Parental Involvement in the High School Classroom

Using the weekly reading as a resource (K&H 11 and D&G 8), describe how you would involve and work with parents and families in your ideal classroom.  What supports would you want to provide parents?  How would you improve communication?  How would you help parents learn how to support their student's literacy?  How would you facilitate student, teacher, parent interactions?  Other ideas?

While I agree that parental involvement in education is the keystone to building a successful student, I am torn at how involved a parent should be when their child is in high school.  I say this because I want parents that advocate and support their students, parents that assist and reinforce positive learning skills, but I want these same parents to teach students to advocate for themselves.  As a high school teacher, one of my goals is to teach the students to be independent learners and speak up for themselves when they have needs that are not being met.  I feel that this is a critical skill for them to learn as they will soon be independent adults and will require this skill to become successful in the adult world.

That being said, I still greatly value the input and participation of adults in my classroom and with my advisory students.  To involve parents I do several things throughout the year to check in with parents.  First of all, I make phone calls when a student is being successful in my classroom, and when they are not.  I do this so that they students can know that I value the positive as well as will report the negative.  I also call parents will am concerned about the student, such as they are not working at their normal capacity or have been missing too many classes. 

Because parents are always concerned about grades, I send home a progress report for students in my classes midway through each grading period.  I do this so that the progress report and the final grade are not a shock to the parent and so they know that I am open and willing to work with their student regarding their grade.  It also gives the students some control over their destiny, you might say, in my class.

What I do not do to involve parents is have them participate in the classroom.  I find great value in this for the younger grades, but am not too sure how it would work for secondary students.  Would they appreciate parents in the room assisting them in their lessons?  I find myself doubting that this would be a successful tactic in getting them to read! I feel that it is better to have a good open line of communication with parents and let the students know that I am constant contact with their parent so that they know they cannot get “away” with things in my class.  While this is something that I value, it is also something that I need to improve on.

Parental involvement in the classroom is essential to a successful student.  No teacher will dispute that.  But teacher are not perfect, and I certainly have a long way to go in improving my parent communication.  It is something that I strive to improve each school year.