Educators value the involvement and support of parents, guardians, families, and communities in schools.
I absolutely love when parents and communities are involved with the learning and wellness of their students. I think that parent involvement is incredibly valuable in student learning.
Growing up, my mom had been heavily involved in my education. She had helped out a lot in my school growing up and had really supported my learning when I was growing up. You can read more about this here.
Over the course of my first 2 practicums (my 3 week practicum and my 4 week practicum) I have had a few different interactions with parents over the course of the practicums, but the two that stick out to me are my first parent teacher interview and the first parent meeting I had been in.
The first parent teacher I had been to had been near the end of my first practicum, and this had been a really positive experience for me. I had a couple of parents from my class had come. I was only teaching one class, so having a couple come felt really big. And the feedback that I had received had been very positive, both from the parents and my Coaching Teacher. I hadn’t gotten a ton of feedback from my CT at this point (minus the continuous feedback that my students had responded well to me). Hearing good feedback from parents had been very rewarding for me, because this means that the students are talking at home about their experiences within my class, and this positive feedback would hopefully mean that they are having a positive experience within my classroom.
During my second practicum, I had witnessed my first parent teacher meeting. I hadn’t been the one facilitating the discussion. This had happened fairly early in my practicum so I had not taught this student a lot yet. I did appreciate the opportunity to be able to sit in on the meeting though. I know that I will have a lot of parent meetings over the course of my career. With this, I had also liked how the students parents had been involved in his learning and how they had a positive meeting with my CT. Not all meetings are positive and having my first meeting be positive had given me a lot of hope for my future.
Both of these interactions with parents had been positive, and I think this had been very good for me starting my teaching career, and again, I just love when parents show an interest in their child’s school and schoolwork.
