How are you involved in your child’s education? Does it matter?

How are you involved in your child’s education? And does it matter?

OK, time to fess up.  I was a teacher for many, many, years and I gave lip service, as all teachers do, to the idea that parents need to get involved in their child’s education.  I don’t think that you will find a teacher that disagrees with this statement.

Teachers see parental involvement as parents helping their children do their schoolwork, or reading to their children, or volunteering to help with school outings.  They think that it is the parents who come to school, who attend meetings, who do the photocopying (!) that are the one who are getting involved with their child’s education.

I admit, I thought this way before I learned more about the important ways parents help children learn.

What I learned astonished me.

When I actually talked to parents about how they were helping their children I learned that not only were all parents trying to help their children but they were spending vast amounts of time, effort and money doing it.

Parents who had never been into school to any meetings, parents who had never volunteered to go on outings with the students, parents who never commented on report cards, were all involved in their child’s education one way or another.

Parents were buying workbooks, paying for tutoring, helping with homework, asking friends for advice, teaching their child sign language, sending their child to language classes, and finding many other ways of supporting their child’s education.

And most of the time teachers never knew about this, they never knew about all the extra support that children were getting from their parents.  parents and children were embarrassed about telling the school that they were providing extra support for their child, they thought it reflected on the work of the teacher – it probably did!

The problem was that the ways parents were supporting their children were often in conflict with what the child was learning in school.  As a result children were confused and conflicted about how to learn.

I remember one child telling me, in frustration, that his ‘other teacher’ told him to do his work a different way. This student was angry, he was trying to do what he was expected to do but he was being told to do two different things!  No wonder he was frustrated.

So, back to my original question – Does it matter how yon are involved in your child’s education?

The short answer is yes, it does matter.  Your involvement needs to be such that it enhances your child’s learning rather than confuses it.

The longer answer is that ANY involvement is better than none.  When you child knows that you care about how well he learns, that you are willing to spend time and effort helping him learn, he will try harder in class, and that alone can lead to greater learning success.

So, get involved, any way you can.  Then, work out what type of involvement works for you and stick to it.

Your child will thank you for your support.