My Parents

Not *my* parents.

You know, my parents -- as in, the parents of my students. Just like when I talk about "my kids" and people, surprised, say, "You have kids?" and I say, "Yeah - 46 of 'em."

About a week and a half ago the 5th grade team put on a workshop for parents of students who are underperforming (which is about 3/4 of our students).

I've had mixed feelings about parents over the years. Traditionally (I've read this, been told this, and this has been, generally, my experience over the last 9 years), Latino parents leave responsibility for the education of their kids almost completely to the schools. I very rarely have parents check in with me about the progress of their students, for example, even though the great majority of my kids are anywhere from one to four years behind. I've called parents, sent notes home to parents, etc., about kids not getting homework done, and a typical response I get is, "I *told* him to do it! What do you want me to do? Hit him?" or "What do you want me to do? Quit my job?"

It is, in a massive understatement, frustrating. Without parent support, my job is ten times tougher and a student's prospects for success are so much dimmer. It takes a special kind of kid to overcome poverty AND a dangerous neighborhood AND a language barrier AND indifferent parents.

But I have not given up on parents. In fact, my faith has been restored. Though there are some parents that are truly (and sadly) lost causes, most parents just need some tools for working with their kid at home. It's not so much that they don't want to help their kid at home, it's that they don't know how. The last couple rounds of parent/teacher conferences and the workshops that we did recently made that abundantly clear. When armed with important information and strategies to help their kids at home, most parents rise to the occasion.

As part of the parent workshop, we presented a slideshow of important statistics to create a context for the importance of academic success, especially for Latino students. You can view that slideshow here. Just click on the image to advance to the next slide.