Education depends one effective partnership between students, parents and teachers.  For schools, this partnership has many implications.  True partnership yields benefits to all members involved in the collaboration.  In public school and education in general, partnership feeds from the strength and weakness of the participants as well as from their willingness to meet or improve a common goal.   In education, the partnership most directly related to the student is between school staff, the students, and the parents.  To the extent these partnerships remain strong and well-informed, the students will benefit.

The role of everyone in the partnership has to be defined and fulfilled.  The relationships are different.   The teacher-parent partnership is different from the teacher-student partnership and they both differ from the parent-student partnership.  The book Parents, don’t forget your homework is written with the intention of serving as a guide to cover all those partnerships in order to create a more educated consumer that will enhance student learning in the school and at home.

Successful students and successful school count on the awareness of the parents and the active role they should play in the educational process of a student.  For effective involvement in our children’s education, we need to understand the role our involvement plays.  We must understand our limitations and our contributions. As parents, when we understand the world of education with our children in their schools, we can immerse ourselves in supportive role.  The supportive role renders benefits to the school and to the student.

The goal of every students should be to be ready for post-secondary education in university or specialize technical school.  As students prepare for college,  collaboration of students, teachers, parents strengthens the possibilities and the pursue of this goal.

With so many demands placed on teachers, an involved parent is the teacher’s best friend.  But proper involvement is a must.  Improper involvement on the part of the parent can actually be detrimental to the child’s education.

Improper involvement is when parents get involved by doing their children’s work or assisting more than they should or when parents support negative behavior in detriment to the teacher’s authority.  We all want our children to succeed, that’s why we have to allow them to go through the learning process by doing, analyzing, studying, drawing conclusions, reading, writing, etc.  These are essential parts of the learning process.  Real learning comes from their homework, schoolwork, and/or class project primarily on their own; perhaps with help and guidance, but always remembering that the it’s the students homework, not the parent’s.

We all want our children to submit well-done homework assignments.   A well-done homework is defined by whether or not the homework served its primary purpose.  The primary reason for homework is to reinforce a lesson that has been taught or to be ready for an upcoming lesson. If the student reaffirms what was explained in the lesson or prepares for the upcoming lesson, quiz, or exam, the homework served its primary purpose.  When parents get involved by doing the students’ work, they deprive the children the opportunity to reason, analyze, draw conclusions, and learn from their own mistakes, which is an essential part of the learning process.

Following the notion of a popular television commercial, it is true that in the world of education an educated consumer is our best customer.  Proper involvement on the part of the parents is the key to maximize the benefits of public education for our children.  These are our public schools.  Take advantage of them by getting properly involved.

Written by

Nino Collado, Ed. Sp.