Parent-child engagement

Disengagement of parents is a vital issue that can incapacitate the success of a school. It’s well known in education that engaged parents generally increase and enhances the attitude and experience of their child. Engaged families create a welcoming environment and allow families to feel as they are part of the school community. I have attended schools where there was minimal parent engagement opportunities. I have also attended schools that had parent engagement opportunities, but they weren’t culturally engaging to their main demographic. Lastly, I have worked in schools that have begun to scratch the surface of culturally competent and successful parent engagement. In my experience I have worked with predominantly Latino and Black families. It isn’t particularly challenging to individually connect with these families, but systematically I have encountered complications. School’s not providing strong engagement opportunities for families of color is an issue in many schools, even those that mainly serve minority populations. Culturally contextual family programming has the ability to create strong, diverse communities which would enhance the fabric of that community. I have experienced this in my educational workplaces and have not always had the answers to combat disengagement and the lack of opportunities provided by the school. I have also witnessed this problem in schools that are predominantly white. The families of color already feel at a distance, and lack of good programming only pushes them further away. As the demographics of our country shift, we are often slow to adapt to the different needs of our rising minority families. I am specifically thinking about minority families who attend predominantly white schools for this proposed intervention. Minority, at risk students would benefit from stronger engagement between the school and their parents. This would increase school trust, participation and communication. All factors that could help decrease a transfer or dropping out. Many schools around the world are suffering from this menace as a result of disengagement of parent which can affect child education and development.

Many ascertains the importance of strong parent engagement and the dangers of its absence. Certain articles about black parents as untapped resources identify the lack of culturally relevant parent engagement opportunities. It also mentions that the majority of schools operate with old irrelevant models of parent engagement. Other article about the Black Parent Council emphasizes on how Black parents use their own networks to solve issues, due to distrust of school administration. This demonstrates the dangers of not having strong parent engagement with Black parents, which leads them to use their resources without the support of the school. Terriquez describes the complications that Latino parents, specifically fathers, face. The case study revealed that although Latino fathers wanted to have high levels of involvement, they often couldn’t based on income level, or even more if they were immigrants. Other research demonstrates that even schools which have existing programs can still miss the mark on engaging families, particularly Latino parents. While a lot of the literature doesn’t necessarily give a lot of concrete examples on how to close these gaps, it does confirm the dangers of the lack of proper, culturally engaging parent involvement opportunities. The literature establishes the differences in engaging Latino and Black parents in comparison to a white majority and how even attempts at providing different support isn’t always successful. The participation of any parent in the child’s learning and education has turned out to be a key determinant in influencing the progress and intellectual development of the child. Some parents put little or no effort in understanding the importance of daily monitoring of this critical aspect of growth in a child. Many parent disengagement to there child education have impacted badly on the child influence due to lack of parental engagement in there daily activities. This lack of engagement can go a long way negatively by disrupting the child mental perception. Proper communication between the teaching staff and the parent plays a vital role in informing and enlightening the parents on the progress of their children. Increased parent involvement also ensures improved behavior, increased motivation and positive attitude from the pupils which are essential factors that better the learning process. Certain paper analyzes the type of communication that is most effective, whether it makes a difference in parental belief about play as well as what kinds of play are most effective and easily explained. It is very important to improve parental engagement because, it help impact on the child level of thinking and also impact on the child educational standard.

Two-way communication offers the parents and teachers an opportunity to dialogue together and is mostly inform of phone calls and teacher-parent conferences. This mode of communication is the most effective for a teacher-parent communication and would significantly make a difference in sharing of best educational concepts including the play-to learn-method. Two-way communication would be the most effective due to the following reasons. It offers the parents an opportunity to ask more questions in relation to a given kind of play which would enable them to carry out it under different settings at home. There is an opportunity for the parents to provide feedback to the teacher on the outcome of any given play which would provide them with a chance to make the necessary adjustments or change the play if need be.

In conclusion, parent-child engagement is very important in making the child a successful one. So there is need for proper engagement of parent to child in all aspect. Meanwhile, parental-teachers should try and be communicating on how the child is progressing and there should be frequent advice by stakeholders on how to achieve the goal.