Conferences this week were a huge success and all the parents were very pleased with their interactions with you. Of course, this isn’t a surprise to anyone! However, at the end of the two days I was a bit frustrated. You see, I had more parent interactions regarding student progress in those two days than I have had all year long; that was frustrating. I was a bit bewildered because it seemed that parents only bothered to come talk to me because they were already here; it felt like they only cared enough to talk about their kids when it was convenient for them. Anyway, it got me thinking about why our parent community, as a whole, isn’t more engaged in their children’s learning. It sent me searching and I turned up a good article outlining three things that lead to parent involvement. I believe that our overall culture is very inviting for parents and I know that you as teachers are most definitely inviting parents to participate in their children’s learning…that leaves the students. Are our students leaving their parents out of the loop? Is there something that we can to do help them bring their parents into the conversations about school? Or perhaps, I’m over looking something else…I’d love to hear your thoughts, after all, these are just my two cents 🙂
This article summary is from the Marshall Memo, an amazing professional resource!!
Originally published in SCSI MS Headlines on October 25, 2013.
Pushing Forward 
This article was good but it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know. Sometimes all it takes is an invite! Invite them and they will come. But I also know as a past parent of a ‘Tween’, that they are at the age where they are stretching their wings, some for the very first time. They want to be independent, grown up, become their own person. The last thing they want is their parents involved. I think the trick to the invite is to get buy in from the students and convince them to do the inviting!