parents matter...

As I come to the end of the school year (as of this writing 7 and ½ school days…but who is counting) student behavior and attitude towards school is definitely on the forefront of things I am dealing with. And as all teachers know, there is only so much we can do during the day in the classroom if the parents are not actively involved in their student’s education. Now it is really easy to criticize parents for lack of help in the process but if we do not lay out for them the things that we need them to be doing, it is really not fair.

Over the summer I am going to write a true “Parent’s Handbook” that will lay out not only what I would love for them to be doing at home but also why it is so important. The following is a list of things I am going to include but please feel free to give some suggestions:

- Help with time management skills (the student’s, not mine – of course I could use some help as well)

- The importance of checking their child’s agenda daily to see what happened that day and what is coming up (but of course it first starts with them requiring their kid fills it out because I do not have the time to make sure it happens)

- Explain exactly what cheating consists of, how to look out for their child plagiarizing and where to draw the line between “helping” them to do their homework and actually doing it for them.

- Explain the things that their child is really doing online when they claim to be “doing homework” (also a part of this, explaining the ills of programs like MySpace)

- Why it is more important for their child to be following dress code instead of just wearing the cutest, in-fashion clothes (there is this one beautiful girl in my class and her mother told me that a boy’s mother recently told her “your daughter was the cause of my son to start puberty” and so she always makes sure that her daughter is “fully clothed” every day)

- Explain just how important it is to keep communication open between home and school throughout the year and not just at parent/teacher conferences. It will also be important to talk about the proper and most efficient way to communicate with teachers.

- Why it is sooo important that their child is in school EVERY day possible and yes, even though this is only 8th grade it is not okay to pull your daughter out of school for hair appointments and vacations to Disneyland. There is definitely time throughout the year for family vacations and long weekends to where it does not have to impact school time. All we ask is for 180-days of attendance.

- Proper nutrition is important to a growing child which means them eating a good breakfast whether they want to or not. And a real problem we had this year is our kids are addicted to Monster and other caffeinated energy drinks – I would like to see how long the parents would put up with it if the first thing their kid did on a Saturday morning was to pound down 3 energy drinks and try and get any quality time out of them..

- Cell phones are a great way to stay in touch but please stop calling your child on them during school hours. (today a student was in the office busted for forwarding a picture of a naked woman over his mobile phone, while sitting in the AP office the phone goes off with a text message sent by the boy's mother consisting of todays baseball scores - the AP actually called mom right on the spot and asked her to stop doing that...mom and student were mortified). And it goes well beyond this with the CONSTANT text messaging throughout the day between students.

- The odds are pretty good that your child will “exaggerate” or even “embellish” something that happened at school at some point so keep an open mind when they tell you stories and if in doubt, talk to the teacher (calmly) first and get the whole story (chances are really good that I did not actually call your daughter a "skank”)

- At the beginning of the year we send home critical dates such as the end of the quarters (where you should expect a lot of testing to happen), conferences, when progress reports go home, etc. It is the parents job to keep track of these and do not simply rely on your child to remind you of them. If we ask the students to be responsible it should not be so much to ask that the parents step up to the plate as well.


Well that is my initial list. PLEASE feel free to comment on some other ideas of things you wish parents did or understood about their kid’s educational time with us. Now I am not naive enough to think that once the parents get this list that everything will be great – let’s face it just as there are some really good and really bad teachers, there are also some really bad parents out there as well. But there is no doubt that the vast majority of parents really do care about their kid's education and I have a feeling that many might just like some pointers in how they can help.

Thoughts?