Mini-Project

Parent Involvement should we or shouldent we?

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Parent involvement is what I will be talking about, the pros and cons of it. I have had much conversation about this topic with some of my class mates and I have heard many things. I am gathering information on this topic so that I will have more than just my opinion. I will be writing a lot about it next week :).

After having conversation with some of my classmates about parents being involved in their school, it was much to my amazement to hear that they felt that a great deal of their parents or over involved. My first thought is how in the world can you have over involved parents. As a result I thought my be parent involvement is not what they need in their school. I know that all of the schools in Philadelphia can use some over involved parents. Although there are times that I think that parents can be a pain and they do not know or understand where they are really needed, and far to often they allow the school to get them involved in thing round the school that will keep them out of the way yet give them the impression that they are helping. The fact that the lack of parental involvement is the biggest problem facing public schools today. Decades of research show that when parents are involved students have higher grades, test scores, and graduation rates and better school attendance. Students tend to have an increased motivation, students also tend to have better self-esteem it also keeps the rate of suspension down and the decreased use of drugs and alcohol. The amount of students that are found involved in violent behavior are very few and far between.

I believe that parent involvement is so very important to the success of any child that attends school no matter if they are an inner city child or suburban schools. School age children spend 70% of their day including holidays and weekends outside of the school. As a result, if parents are not involved in their children education then that child/children will have a difficult time of achieving success. Most children with high success rates are children that have parents that are involved.  (There are exceptions to the rule)One of the most effective forms of parent involvement are those parents that engage in working directly with their children on learning activities at all opportune times, rather it is at home or on the bus in the car on a plane waiting for a appointment, let’s not forget the dinner table.

Does where a child comes from determine rather or not they need parent involvement?  Is this a need just for the student that may have improvised communities? Maybe it is only for the intercity school? Or maybe it is  just for the private schools? Who needs it more what community can go without it?

Let me save you the research and just answer the question. All Schools need it and all students need to have parent that are involved with them no matter what. This is a program that NO school should be without.  Even though it means something different to every school, and depending on the need of the school will determine the description of that sites Parent Involvement person roll.

We are going to delineate the different between the person that serves that position and the parent that comes to the school to help out.   

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