Episode 10: The Parent-Teacher Connection

Are you doing these critical things to help your child succeed academically? Take the quiz now to find out the important actions you can take to enhance your child's education. Go to my website, liberationthrougheducation.com quiz and take the quiz today. Welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into the space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as dealing with micro discriminations that I faced while raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about the current topics in education that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place place in today's episode, I'll be discussing the intricacies and nuances of the parent teacher relationship and its impact on your child's education. This is a broad topic and I'll highlight some of the more germane points that were revealed in the current research. When parents and educators can effectively work together, magic happens in the classroom and at home. The strength of parent teacher relationships is complicated by cultural, language and socioeconomic status similarities or differences between parents and teachers. Yet, this is a critical relationship that directly affects the academic success of children. Let's dive a little bit into the background. This topic has been researched since the 1830s. Researchers have found that with such dissimilarities, it's easy for both parents and teachers to develop misperceptions that lead to poor communication and a lack of respect. This leads to the potential for teachers to view particular children through a specifically limited lens. Even when teachers believe they have strong communication skills, many of them become frustrated when families, especially minority and low income families, don't respond. What the educators perceive as disengagement often arises not because minority and low income families don't care about their children's education, but because the way the educators correspond and communicate misses the cultural mark. Many middle class and white families who largely rely on independent cultural norms, those that are rooted in individuality, uniqueness, choice and self advocacy, appreciate the individualized child centered feedback. Minority and low income families, on the other hand, tend to rely on interdependent cultural norms such as connectedness, relationships, roles, and respect for hierarchies. These families may be less likely to initiate or act when on any communication about academic issues because they view teachers as academic experts who can be trusted to make the right decisions for learning. Relationship focused communication builds trust which allows families to feel safe asking questions and soliciting advice from teachers. In this environment, the questions of how are you doing? Or what do you need? Become how? How is your family doing? What does your family need? Relationship focused communication also contributes to the student's academic learning by helping the teacher develop a deeper understanding of the students and their families outside of the classroom. Implementing relationship focused communication involves showing care about the well being of the family, opening multiple lines of communication, offering different ways for parents to ask questions and provide feedback like through phone calls, text messages, emails, virtual meetings. It also involves being consistent by establishing a regular communication schedule. And finally, implementing relationship focused communication involves building community among parents through the use of class websites and email threads. An article in the elementary School Journal in June of 2014 by Miki Sheridan and other colleagues indicated that parental engagement is directly correlated to student achievement. Parent teacher relationships are unusual and that they can be highly emotionally charged but are not entered into voluntarily. Both parents and teachers seem to report feeling unprepared for and uncomfortable when with their interactions and this discomfort often leads to miscommunication and increased difficulties in the relationship. For the most part, when these relationships are productive, they appear to have a significant positive effect on the child's academic success. Constructs that encompass parenting behaviors that support children's learning, including those that are visible to the teacher like attending conferences, volunteering in school and those that are not immediately visible like supporting learning at home. Not surprisingly, parent and teacher perceptions of parent involvement often differ. The teacher focuses on behaviors they can observe in the classroom whereas parents tend to reference home based supports such as school support systems like doing homework. Many teachers sometimes interpret the lack of visible involvement in school as evidence of of a parent's lack of support for their children's education, which then leads to an unproductive working relationship. Parents and teachers also differ with respect to initiation of involvement activities. Parents tend to initiate contact when things are going well for the child, whereas teachers tend to initiate involvement when there are problems. This sets the stage for challenging interactions. These interactions can evolve and stabilize, however, over time, but it takes work. The quality of the parent teacher relationship is more predictive of the child outcome than the amount of contact between parents and teachers. Often the social relationship variables between parents and children and between parents and teachers strongly influences both the parents decision to become involved in the outcomes achieved through family school engagement. There's emerging evidence of the quality of parent teacher relationship influences parents efforts to engage their children in discussions of academic success, which in turn produces improved academic achievement. Relational trust between families and schools, including respect and personal regard, accountability, consideration, sensitivity and understanding, and equality and reciprocity are all elements of healthy family school relationships. Supportive, positive relationships between families and teachers serve as the foundation for intentional collaborative partnerships. Views of the relationship appear to influence teachers beliefs about students. Because teacher expectations of students are known to influence student achievement, it's important to understand how perceptions of parent teacher relationships may themselves play a role in teachers perceptions of students. These perceptions may be particularly relevant when the child is experiencing behavioral difficulties, and given that parent teacher interactions are likely to be focused on negative behaviors, there is a greater likelihood of strained relationships. Have you had a chance to check out my Interactive Expert on my website? There are some great conversations and questions going on there. You can check it out ationthrougheducation.com askmenything Again, check out the questions and conversations happening there. Ationthrougheducations.com askmenything Researchers have outlined a model of parent involvement that includes two motivational beliefs contributing to involvement decisions, role construction and self efficacy. Role construction concerns the extent to which parents believe that involvement in education is appropriate or part of their job as parents. Self efficacy is the degree to which parents believe they are capable of engaging in behaviors that will help their children succeed. Parents who hold positive beliefs pertaining to role construction and self efficacy are more likely to be motivated to participate in their children's education as compared to parents who believe that their role and efficacy are less positive. In the same way that parents belief about their roles and capabilities influence their involvement choices, the teacher's beliefs about parents also influence parent teacher interactions. The research also indicates that teachers who believe that parents are not capable of helping their children learn are less likely to attempt to engage those parents. Similarly, if the teacher has had negative experiences with a parent, the teacher can develop stereotypical beliefs about the parent and subsequently reduce their efforts to engage with that parent. In general, researchers found a correlation between children's race and income and their academic and behavioral outcomes. Although the correlation between race and income is complicated, meaning that over 60% of Latino and African American children in the United States under the age of six are living in low income households compared to 30% of Caucasian children, many studies have found that minority children and children from low income households are more likely to be rated by their teachers as less socially competent and more aggressive compared to Caucasian children from from higher income households. Some of the research even revealed that Caucasian teachers perceived that minority children were more dependent on them when compared to Caucasian children. The general consensus today is that parent participation is a critical element of academic achievement, a link that completes the home school connection, and a reliable predictor of children's social and emotional well being. Over the last 20 years, research on minority parent engagement has come a long way in seeking to understand why so many minority parents experience a distant relationship to the schools that their children attend. This conclusion is generally centered on a cultural mismatch, as being the blame Few schools have made serious efforts to become culturally sensitive to the needs and concerns of minority and immigrant parents. Of course, the federal government continues to stay involved in the educational arena. The U.S. department of Education launched its National Parents and Family engagement Council on June 14, 2022. The council will be tasked with identifying ways to help families engage with school districts at the local level. The council consists of members from parent and family organizations across the country and will help families understand their rights, create a feedback loop with schools to shape how American Rescue Plan funds are used, and identify summer learning and enrichment opportunities for children. According to a press release, this is all intended to foster a collaborative environment where all parties can work together to better serve the interests of of students. The federal government allocated $122 billion in 2021 through the American Rescue Plan for elementary and Secondary Pandemic recovery efforts, with $83 billion going directly to public schools. One requirement of that funding is that school districts gather parent feedback on how they should spend the money. The top priorities that emerged and as far as utilizing local plans for the funds include mental health resources, social emotional learning, teacher recruitment and retention, and academic recovery efforts like summer learning and after school programs, according to a study from Future Ed, which is a Georgetown University think tank that's dedicated to studying education issues. Even though the family engagement is a requirement for the funding, some parent advocates argue that that not enough is being done to ensure parents are being heard. In a recent study of 100 large urban school districts, the center for Reinventing Public Education found that only 57% of those school districts have even created strategies to engage with parents and families. At the national level, 21% of parents said their children's schools have asked for families to give input on how the funds should be used, and 46% of parents said they had heard about how the funding would be used. As of fall of 2021, the National Parents union basically demanded that officials provide more transparency around the funding, ensure the school boards and districts effectively engage with families, and verify that funding is spent on investments rooted in equity. The hope is that this federal council is an initial step at the federal level for creating an infrastructure for parent engagement. The Education Department and the Council have indicated that they will hold local listening sessions with parents, families, principals, educators, and school community members over this summer in order to better understand the needs of the students as they start the 20222023 school year. So here's how this applies to K12 education pandemic era Schooling has been anything but easy for the parent teacher relationship. Teachers have been stressed by parents and administrative demands. The pandemic worsened staff shortages, often leaving parents in the lurch. Culture wars have increased distrust between two parties and and debates about who gets to decide what's taught. One study in the elementary School Journal in March of 2011 examined the relationship between child ethnicity and family income as far as developing a kindergartner's social skills. Kindergarten is a critical time for children because of the many developmental changes that occur. These changes include expansions in the child's peer relationships and social networks as well as increases in cognitive capacity and academic standards. Adjustments to these changes during kindergarten can be a challenge for some students. This study included 481 Caucasian, African American and Latino children from low income households. Overall, teachers reported strong relationships with higher income parents than lower income parents and rated children from lower income homes as less socially competent and more aggressive than children from higher income homes. When parents and teachers reported that they had strong relationships, African American children were more likely to be rated as more socially competent and less aggressive than Caucasian children. Numerous studies show that as early as kindergarten, low income and minority children in a school are less socially competent than their higher income and Caucasian peers. Researchers provide evidence that positive home school relationships are positively related to optimal school development for the child and may thus mitigate children's risk for problematic development and adjustment during kindergarten. Research conducted with school aged children has shown that strong homeschool relationships are associated with children's outcomes including engagement in the classroom and teachers perceptions of children's academic competence. The link between parent teacher relationships and children's social skills in kindergarten is important. When parents and teachers agree that their relationships are close and trusting, children will be rated as more socially competent and less aggressive since children's experiences will be more positive and teachers and parents will be more aware of the context surrounding their children's behavior. On the other hand, when parents and teachers perception of the relationship do not match or are distant and distrustful, children will be more likely to be rated as less socially competent. More aggressive. Parental involvement and student learning can go a long way in order for parents to be active in this process, you can apply the principles that have been discussed in the background in the following ways. 1. Help your child practice math and reading at home. 2. Read all the newsletters and emails that come back from the school 3. Check your child's assignment planner and spot check their homework as needed. 4. Teach your children to manage their time. 5. Be involved in school activities as much as possible. 6. Pay attention to what media your child is consuming and hold him or her accountable. 7. Speak respectfully, albeit frankly, to your child's teachers. 8. Teach ownership for your child's actions and learning and 9. Be vocal to school committees and town finance committees about appropriate funding for schools. Here are this episode's takeaways the federal government has used education as a political football for the past several decades. We will have to wait and see whether the National Parents and Families Engagement Council, which was instituted in June 14, 2022, will actually make a difference in parental engagement in local school communities, or whether it was just an item on the checklist for the purpose of optics in the High School Journal, an article in March 2013 issue, Matt Wallace indicated students with actively involved parents are, for the most part more engaged in the classroom, more positive about school and learning, more likely to enroll in advanced courses, and less likely to drop out. Research suggests that the more engaged parents are in their children's education, the more likely their children are to succeed in school. Existing research often suggests that there is a lack of minority parent involvement in school broadly and a lack of African American parent involvement in particular. From this, however, it would be both unwise and unfair to conclude that minority parents do not value education. As some teachers are prone to conclude, some parents are very much committed to their children's education but are restricted by language and or cultural barriers, work schedules, child care or lack thereof, and limited transportation. Institutional barriers such as low expectations of black children, unwillingness to test black children for either learning disabilities or or accelerated education programs are other reasons why minority parents are less involved. In addition, schools typically employ a one size fits all approach to parental involvement, which often marginalizes minority parents. This approach ignores the individual needs, experiences and roles that minority parents have in their children's education, and it treats parents as one homogenous, undifferentiated group. When parents are involved in ways that are congruent with the school's vision and values, they are considered good parents. Although this classification includes parents of all ethnicities, more often than not the good parent is white and middle class. If this is the typical situation, minority parents have only a few choices, assimilate, refrain from participating, or risk being ignored or discounted. These dismissive events have been referred to as moments of exclusion by researchers Laureux and Horvat. This is a situation where parents inability to be involved in a fashion that educators deem ultimately leads that parent to be unrecognized, alienated by their child's school. It seems that the research suggests that many schools privilege parent involvement as long as it's grounded in supportive goodness, cooperation, and deference. There's a fair amount of research that examines the correlation between parent involvement, teacher perceptions, and behavioral problems with minority children. I think that the majority of the behavioral problems that seem to be associated with African American children is more a perception of the teachers understanding of the culture rather than an actual behavioral issue. Some studies even linked income and other socioeconomic factors to the behavioral issues, and I'm reluctant to validate that correlation as well. It's hard to deny that the silencing of minority parents in schools is in reality about the exercise of racial privilege. Whether we admit it or not, the silencing of minority parents in schools is about habits of racism and the racial structures inherent in everyday working of schools. Unless this deeper issue is addressed, reflected upon, and actively worked on, any changes at the policy level can only be a band aid solution to a deeper and more unrelenting problem of racism in schools. At the root of the phenomenon of minority parent participation in schools is one group's exercise of racial privilege over others on the basis of race, which functions as a visual hierarchy that marks certain people as different and subordinate to others. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast or on whatever service you're listening to this. Also, I'd love to hear from you. So please leave me a comment or a review and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. By the way, if you have a burning question about a current issue or specific topic that you'd like for me to cover and explore, shoot me a quick email@kimberationthrougheducation.com to let me know what your question is. 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