remove their children from their present school and send them somewhere else. Now, that may eventually be the decision that is made, but parents should work through all available resources first before making precipitous decisions. Arne Duncan stated, “Parent engagement is, of course, a two-way street. Parents sometimes disengage when schools fail to welcome their input. Too often, parents come in to school only when there is a problem—rather than touching base regularly to see how students are progressing.”

So, parents, first and foremost, don’t wait till there is a problem to come in and spend some time in your child’s school in whatever capacity available to you. Get to know your child’s teacher and principal by helping in the classroom, being a chaperone, helping as a room mother or father, calling or emailing to find out what is happening in class, and attending conferences. Call for a conference if you have questions or concerns. Teachers will make time for you. Then, if problems pop up, you have already built enough of a relationship with your child’s teacher to be able to work together to solve it. It is unlikely if you follow this advice that you would ever get to the point of considering removing your child from their school.

Second, if you do not have the time to get to know your child’s teacher and a problem develops,set up a conference and do all you can to amicably resolve the issue. Do not go in loaded for bear believing everything your child has told you. Work together with the teacher to try to reach a compromise. And do not threaten to pull your child from school unless all other options have been explored and failed. It is not going to help your child to make drastic changes. So let that be a last resort, no matter where your child goes to school.

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On Monday mornings in my classroom we spend the first few minutes reconnecting after the weekend by sharing something exciting we did over the weekend. One memorable morning this past spring, we were making our merry way around the room sharing our happy tales until I reached one young man, I will call Tim, who had been absent on Friday. Thoroughly expecting to be told that Tim spent most of the weekend in bed, I inquired, “So, Ted, I know you were sick so I assume you didn’t do much this weekend, right?”

To my utmost surprise, Tim boldly proclaimed, “I wasn’t sick on Friday.” Okay, so now I expected to hear that perhaps he had a doctor’s appointment or a family obligation, so I asked him if either of these two possibilities was true. He very patiently replied, “No.”

Now I was stumped. So I pursued the matter a little deeper by asking why he had stayed home then on Friday. Now get ready…His exact words were, “I had to stay home and help my mother set up the pool.” This happens to be a student who has struggled academically all year and whose mother I had been in regular contact with for support, so it took awhile for this proclamation to sink in fully, not just for me, but for the rest of the class as well. When I trusted myself to speak, I asked if he had begged to stay home to help. Tim retold the story that his mother came to his bedroom door in the morning and asked him if he would like to stay home and help her with the pool. Again, I had to take some time removing the shocked look from my face as I asked if this pool work could not have waited until he got home from school or over the weekend. He just smiled and shrugged. At this point I questioned whether setting up the home pool qualified as an excused absence. The only thing that saved me from a complete melt down was the fact that I was not the only one in that room that was amazed at the craziness of this situation.

I tell this story because it is indicative of a serious problem we face in education today. So many activities are becoming more important to parents and their children than school: sports, movies, computer games, vacations, concerts, and now I have to add pools to this list. For those of us in the business of educating and trying to get students to pass state tests, it is frustrating to say the least. I’m sorry, but when parents believe that setting up a pool is more important than getting their children to school, our schools and our students take a real dive.

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