Getting Parents on Teachers Side
Parents’ involvement has, more often than not, been said to have a significant impact on students. Students who receive academic support from parents has been noted to perform better than compared to those who are only left to the teacher. Although teachers often spend a lot of time with students, they fail to have the kind of control that parents have on them (Lee & Marlene, 2008).
To ensure that parents are involved in their children’s education, teachers and the school need to employ several strategies that help them accomplish this, which include communication with parents, organization of Parents Teachers Organization meetings, offering voluntary services to the parents. First, communication between teachers and parents includes encouraging parents to respond as expected to letters and invitation from the teacher and that it is compulsory that parents attend functions and conferences that play a role in the children’s performance. Parents can also be motivated to offer volunteering services to the academic institution. They can volunteer by serving in the classrooms, library, or even lunchrooms. Parents can also be involved by being made to join PTA (parents Teachers Associations) or also PTO (Parents Teachers Organizations) this way they get engaged in the making of decisions about the kind of educational services that their children get. Most schools have PTO or PTA, though exceedingly few parents involve themselves in them (Lee & Marlene, 2008).
Calculate the cost of essay
They are several impacts that parents involvement has on children that make them improve on their general performance; firstly, children in this case students always need someone they can rely on or look up to and a parent’s figure provides this. Parents also create and develop a sense of accomplishment or achievement in their children. This is done by appreciating their small steps towards success as parents anticipate greater and larger steps. By believing in the ability of children, parents create self-confidence in the children, this confidence builds an exceptionally strong foundation in the achievement of success as it makes them also believe in themselves.
By involving parents in their children’s academic progress, they get to learn more about the school, and this motivates them to develop a positive attitude towards the schooling process and the school in general. This helps the effectiveness of the teacher to improve, as parents become more concerned with ensuring that their children performance is at its best. This then challenges the student to perform better and pay more attention to teachers (Richard 2008).
Actions will have to be taken to ensure there is consistency in the involvement of parents. As a teacher giving assignments to students and making sure that parents sign, (as a show that they are aware of the academic activities of the student) is a way of enhancing parental involvement. The parents will in turn communicate to the teachers and help in identifying the problem area. Through continuous assessment of the weak areas, the students improve in both class performance and moral performance.
As a teacher u can also make frequent phone calls to the parents informing them on the performance of the student: updating them on the student’s attitude and change in behavior; calling to give deficient report discourages the parent. The teacher calls the parents to inform them how the students have performed in their Continuous Assessment Tests and main exams or term papers.
These two actions are most effective because: they ensure constant communication, between the teacher, student, and parent. They also serve to connect guidians, teachers and students in such a way that they constantly update each other on the academic progress of the student. These two actions also offer guidance to guardians on how they should improve the performance of the student e.g. by purchasing of textbooks, sample papers and paying for extra tuition. Making phone calls to parents to be specific, is as actually the fastest means of monitoring student progress between teachers and the parents of the student. It makes a compelling rapport between teachers and the student in such a way that they can openly discuss performance and progress of the student without excluding any details.
Benefit from Our Service: Save 25% Along with the first order offer - 15% discount, you save extra 10% since we provide 300 words/page instead of 275 words/page
What I had hoped for at the end of the course is that every student achieves his or her optimum performance and receives maximum support from both parents and teachers. By so doing, students get to believe more in themselves and become more aggressive in their pursuit for knowledge. I had also hoped that parents would be well-versed with school programs involving their children and contribute in such a way that will better the performance of their children through purchase of books and other stationery that will help in improving performance of their children (Richard, 2008).
I had also hoped that the performance of the school as a whole would elevate and have a higher mean score in the various grades / classes. Most excelling schools have been noted to involve parents of school programs, rules and regulations, expectations and targets.
I had also hoped that positive changes that may better the performance of the school be proposed and implemented so as to ensure improvement in academic performance of the school. As an example, music and drama festivals in schools practicing music and acting. Academic symposiums could also be implemented in the school curriculum. Questions that I have about this course of parent involvement in academic progress of the student are: what are the negative implications of the involvement of the parents in the academic progress of the student?; secondly, what actions should be taken on parents reluctant in the involvement of their children’ s academics?; what could be done in the case of orphaned students who even lack guardians?; does parent involvement pose as a threat to teachers and administration at large
Steps that I would take to answer these questions are: mainly interviewing the involved parties i.e. parents teachers and students; in the case of negative implications, observation and collection of general opinions may be used as a way of acquiring answers; in the case of orphaned students, other parents or teachers could be requested to help in their adoption them or they could be handed over to child orphanages for protection and support. Failure to this, teachers could be requested to follow up their academic performance strictly (Richard, 2008).
Summary
In conclusion, parents’ involvement is the back bone of the child’s success in academics. If parents are not involved in the academic performance of their children, there will be general laxity and poor general attitude towards academics by the children. Teachers can also tend to relax on their responsibilities by e.g. failing to attend classes, failure to cross-check assignments and notes of the student, falling back in the general syllabus coverage and a general don’t-care attitude towards the students and their performance.
Teachers can also get discouraged if parents are not concerned about their children’s education. This will make them little concerned about the students’ welfare. To ensure parent-child involvement, the strategies mentioned in this essay have been implemented and their benefits have been acknowledged such as increased self-esteem and confidence in the students, increased general performance of the school and finally, parents have been made more knowledgeable able the school’ s program, timetable and objectives. Due to parents’ involvement, teachers operate more efficiently as this is a motivation to them in the performance of their responsibilities.
The concepts of parent involvement in this essay are such as: ensuring parents volunteer in the different departments in the school. Parents can also be followed, and made to attend PTA and PTO meetings. In addition to these, various activities can be given to students whereby they will be required to involve their parents e.g. parents and students can develop a habit where they read to each other. Communication is also a highly efficient concept of parent involvement. This is achieved by teachers sending letters to the parents and by use of report cards, which show the general academic performance and rates the students’ competitiveness.
