Parent involvement in education is critical as it extends education outside of the classroom, creates a more positive experience for children, and helps children perform better when they are at school. An increase in parent involvement also creates greater trust and greater respect develops between the families and the school and their child’s teacher. According to studies:
- Children achieve more regardless of ethnic or racial background, socioeconomic status, or parents’ education level
- Children achieve better grades, test scores, and attendance
- Children have better self-esteem, are more self-disciplined, and show higher motivation towards school
- Parents have more knowledge of their child’s development, which leads to an increased use of positive reinforcement and less use of punishment on their child
- Parents have a better understanding of the teacher’s job, the school’s curriculum, and their effectiveness
Today, we’re going to look at four key principles of encouraging family engagement in your school. To learn more about this, take our online course available now! According to the Mid Atlantic Equity Consortium, there are four key principles to family engagement. They are:
1. Welcome all children and families
Try and great every child and every parent that enters your school. Just a quick, “Hello, how are you?” kind of thing works. The more you interact with children and parents that walk through those doors, the more you start developing interpersonal relationships with the families at your school. I remember when I used to drop my oldest off at the junior high school in our town and a teacher stood at the top of the steps from the parent line and gave out fist bumps to every student that walks through those doors. It’s a simple recognition by their name and a fist bump and it just sets a positive tone for the day. I volunteered to do an event at the school and when I walked past him, he even gave me a fist bump. Little things like that daily can set a positive tone for the day for children and parents and create opportunities for relationship building.
2. Allow for community building and networking
Try and create opportunities to connect families with others in the community or even connect your program with other community resources. When I was a director of an afterschool program, I always felt that it was important to meet and build relationships with the staff and administration in the school. I always felt that we could help support a child’s learning in the afterschool environment by building relationships with both teachers and parents and serving as the “intermediary” between the two. We saw success in this: We had a 2nd grader that was struggling in reading and worked with her daily at the request of her teacher and by the end of the year, she was reading at a 4th grade level. That’s just one example. That was long ago, but when I served as the principal of a Christian school, I still used those same connections to help our program. The music teacher I befriended as a young afterschool director volunteered for our school and provided music education after she had retired. The daughter of a teacher in our school that I connected with did our school pictures. Don’t underestimate the importance of networking in your local community! You want to have these opportunities available to network your program and your families with resources that could potentially benefit their children.
3. Provide a “nugget of knowledge” and allow time for modeling and practice of new information
We are the experts on child development, the stages of learning and development, and the educational process as a whole. Parents, clearly, have an idea of where their child should be, but also trust our judgement to help develop those needed skills. One way to help with family engagement is to provide them with some tidbit of knowledge or a strategy they can use at home and give them an opportunity to practice with their child at home. You could even use a video or a demonstration to show how to practice it at home and encourage families to work on it. If parents reinforce what you’re teaching in the classroom, it’s only going to benefit the child.
4. Tie family engagement to school readiness goals to improve outcomes for children and families
Helping support efforts for school readiness will improve the outcomes for children and families. By providing activities or events that tie into school readiness, you are helping children prepare for school at a young age.
Conclusion and Follow-Up
Parent involvement in the classroom is extremely beneficial for your students. Finding ways to invite families into the classroom, for them to share in their child’s educational experience, and to build relationships with these families will inevitably lead to greater student achievement in the classroom.
For more on parent involvement and family engagement, take our online course.