Standard 4

Educators value the involvement and support of parents, guardians, families, and communities in schools.

I heard an anecdote from somewhere that if a butterfly is surgically removed from its cocoon then it is completely unable to fly. It is necessary that it struggle against its fetters and in the effort to escape the cocoon it grows the strength it needs to soar. The one big fear I have when considering interacting with parents about their children is that I might have to inform them that they did something along those lines to their child, removing the struggle so they did not learn.

During the Math Night my lesson plan made for a very particular subgroup of grade 7 students was not present to enjoy the experience, as I probably should have expected.

All the same some people ended up at my table, through osmosis as much as anything else.

Though an interesting thing happened when the younger students attempted my atrocity of a game. They seemed to do well enough for themselves but when they had difficulties they didn’t tend to get frustrated since they had their parents nearby who were looking at things on a higher level, able to dispense advice when needed and help with the more difficult calculations.

The students ended up having a fun time and taking away one of my extra copies of the game system I had around and I would attribute their good experience with the fact that their parents were able to assist them when they needed to. Since they were obviously below the expected age and knowledge level that I had designed the game for this seemed like the best.

Of course there can be issues with parent over involvement in student work since the work will not have evidence of their students abilities. Worse than that, those students who are likely to have parents invested in their life to ‘assist with’ homework would also be more likely to have their children be well behaved students. From this assistance the teacher receives distorted feedback that children are quite able to do what they are actually incapable of doing, leading to misplaced expectations that negatively impact those students who do not get the help and are therefore negatively impacted from all sides.

To ensure there is no distortion of the evidence a teacher will need to ensure that parents have something that they are able to do that is voluntary and doesn’t artificially inflate student achievement.

Of course parents care about their kids and want them to be successful so the only thing we need to do for parents is give them an opportunity to help their children in a way that will help them.