Parental involvement is pretty mixed for the students in my
class. We do have a few overbearing parents that are constantly checking their
student’s grades and emailing us about every grade that is not a 100%. The
irritating thing about this is that they email us before asking their student
about their grade. However, most of the parents do ask what needs to happen to
be able to raise their student’s grade, not expecting us to “go easy” on them.
The biggest issue is that parents do not seem to keep their children
accountable to turn in homework or come to extra help sessions.
For example, we have one student in our class who missed
about a week of school for medical-related issues. When she returned, she was
constantly falling asleep in class (because of the same medical issue) and was
very behind in turning in work and making up tests. We met with her mother and two
other academic teachers and an assistant principal. Her mother explained the
details of her medical issues which we knew most of. We explained what she
needed to do to make up for her missed time, offering many times she could come
in for extra help. Her mother promised she would make sure her daughter would
come to every time possible (also for her other classes) and would make up all
her missing assignments and tests. We only had a week before fall break and she
rarely came in for extra help or when she did it was ten minutes before class started.
We updated her mother on her behavior and yet there was no change or replied
emails. It is kind of frustrating because her mother talked about how much
effort they were going to put into her making up everything and we didn’t see
any effort besides her coming to a meeting.
Besides these specific parents most of our students’ parents
are moderately involved as far as we can tell.
We had a somewhat situation happen except that it was not due to absenses. The student got off to a really bad start, making low grades on everything in the first chapter. The main reason was because she was having a very difficult time with the algebra involved with the problems. Her mother was very concerned and began to email us. We of course encouraged the student to come in for extra help with the algebra. Her mother also made promises that she would come in early/after school. That only happen once. I feel like this happens too often with parents saying one thing will happen but it doesn't. They are not following up with their students and end up freaking out again when another bad grade rolls around. There is a large disconnect between the what the student needs and what the parent encourages/makes the student do... exhausting. Its heartbreaking when students fall behind because they lack funtamental algebra skills which are necessary for learning new concepts and solving higher-level problems. The only remedy is to spend time outside normal class time practicing those skills. Sorry mini tangent there. I just wish the parents understood the how math builds on skills.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing to me how parents want us to make changes for their children but then cannot get their children to follow through. This also occurs in my class.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you could have given her makeup work to do over you jealously long fall break. lol I know it's too late now but maybe something you could consider in the future!
ReplyDeleteIt is so annoying when parents don't hold their child accountable for their grades. They don't need to jump on the teacher.
ReplyDeleteI think it's great that you have parent involvement. We don't really have any. I do, however, wish that parents considered being involved more than just emailing the teacher to fix their kid's grade and make their kid do the work.
ReplyDeleteWell the first couple of days of fall break were "Remediation and Intervention" days. Students came in, worked on review work, and retook a test that they failed. This particular student was supposed to come in both days to have that time to make up work with the help of a teacher and take makeup tests. When she didn't show up on the first day, the school called her mother who said she forgot when it started. The student came on the second day. We've been told that in her other classes she got zeros on assignments and possibly a test because she never showed up to take it. It is just really hard to try to give students and parents every opportunity to fix the problem when they do not seem to be taking it seriously.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you tell parents about supporting their student? How to help their student raise their grades?
ReplyDeleteWhere is the post on diversity?
ReplyDeleteMaking sure I didn't miss it somewhere on your blog.