Strategies for Working Together- Teacher, Students, Parents, and the Community

Here are some tips on how to create a classroom with effective communication between the teacher, students, parents, and even the community. I think that having effective communication in the classroom not only benefits the teacher, but also the students. Students need to be able to feel comfortable in their classroom to express themselves. Their parents should also feel free to come to the teacher with any problems and or concerns they have for their student and their student's learning. Here are some of my ideas that I got after reading a text in one of my classrooms.

I. Collaboration and Establishing Relationships
A. “Collaboration of parents and community agencies is essential if schools are to succeed in educating young children” pg. 286
1. During the 1960s and forward, schools have recognized that for a society that is rapidly revolving and growing, necessary for schools to encourage all parents to help students with their school work
2. Active parent involvement
a. Definition>”enhancing the family’s ability to respond to its children” pg. 286
b. Active parent involvement is a very important goal in schools today
B. Before the 1800s, parents were responsible for their own children’s education; however, in the beginning of the 1800s changed took place
1. Public schools started to take more responsibility for education
a. The Constitution gave states the exclusive right to decide on matters dealing with education
b. First, families were responsible for education> then schools became more involved in educational matters> professionals started teaching parents about childhood development and growth, preparation for formal schooling (kindergarten)
2. 20th century parents began to cooperate with schools by doing exactly as the school suggested, (book term) “parental acquiescence to suggestions
3. Gradually districts began the movement from teacher dominated procedures to collaboration
a. parental and community agencies collaborating with schools
b. schools that are successful have made parents and community members “embedded partners”
1. definition: parents, teachers and community persons who are an integral part of the education process for children in the community
2. this helps schools deal with the increasing amount of challenges in education
C. Embedded Partners
1. Teachers need to be able to respect diverse communication and work styles of parents and the community
a. there are different cultural expectations and habits of interacting with others that teachers need to learn how to accept to stop the break down of communication
b. parents and teachers need to be able to adapt and respond to each other’s interests, concerns, and needs
2. Teachers have the responsibility of taking the lead in this strategy
a. they have to reach out to parents and the community more than just half way
b. take a while for parents to realize what is going on and be able to accept it
3. Once the parents and other community members feel comfortable and more welcome in the school many things will change
a. visitors to the classroom become: classroom aides, volunteers, special professional guests
b. when involved they learn about the school, school culture> help them show the importance of school programs for children to others in the community

II. Establishing Relationships with Families
A. Teachers send letter or post-card to students during summer, before class starts
1. Students are welcomed to the class and teachers introduce themselves
2. Makes students feel special and that the teacher cares about them
a. makes most students excited to start school and be in the class
B. Teachers can use email to contact parents and allow parents to contact them
1. Some parents work a lot and do not have time for a phone
conversation, but can send emails back and forth much
easier
C. Teachers can use phone calls;
1. Be the initiator and talk about good things that student does before any problems or talk about only good things
D. Teachers can allow for formal class visits
1. Back-to-School night where parents meet other parents and learn about the teacher, why the teacher wanted to become a teacher, get to know the classroom
E. Teachers can allow for informal class visits
1. Invite teachers to classroom at anytime
F. Teachers can make home visits to students’ homes
1. Make sure to have someone else from the school to come with you
2. Allows teachers to better understand the students, their home situation and life; also you get to know parents in their setting

III. Written Communication
A. Handbooks that have policies and procedures for the school, the philosophy of school, and parent involvement opportunities
B. Homework is for parents to become involved with their children’s education
1. Parents should oversee and help students with their homework
2. Homework is for students to practice a skill or concept learned during school and gives parents an idea of what their children are learning
3. Community libraries are partnering with schools to support parents and children with homework
C. Bulletin Boards
1. Teachers put children’s work, information on special events, and material on a unit to inform parents of what is being taught in the classroom
2. Children’s artwork, essays, reports on books and photos with captions which parents like
3. Schools sometimes gives parents their own boards to put whatever they feel parents should be informed about
D. Newsletters and Websites those teachers create to inform parents and give them notices of school events or volunteer opportunities
1. Take photos of the classroom, put in their artwork, thank-you notes for parent and community support, examples of how the children are using things donated by parents

IV. Parent-teacher conferences
A. This is most frequently used methods of communication and successful in discussing student’s progress
B. In a successful conference, teachers need to communicate positive attributes of the student; their strengths, progress, and specific things in the subject that students need for improvement
C. Parental involvement should be encouraged by having them prepare with any questions by looking at the newsletter or website
D. Student involvement is necessary; let them know the purpose of the conference and the student talk with their children about the conference

My Space

There are many people that believe MySpace is not a good thing for students to get involved in. Yes, there are some bad things about the site, but there are a lot of benefits. For example, students are more easily able to collaborate and create social networks between each other. However, some of the things that these students put on their sites are very inappropriate and can later damage their abilities to get jobs because a lot of employers now go to see if a possibly employee is on the site.

Here are some of my other ideas that I put into a brochure for one of my education classes;

Parents guide to their children’s social networking

By: Mrs. Smith

Resources:

Goodstein, Anastasia. Totally Wired. New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 2007

Illian, Jason. MySpace, My Kids.
Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 2007.

Magid, Larry and Anne Collier. MySpace Unraveled. Berkeley, California: Peachpit Press, 2007.

Advantages
Teens can participate in interest groups such as: politics, music, sports, and many other groups
Teens customize their pages and feel that the page belongs to them
Teens can easily socialize with other students from their school
Teens can easily socialize with other teens on their buddy list from anywhere
Teens hopefully will learn risk assessment, which is considered to be the primary tasks of adolescent development
Teens have MySpace email, buddy list, address book, MySpace events, instant messaging, blogging
Disadvantages
Teens are more easily able to continue negative and or destructive behavior
Teens can learn from others in these interests groups to help them continue their destructive behavior secretly
Teens blogs and social networking spaces online can create a new image of themselves that they fear to have in public
Hard to control
Teens can get around filters by using phones, PDAs, laptops, hand held game players to go online

Pros
- Allows teens to connect with friends
- Allows for social development
- Blogging is more interactive
- MySpace pages show visual self-expression
_ Creating and experimenting with their identity
- Allows for multi-socializing

Cons
- Teens can be using the chat rooms too much and get out of touch with family life
- Pages are not truly a private space
- Posted writings and comments can be copied, shared, and passed around
- Allows profanity, sexual content to be shared



Legitimate Concerns
- Parents concerns about destructive behaviors being reinforced by other teens
- Cyberbullying causing low self-esteem
- Sexual predators

Speculative Concerns
- Fear that teens are being overexposed due to socializing on the net
- “Dateline NBC” (spring 2006) sexual predators shows on continently; other media joining in with the trend

What are MySpace and other social networking?
* Place where teens can express themselves in many different ways
* Create blogs which are easy to set up with photos, favorite web sites, journaling
* Blogging has become more interactive, creating casual communications and socializing between teens
* MySpace is used for many different things such as: commenting on friends’ profiles, get comments on their profile, rankings on photos and buddy lists
* Create a diary to show teens feelings
* Meet people that they have common interests in the different communities
* Social networking is happening everywhere! Sweden, Korea, Portugal, China, etc.
“What parents are seeing, in effect, is what adolescents have been doing and saying for eons in more private spaces . . .” (Magid and Collier 7)


What can parents do?
- Ask your children for their MySpace password and once in a while check out their profile and blogs
- Trust your children to behave properly online by allowing them to participate in MySpace
- Enforce punishments when there is inappropriate behavior that parents learn about or see
- Be honest and share your concerns with your children
- Be patient with your children
- Do not be too authoritative, yet not too lenient
- Most important thing is to have open communication with your children; do not let your children dissolve into the online world

Integrating Curriculum

Integrating curriculum between different classes can be a very important thing that many teachers do not currently do. How many times do students leave an English classroom without making the connection between that books that they are reading and the time period in History. Depending on what period in time a piece of literature was written can determine what was being written about, who was writing the piece, etc. During the Civil Rights Movement there were a lot of poems, books, and speeches being written by civil rights activists; such as: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Maya Angelou. They cared about the position that their people were in and were working to make the mass population realize that things needed to be changed. However, a lot of these ideas are lost between the different classes of History and English because of the teacher not explicitly making the direct link between what was being read, the time period, the authors, and what the authors' goals were.

Why does integrating the curriculum not happen often, especially between classes such as History, English, Foreign Language, etc? Most likely a big problem is that teachers need to make themselves more prepared in order to handle the questions that are going to arise in the content area that they normally do not teach. The English teacher will not only have to become an expert on the literature, such as:Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry; but they will also have to do a lot of background research into the Industrial Period and the effect that the Industrial Period had on people. This also means that teachers from different content areas will have to work more closely together in order to coordinate their curriculums'. For example, if the History teacher is working on a certain period in time, then the English teacher will not want to stray to far away from the History teacher when the History teacher moves on in time; by spending too much time reading a certain book or play.

Do the benefits out way the drawbacks? There is not much research done into integrating curriculum because this has not been done on a wide scale. However, there are some teachers that try to integrate curriculum because they see how much of a benefit integration can be. Since teachers build on a similar foundation of basic ideas, students are more readily able to remember the new content that they are taught because of the links back to their prior knowledge. Integration is also beneficial because the reiteration of similar and or the same ideas helps students remember what they are learning. Lastly, many students are not able to make the connections between different content areas without the teachers help. For some reason, when students move from class to class, they think that the content being taught is isolated and abstract from all other knowledge that they are learning and have already learned. If only students understood how much information they learn comes from many of the same foundamental and basic ideas that they have known for ages!

First Blog

This is the first time that I have ever used a Web Blog. Even though I am some what young, I don't really like using the internet all that much. I feel like technology has helped society in many ways, yet hindered society's growth at the same time. Computers help to speed up the writing process; however, since computers can fix our spelling for us, there are many people (especially young) that do not bother remembering how to spell hard words. I know that I did not realize that I had spelled business (probably most my life) wrong until I had to write an essay by hand in English, as a college student, and the teacher marked the word wrong. I thought that he had made a mistake, until we talked and I realized that my computer had automatically changed the spelling of the word every time I typed it. Also, text messaging has totally ruined the ability for our students to be able to spell and write with proper grammar. The internet can be a great resource because there is so much information out there at a student's finger tips; however, does the student know how to properly understand the reliability of the source or not?

I still remember the days that I was in the military and my dad would send my hand written letters. There were a lot of people that were jealous because my dad sent me letters at least three or fours times a week. There parents were so caught up in the digital world that they only sent and recieved emails and wouldn't write to their own children. Since we didn't have internet access at the time, there were a few people that were not only caught off from the real world (for the first time), but also caught off from their family and friends. I think that the hand written notes were great to get because I was able to stay in contact with those that I loved and helped boost my morale and keep me going. I felt special because my dad and a few friends took time out of their day not only to sit down and write a letter, but also to send the letter through the mail. The extra time was worth the wait to get something as precious as a letter at boot camp!! I don't even think people understand how important those letters were.

Anyways, I am finishing up my last year before being certified to teach History and English in the secondary levels. Right now, I will be observing in History classrooms because that is my major and then I will write to BOCES and request my certification in English because I have already finished the tests and required courses to teach the subject. So far, all I have observed were some 12th grade Government classes. The teacher seems to do more work lecturing and working on "dittos" than anything else. The seniors seem bored and need for the teacher to do something different to liven up the classroom. He only has forty-three minute class periods, so does this make it more difficult for teachers to be able to incorporate technology in the classroom? I will have to observe more and see if I can bring some more interaction into the classroom when I take over in January.