It was through having seven years of experience teaching in a metropolitan public school system that this yearn to develop such an outreach began. Coming from a relatively rural area where I'd taught for seven years prior to this experience, I'd taken the nurturing learning environment I was accustomed to for granted. But after one year in an urban public school setting, my professional world seemed to turn upside down.
One of the motivating forces was the plethora of parent-teacher interactions that followed this pattern of events. Allow me to take on the role of Ghost of Past Parent-Teacher Conferences....
- First the teacher contacts the parent(s)/guardians(s) after several attempts to rectify poor academic/behavioral performance in the classroom.
- The parent/guardian responds with hesitancy, partially grateful that they were contacted, partially agitated that they were contacted, and partially defensive on their child's behalf due to previous negative experiences with urban public schools. After a few moments of interaction, the hesitancy and defensiveness subsides.
- Once the the issue is clearly identified and proven by the teacher, the parent, wanting to appear to be a good parent, immediately turns toward their child with anger and frustration as if the child should "just do what they are supposed to do" automatically because he or she "told them to."
- This is followed by a 2-5 minute rant by the parent to the child about previous similar experiences of this behavior and a few threats of punishment(s) for their behavior.
- The child sits with sulking body language with a facial expression that conveys their wish to suddenly be invisible or run out of the room. Most often the child has a look of confusion on their faces as their parent/guardian rant about their responsibility to "do the right thing" as though they are trying to understand why their parent/guardian is putting on such a show.
It was after several parent-teacher conferences of this kind that I noticed something particularly disconcerting. I noticed fear in the eyes of the parent/guardian. Frankly, it startled me! The parent/guardian was afraid. It was a nervous fear and it was silent...hiding just beyond the outburst of anger and frustration towards the child. From that moment I began to not raise an eyebrow at the parenting styles in question, but to truly empathize with the parent's fear of failing. I realized that for some urban parents/guardians, there is a very real sense of not knowing exactly what to do or what they should be doing to help their child be successful in the classroom and earn a quality education.
Sure, they have heard: "Come to the PTA meetings, go to Back-to-School night, make sure they do their homework," but many urban parents are not sure what they should be doing beyond those things on a daily basis. To add to the complexity of the situation, many urban parents have extremely busy schedules, extreme work stress, stress of long commutes, stress of high cost-of-living, stress of just dealing with what comes along with living in a metropolitan area, and many also happen to be single parents with little or no extended family support.
Unfortunately, many urban parents' previous experience with urban public schools formulated a negative schema of the public school system which include: memorizing information for quizzes and tests, relying on favoritism from teachers or athletic skills to get through a course, cramming for tests at the last minute, perhaps dealing with chronically unfair teachers, or just suffering through until they graduated and landed a job immediately after high school. For many third and fourth generation urban parents, college and other higher educational opportunities may have seemed unattainable for them, although some urban parents have persevered to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees. Most urban parents will quickly join in the chorus of saying that education is important in being able to provide for one's family and being a contributing member of society, some find themselves not knowing how to really help their child in earning a quality education.
...And that's where I realized that an educator's insight in the format of a simple manual would be most helpful to the urban parents who sincerely want their child to succeed academically, but are not sure how to establish a foundation for the academic aspect of parenting. The goal of this manual is to replace the fear in the eyes of urban parents' during parent-teacher conferences to a look of empowerment to facilitate a positive and successsful learning experience for their child.
So, I invite you to explore this manual: "Parents, You are Teachers, Too!" and share it with any and all parents, whether they live in an urban or rural area, who would appreciate insight from an educator's point of view as they continue to prepare their child for the world beyond the public school system.
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