How to get parents more involved with their child's education

“The school’s best ally in the task of nurturing a student’s innate ‘urge to learn’ is, first and foremost, the parents,” says Bernie Poole in his online book Education for an Information Age.[1] How to get parent more involved with their child’s education? This may seem like a simple question, but with working parents, language differences, economic and cultural divisions, and a history of schools regarding parents as intruders and critics rather than partners.[2] The challenge that faces America educators today is how to get parents more involved with their child’s education.
Communication is an essential ingredient in parent involvement[3], It is important to set-up the communication with parents at the first meeting. Most of the time the first meeting will be at an open house at the school. It is good to try to spend a few minutes speaking with each parent to see the best forms of communication to keep in contact with the parents. Forms of communication for each parent can be different depending on their employment and education. Some parents may prefer email; where as other parents will want a phone call.
It is also very important that you let the parents know that communication works both ways and give them the best ways to reach you about any issues they or their child may be having in school. You should also let parents know early on about letters you will send home, test dates, what is expected of their child in your class. At the first meeting with the parent you can also ask if they would be willing or able to volunteer at the school in any capacity. The more you can get the parents in the school the more you will be able to get them involved with their child and sometimes it will even help other children who have uninvolved parents to have someone other than their teacher to look up to at school.
Other forms of communication that are used to help get parents involved are websites and newsletters. Teachers can set up their websites to show weekly updates of homework assignments, classroom projects, and publish students work. The websites can link to the school and district websites. You can also link to educational sites for games, trivia, and world knowledge. Make the site useful for parents and fun for the children so that the whole family will enjoy going to your website. Almost 96 percent of U.S. schools now have Websites.[4]
Newsletters are another way to keep parents informed of what is going on in their child’s class. You can decide on whether to do a weekly, bi-weekly, or a monthly newsletter and have the students help with putting the newsletter together. You can include the lunch menu, items your class is studying, writing projects of the students.
Communication can also be used for good reasons. You can call a parent to tell them how well their child did on a test, or just to let them know they have a polite and considerate child. Parents will appreciate the good news and it will help to keep the lines of communication open between the teacher and the parents.
After many years of intense effort to increase parent involvement in schools, the results are beginning to appear in the educational research. The news is good for schools where parent involvement is high, and the benefits for children are encouraging. Where parents are involved in children’s schools and education, children have higher grades and standardized test scores, improved behavior at home and school, and better social skills and adaptation to school.[5]
Parents can be involved in many ways, volunteering at school, PTO (Parent-Teacher Organization), homework, after school activities, dinner conversations, reading with the child, and keeping the lines of communication with their child open. Parents would care enough to talk to their child and to spend time doing positive activities with their children will see more positive results from their child at school. Teachers give kids more attention when they know their parents from school visits.[6]
[1] http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/profdev124.shtml
[2] http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/profdev124.shtml
[3] http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/profdev124.shtml
[4] http://www.education-worls.com/a_curr/prodev124.shtml
[5] http://childparenting.about.com/cs/parentinvolvement/a/parentschool/htm?p=1
[6] http://childparenting.about.com/cs/parentinvolvement/a/parentschool.htm?p=1