Parents Parents Parents

 Hi everyone! This week’s post is discussing parental involvement in education. Parents play a large role in schools. After watching the BOE meeting for my town it was interesting to learn how much the community really does affect schools. At the BOE members of the community (mostly parents) got to voice their opinions and concerns. I feel that a few of the issues parents are worried about could be avoided by having better teacher parent relationships. Part of my job as a competitive gymnastics coach is explaining to parents why their child got the score they did on an event. The simple answer is that they earned it, but for some reason they do not feel that is the case and they cannot grasp that their child is responsible. I am still mastering how to deal with parents but I know that they play a large role in whether their child will score well at competitions. For example the parent can stress the importance of stretching at home, they can teach their child to listen to me, they can get their child extra private lessons to help them. The same can be said for school, parents can ask teachers what is happening in the classroom with their child. They can stress the importance of paying attention in class, and they can get them a tutor if needed. 

The video “putting parents to work in the classroom” shows one school going above and beyond to get parental involvement, when it can be simple as what i listed previously. The parents at that school did have a unique opportunity to actually see what is happening in the classroom and be apart of the learning process. Going back to my gymnastics competition experience, I am currently writing having just got home from an 8 hour long one, something else that I personally do is I take every one of my girls to the bathroom. It seems silly, like why would this matter? USAG is surrounded by child predators and I will be damned if something happens to one of my girls at a gym I am unfamiliar with because I let them venture off by themselves. This rant seems irrelevant but it is not, the workshops that we had to complete were very similar to the workshops I had to complete for coaching. The DASA workshop, child abuse identification workshop, and school violence prevention and intervention workshop, all taught me very import tools that I am happy to have in my back pocket if needed.  I am a little crazy and I am hypersensitive to certain issues because of my gymnastics background but I know the role that parents play in education and how important they are to their children. 

Aguilar, E. (2011, September 23). 20 Tips for Developing Positive Relationships with Parents. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/20-tips-developing-positive-relationships-parents-elena-aguilarLinks to an external site.

Borovoy, A.E. (2012, November 2). 5-Minute Film Festival: Parent-Teacher Partnerships. Edutopia.https://www.edutopia.org/blog/film-festival-parent-teacher-partnerships

Family Engagement: Resource Roundup (2010, July 14). Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/home-school-connections-resources