From a teacher’s perspective, I would like my students to have parental involvement at home with encouragement, homework, and enrichment activities. I would like my students to be encouraged at home by their parents to succeed academically as well as to spend time with their children listening to them read and/or experiencing enriching activities together. I want to involve my students’ parents in their child’s education by keeping them informed with open communication and how they can help their child be successful. Epstein (1997) addresses the importance of meaningful communication between parents and the school in her Framework of Six Types of Parental Involvement. Epstein defines communication as connecting schools, families, students, and the community through two-, three-, and multi-way means of communicating about school programs and student progress (Epstein 1997). I would communicate with parents thru progress reports, report cards, phone calls home, emails and parent connect (grades). When parents feel they are informed parents are more effective parents in helping their child be successful.
I do not have any resistance working with parents as partners. In fact, parental involvement is important to each of my student’s success academically and the more that parents are involved the more impact they will have on the academic achievement of the child. At the beginning of next year I plan to involve parents at the beginning of the year in order to gain support. More training is needed to teach teachers how to effectively reach out to parents and get them involved in their classrooms as well as helping their children at home to support what is being learned at school. I plan to have open communications with parents about student achievement and ways that we can continually improve. It is important to keep the lines of communication open to ensure that every stakeholder is reaching for the same goal of student success.
Epstein, J.L., Coates, L., Salinas, K.C., Sanders, M.G., & Simon, B.S. (1997). Epstein’s six types of involvement. In School, family, and community partnerships: Your handbook for action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
