Cooperation between stakeholders is important in education. The state has been advocating for this and has implemented several Acts. For instance, the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires that the state consults and involves parents when developing and implementing educational programs (NCLB Action Briefs 1). Parental involvement refers to the participation of parents and guardians in regular and meaningful communication concerning their children’s academic and extra curricula learning.
Parents are major partners in their children’s education. Therefore, they should participate in the learning process in order to assist their children in learning and in making appropriate decisions (Wormeli, 171). Research studies have shown that children with strong parent involvement perform better and make good career choices as compared to those with low or no parent involvement.
It is important for schools to involve parents in their children’s education as they contribute to their children’s performance. Therefore, schools should develop and implement parent education programs that will help parents participate in their children’s education actively. A parent education program refers to planned educational activities that focus on the young adolescents, they physical needs, psychological needs, cognitive development, and concepts of middle school (Manning and Bucher, 247).
In middle school, most students are adolescents and are prone to changes in behavior. Parent educational programs should assist parents to respond positively to these changes in behavior. Schools in this district should develop and implement parent educational programs in order to improve the performance of students. For successful implementation of these programs, schools should engage in advertising in order to publicize the programs. They should also ensure that the programs are current by embracing technology and emerging trends. Further, schools should ensure that schedules of the programs are relevant, convenient, and flexible in order to accommodate the parents.
Parents in this district tend to be busy and struggle to balance between work and parenting. Most of these parents were not so involved in the formative years of their children’s development. This makes some of them have a feeling of guilt, and pushes them to want to be involved in the education of their children. Therefore, they need a program that will allow them to jiggle between their two major roles. Schools should device programs that allow parents to participate in school activities at their own convenient time. Further, some parents spent little time with their children and do not know what exactly they should do to help their children.
This frustrates many parents and may even cause them to drift away more. Therefore, the programs developed should have workshops to teach parents on effective ways to assist their children. The activities covered should accommodate the needs of all parents. That is they should cater for the different social classes, ages, careers, cultures, religious beliefs, and other needs of parents. In general, these programs should be easy and interesting to parents. They should allow parents to be helpful to their children both at home and at school.
Parent educational programs are very important to learning. First, they provide a platform for parents and their children to have better interaction. Students benefit from parent involvement through social, emotional, and academic growth. During implementation of parent educational programs, adolescents get to interact with their parents and parents of their friends. In the course of these interactions, adolescents improve their socialization skills.
This has a direct influence in their performance. Secondly, these programs help students get support from their parents. The interaction helps students draw emotional strength from their parents, which encourages them to work hard. Further, parents help them to acquire positive attitudes towards school. This promotes positive emotional growth amongst the students. This translates into confidence in undertaking classes that are more challenging.
With the help of their parents, students are able to make informed career choices. Schools are also benefactors of successful parent educational programs. They benefits from improved academic achievements and standardized exam results due to better performance of students. Parent educational programs assist in creating a serene, open, and interactive instructional period and oversee improvement in academic performance of students.
Evidently, parent involvement is important in ensuring successful learning. Schools should device programs that value parent and family involvement. This district consists of individuals from diverse cultures and social backgrounds. Schools should form programs that accommodate all families irrespective of cultural, economic, social, and other differences. This is because some parents feel left out and may be reluctant to participate in parents educational programs.
Therefore, schools should ensure that the programs they implement are applicable, relevant, easy to understand, and unbiased. That is they should be fair and provide equal opportunities for parents with disabilities, limited language proficiency and those facing other challenges. Those programs should provide opportunities for parents to develop their skills and confidence by allowing them to determine how they would want to participate in their children’s education. In general, programs should accommodate topics that are relevant and of interest to parents. Schools should ensure that they publicize such programs to encourage parents to participate (Manning and Bucher, 247).
Works Cited
Manning, Lee and Bucher, Katherine. Teaching In the Middle School (4th Ed.). New Jersey: Pearson, 2011. Print.
NCLB Action Briefs. Parental Involvement. 2004. Web.
Wormeli, Rick. Meet Me in the Middle: Becoming an Accomplished Middle Level Teacher. Portland, ME: Stenhouse, 2001. Print.