The George Lucas Educational Foundation has a very useful website that is related to education.  There are several very important articles written on priority topics, such as: assessment, community partnership, the digital divide, emotional intelligence, mentoring, parental involvement, professional development, project based learning, school-to-career, teacher preparation, and technology integration.  After reviewing the website and reading a few of the articles, I found the article on parental involvement very interesting.  The URL is as follows: http://www.edutopia.org/home-school-team.

“The Home-School Team: An Emphasis on Parental Involvement” is written by James P. Comer and it emphasizes the importance of parental involvement.  The article explained that children learn best when they are influenced by all the adults in their lives.  When talking about all the adults in a child’s life, it is important to realize that this does not just encompass their teachers.  It also includes their parents, grandparents, and even their older siblings.  It states that “Schools alone cannot address all of a child’s developmental needs: The meaningful involvement of parents and support from the community are essential.”  Therefore, when we are considering how a child is developing, it is important to consider the experiences that they are going to encounter outside of the school and the teacher, as well as how this in going to influence their development. 

I really enjoyed this article because it stressed the significant difference between societies today and societies of the past.  The author explained that although it may seem like common sense to have a strong partnership between schools and families, the idea is not always as easy.  In the early societies, this idea was common sense.  Communities were smaller and teachers, students, and parents lived in very close proximity to each other.  Therefore, because of this, teachers saw parents on a regular basis and there were many opportunities that presented themselves to discuss a particular child’s development.  However, today, it is a whole different world.  Society has become much more complex and fast-paced.  Teachers and parents live on opposite sides of town and the only time they see each other (if they do see each other at all, I might add) is on teacher-parent conference day.  No one has the time or the energy to establish the relationships that were established in the past to benefit the children.  As the author explained, because of these relationships and the lack of trust and understanding, when a child falls behind, “the teacher blames the parents and the parents blame the teachers.

The main problem is where do we start to try to change this growing problem?  There are many ways that parents can become more involved in school.  Parents can take on a variety of roles to allow themselves to participate in their child’s schooling.  For example, parents can become involved in PTA, governance of the school, attend school and/or curriculum meetings, or just simply observe/participate in their child’s classroom.  One of the easiest tasks for parents that will allow them to become more involved is to chaperone a field trip.  Because of the hectic lifestyles that we live with in this world today, it seems barely feasible.  However, there are a few signs of improvement, such as employers giving parent’s time off to participate in schools.  Employers are starting to become concerned with the future workforce.  Eventually, we all hope that communication can be tied between teachers and parents.  It is important to remember that by increasing our communication, we are allowing the biggest winners to be the children – and to me that is what is most important!