Thursday, November 10, 2011

Keeping parents out of schools


A while back I wrote a post called "Getting parents to come to school". Feel free to go and read it if you like. It seemed a pretty non-controversial post to me, but it got one reader so pissed-off that they said they were never coming back. I suppose the issue was that in his/her mind, schools already do all they can, that they are in no way responsible for any lack of parent involvement. To which my response is, maybe at your school...

So, I thought I'd try a post looking at the problem from the other side. What happens at schools that keep parents from being more involved. I'm looking at administrators, PTA/PTO leadership, teachers, or North Ave depending on the problem. I'm also going to say what I think a solution is to this problem, because no one likes a whiner who complains, but doesn't suggest anything that would work better.
  • Have PTA meetings that go on and on, but really don't have any positive results that justify parents sacrificing their time to be there
    • PTAs need to have real agendas and time lines and actions and responsibilities for each and every meeting. I realize that this is a lot of work and a lot to ask from poor schmucks that make the mistake of running for office, but I believe this is the number 1 reason people don't come to PTA meetings. If the school administration really wants to have a PTA, maybe they need to help develop these agendas, at least until the leadership can figure out how to do it on their own.
  • Allow a single parent to monopolize all the time at a PTA meeting talking about something they care passionately about, but isn't on topic and/or doesn't follow the agenda.
    • A PTA leader should offer to talk more about this after the meeting ends at which point they need to come up with an action plan that will drive this issue to closure that the aggrieved parent agrees to. Most times a parent repeatedly yammers on about something like this, it is because they don't see any change or progress being made. If it's a dead issue (i.e. can't be done) the PTA leader needs to own up to this and say (in private) that we can't talk about this any more
  • Make going to report card conferences chaotic, rushed and hit or miss as far as talking to the teachers you would really need to talk to, often being blindsided by a problem at the meeting
    • One solution would be to have teachers reach out to parents with the current grades and how concerned they are about specific students. Then have actual appointments with enough time to talk about concerns. Knowing that there's something important to talk about, the parent could juggle between various teachers and come up with a possible schedule that lets them meet with the right teachers. On the other hand, if there are no issues, maybe a quick email is enough and they can take conference night off and leave it to parents with bigger issues
    • A second solution would be for the team of teachers to meet with parents, like an IEP. This would allow everyone to discuss issues and at a certain age would include the student.
  • Have lots of fundraising, with no real idea of what the money is for, or after the fundraising, how well the fundraiser went.
    • The solution here seems obvious - fund raise with a specific goal in mind, communicate that goal to parents, communicate successes and failures, thank everyone who pitched in. If that's too much to do, don't complain about poor participation.
  • Whenever a parent calls to ask about something negative that they think is happening at the school, get defensive quickly and go on the offense against their child and/or the parent
    • If you want involved parents, expect that their ideas of how things should be run might very well be different than yours. Understand that loving parents want to believe and support their students. Thank them for being involved and genuinely listen to complaints. This takes time and patience, but if you want to form a team with parents, you might have to engage in unilateral disarmament.
  • Try to solve all problems at the same time with equal priority, or alternately (since the end effect is about the same) maintain that there are no problems and spend all the time you interact with parents on defending the status quo
    • Brainstorm initially to identify problems, but focus and prioritize. Some issues that have real importance will be totally overlooked, but progress, momentum and a sense of accomplishment is worth a great deal, while a diluted message is confusing and discouraging.
Applying that final point to myself, I have clearly written too much and should expect that there's not a whole lot to take away from this post. On the plus side, it helps me meet my post a day objective.
For something a little more concise, check out my fellow Bmore Ed NaBloPoMo Crew:
Epiphany in Baltimore
BmoreSchools
Maryland Math Madness
and The Smallest Twine

6 comments:

  1. "One solution would be to have teachers reach out to parents with the current grades and how concerned they are about specific students. Then have actual appointments with enough time to talk about concerns. Knowing that there's something important to talk about, the parent could juggle between various teachers and come up with a possible schedule that lets them meet with the right teachers. On the other hand, if there are no issues, maybe a quick email is enough and they can take conference night off and leave it to parents with bigger issues"

    Is this realistic for teachers with 160+ students? How would appointments go with them? Right now, schools send home 4 progress reports per year (before the 4 report cards), and teachers comment on there if a conference is required. How much more often is needed for the teacher to reach out?

    I agree that we need more time for conferences, but schools cannot get away with that because of union issues.

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  2. I was happy that, this year, the schools brought in one evening conference. Still, attendance was poor.

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  3. @EiB-
    With 160 students it does seem daunting. I'm not sure what would work better.

    Here are some honest questions -
    Do you think 100% of teachers reach out successfully? I'm not talking about you personally, but do all of the teachers in your school do a good job with the comments on the progress & report cards? Do they call or email in bad situations. Do reports get handed out enough before the conference time to allow parents to reach out to teachers to ask for details? When you say you were disappointed with turn out at the conferences, did you get better attendance from the parents that you requested a conference for than for the ones you did not?

    Here are some honest experiences that I've had at different schools:
    I've never had a conference requested per comments but when I have talked to teachers they very much had things they wanted to talk about. I've gone to conferences where there were lines for some teachers that would have required me not seeing any other teacher but to wait for them, primarily because they were having long, great conferences with the parents that they could talk to at the expense of other parents. I have gone to conferences where big problems were brought up for the first time and I was totally blind-sided. I know that my child is the person who isn't communicating well, but being blind-sided sucks. I have gone to 504 meetings and had teachers not show up, but then have big issues pop up in report cards weeks later.

    So, my experiences are far from perfect. This is not about a specific school, but just general comments. Honestly, I dread conference nights.

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  4. One solution might be to just request conferences with teachers. If being blindsided at conferences is something that has happened more than once, maybe don't wait for a bad report for it to happen.

    I have big issues with how BCPSS does conferences. Honestly, we should have evening conferences after every report card, and all the teachers should probably be in one place (like the gym) so parents can see when a line dies down. That's how I remember it happening in my high school.

    Honestly, though, parental involvement is so low (6 parents out of 160, that kind of thing) that I don't think anyone wants it changed. Who wants to stay at school until 9pm to see 6 parents? I guess you could argue that attendance is so low because of crummy policies for conferences, but honestly I think an active parent is going to push through those to see their kid's teachers.

    So, I'm not sure. I don't think individual teachers calling all 160 parents when problems arise is going to happen, though. As for this report card, none of my comments showed up because of the new system, so no one knows which parents I requested conferences. I know most of my colleagues do request conferences, though - though admittedly it's an automatic C.Y.A. move in case of a future failure. Teachers are so overwhelmed with student load, though, that it's tough to see how else to survive.

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  5. OK, here's the plan. Report cards come out the day of the conferences and may or may not have notes. It's too late to figure out things then. I'm asking the 2 high school students to ask each teacher if they request a conference. A 15 second task - a place to initial and a single yes/no question. We'll see.

    ReplyDelete

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