The Importance Of Parental Relationship In Education

Bob Beauprez paints a great picture of the symbiotic relationship that should exist between students, school personnel, and parents when he was quoted as saying, “Education is a shared commitment between dedicated teachers, motivated students and enthusiastic parents with high expectations”. Unfortunately, what sounds great in theory is often hard to achieve in reality. It seems as though the relationship between parents and their children’s school system would be a natural occurrence, but often the division between home life and school life is a difficult challenge to overcome. So why should educators work so diligently to make sure a positive connection exists between parent community and the school community? This question is best answered …show more content…
Lechtenberger and Mullins (2004) give several strategies that can be used to help school personnel in reaching these parents. They acknowledge that schools need to do a better job in helping parents understand the culture and terminology of schools. In addition, schools and parents need to collaborate with one another, recognizing the importance of the parental role while respecting the expertise of the school personnel. One of my roles as a teacher leader is to act as a liaison between the school and the parents. I need to make parental involvement a priority in my daily planning. Are my communications with parents positive and easy to understand? Do the teachers on the campus know how to implement a true partnership with parents? Am I using all resources available to me to provide a proactive parent-school climate? Through this questioning process, I need to remember that ultimately it is the student who will either suffer or benefit from the role I choose to …show more content…
One of these frameworks that I feel can be implemented by my colleagues and campus members is Joyce Epstein’s “Six Types of Involvement” which includes: parenting, communicating, supporting school (through volunteering), learning at home, decision making, and collaborating with the community (Epstein, 2008). By communicating with parents, involving them in decisions affecting their children, including parenting and academic strategies, and utilizing community support, parents will once again feel comfortable in considering themselves a part of their children’s educational system. In addition, explaining educational procedures and processes and then allowing parents to participate in academic decisions can also help win over resistant parents. I know that all too often, curriculum and other policies and procedures limit the role that parents really play in their children’s education. For example, when the current math curriculum was put into place in our local school district, many parents complained that they did not have access to textbooks or other study materials to help their children. Instead of working with these parents, some teachers took on a superior attitude and talked down to the parents explaining that the curriculum was too advanced for non-educational experts to navigate and understand. These problems with curriculum and devaluing of parents severed many