The Backstory
Family engagement remains under-emphasized in education. It’s because other school safety, student-centered, data-driven instructional, and assessment initiatives and concerns tend to be pushed to the forefront in educational arenas.
As a family engagement influencer, I actively work to prioritize this segment of education as critically important. The overall success of student learning as well as their academic performance in a safe learning environment where their differentiated needs are met through rigorous instructional delivery depends on this home and school partnership.
I exclusively define family engagement as
“the mutual dedication, cooperation, and support that educators, parents, and other caregivers share as students are being educated”.
I recently wrote a published “It’s Time for A Parent Check-In” and “It’s Time for A Teacher Check-In” to elaborate on my beliefs about this subject matter. I invite you to read each of these two stories to gain insights into the role parents and educators play in the realm of family engagement.
This story represents the third article connected to my three-part series. In addition to educators and parents being the primary stakeholders in the family engagement process, here I add a third group of individuals. In the context of home and school partnerships, students must be considered.
Student Accountability
Family engagement supports the reality that parents, caregivers, and educators must work together as a team to educate and support students. Just as mothers and fathers along with school leaders, teachers, and other school personnel have exclusive responsibilities to fulfill their collaborative mission to educate learners, students have responsibilities, too.
Parents, caregivers, and educators cannot lead the educational process alone. Family engagement has to include three components that solidify the mutuality that must exist in education. From their earliest beginnings and when they are enrolled in school, students must grow to become accountable for being active participants in their education. They play very specific roles throughout their educational experience that support and unify the efforts of their parents and teachers.
Learners function as the proverbial glue that holds all of the collaborative functions between the home and school together in four important ways.
Four Things Students Must Do
Students have diverse levels of needs and abilities. The capacity of students to fulfill their responsibilities is dependent on their ability to do so. These student responsibilities shown below are exclusively targeted at learners who can function in a self-directed manner and can do so. Such learners do not require varied levels of support when they perform student-oriented educational tasks.
- Students must respect and honor the function of formalized education. Long before students enroll in school, the value of learning must be prioritized and taught in the home. Parents and caregivers must also prepare their youngsters for the rigors and routines associated with attending school and being active learners. Once students are formally attending school, teachers and parents must continuously reinforce the importance of education. Doing so enables students to function as active members of their educational team with teachers as well as other school personnel and their mothers, fathers, and caregivers.
- Parents and caregivers must make constructive use of family time to teach their youngsters boundaries before they officially enroll in school. This is one example of good parenting. Once children begin school, teachers and other educators must teach students school rules and procedures. They must be willing to model, practice, and reteach them to their learners. Ultimately, students must be held accountable for adhering to classroom and school rules and procedures.
- Another example of good parenting involves mothers and fathers teaching their children what it means to respect authority and other individuals. A professional responsibility of teachers and school leaders is to build the capacity of students to respect others and to maintain high expectations for them to respect others.Students are responsible for displaying a high regard for all the adults who contribute to their educational experience within the school as well as to their peers.
- Students must fulfill their school obligations. This includes many things like arriving at school on time and being prepared to learn, completing school-related tasks like schoolwork and homework, and displaying appropriate behavior.
Students who are cognitively, socially, emotionally, and physically capable of as well as those who maintain a good mental health status who are capable of adhering to these four requirements but willfully choose to defy their responsibilities become destructive.
Student Destruction
Within the context of school, students of all ages experience optimal learning outcomes when healthy mutual partnerships between home and the school prevail.
However, relational stress between educators and parents is apt to become compromised and weakened when students who are exclusively capable of assuming any or all of their school responsibilities refuse to. Most regrettably, students who are repeat offenders may cause such a high level of stress between teachers, school leaders, mothers, fathers, and caregivers that engagement efforts completely fall apart.
In severe cases of refusals and defiance, students may manipulate school-related incidents to position their parents as educational adversaries. When this happens, parents side with their children because they believe that what they reported to them is right. Such parents wholeheartedly believe the teacher or school is completely at fault for their children’s derogatory circumstances. Therefore, it becomes increasingly challenging for a positive or reasonable at best home and school partnership to be sustained because the divisive student remains the center of the conflict through their deceptive design.
To avoid such communication breakdowns that lead to school and home disengagement, parents and caregivers must avoid relying on their emotions, feelings, and desire to protect their children from school-related accountability. This type of subjectivity destroys opportunities for the collaborative spirit to grow.
Objectivity is a key component of a healthy parent and educator partnership. This occurs when parents rely on the facts that the school provides about the overall educational performance, observation, data, and outcomes of their children.
The Takeaways
Family engagement is a significant part of the educational process at home and school. For healthy partnerships to develop and remain intact for the betterment of student success, mutual dedication, cooperation, and support have to exist between mothers, fathers, caregivers, teachers, school leaders, and other school personnel.
Students must also be active partners in their educational process. Doing so strengthens the family engagement efforts that lead to their increased levels of success.
The home must be the starting point for students. Mothers, fathers, and caregivers must become responsible for placing a high value on education from birth and as their youngster grows. Parents must also teach children behavior boundaries and the importance respect plays in the lives of their sons and daughters. These are some powerful examples of good parenting that prepares children for the rigors of school.
Once children formally enroll in school, in addition to focusing on instructional content and student learning, educators must teach, model, practice, and reteach school-related rules, procedures, and student expectations.
Students who are capable of fulfilling academic, social, and behavioral expectations must be held accountable for adhering to all the school and home protocols established for them as learners.
When parents, caregivers, teachers, other educators, and students partner together as a team, the overall learning experience becomes more positive. It is because family engagement makes it possible.
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I sincerely thank you for reading my family engagement perspective. Be sure to visit my profile to read more stories related to this topic.
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Dr. Deborah M. Vereen is a retired Teacher and School Administrator. Her website is www.Drdeborahmvereen.com, and her YouTube Channel is Ignite Family Engagement with Dr. Deborah M. Vereen.
Copyright © 2024 Dr. Deborah M. Vereen. All rights reserved.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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