Home/School Connections and Boundaries

by Jenny Sabbagh

For my culminating activity, I am having the students write a newspaper article and then present the article in a news report fashion. We will be videotaping them, bringing in refreshments, the students are dressing up, etc. My partner and I sent home a letter to the parents inviting them to come at the beginning of our full time. We only heard from one parent. Although I realize that some of the students may have completely neglected to give these notices to their parents, and some parents probably have to work, but I was really disappointed with this count. I think that a home/school connection is so important and parents should be more involved with their students learning. Depending on where one works, I’m sure that the parent’s involvement varies. Even being with these students for the short time that I was, I have realized that the students that share the knowledge that they learn at school with their personal lives seem to gain much more out of the experience. This has inspired me to work very hard on this when I have my own classroom. I want to be sure that as many parents as possible are involved. As I have been thinking about ways to implement this into my teaching style, I came up with some conflicts. When is the teacher allowed to get involved and not step on the parent’s boundaries? How do you motivate parents to want to be involved in their child’s schoolwork? I think it is first and foremost important for the teacher and the parent to sit down and realize that they probably have similar goals for the child. The problem is how to achieve these goals. It would be beneficial for the parent and teacher to sit down together and discuss this in great detail so that they are on the same page. The teacher could also offer some more assistance than what is required on parent/teacher conference night. Many teachers call home when a child is misbehaving and/or failing, but it may be helpful for teachers to contact the house even when a child is right on track or did something great! The main goal is to form a relationship! I know this must be really hard, but I find this to be extremely important and I hope to be able to accomplish this when I have a classroom of my own.