Parents: A wasted resource.

I don’t think we can leave the education of children to teachers. My research shows that parents have an enormous influence on children’s learning and that it is they, not the teachers, who make the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful student. (Sorry teachers, but it gets you off the hook).

But most parents are not aware of their influence on their child’s learning, and do not know how to support their education. They want their children to do well but don’t know what to do about helping them.

This is a waste of a valuable resource. By giving parents the power (information, advice, resources) to help children learn we can help children be more successful without having to find extra resources for the schools.

The thing to remember is that parents are not teachers. They have a different relationship with the child (even if they are teachers they need to act as parents or kids miss out). That means that there has to be some distinction made between what parents and teachers do to help children learn.

My research helped me understand the differences between the role of the teacher and the role of the parent.

In essence -
Parents – set the scene for learning by helping their child develop ‘learning to learn’ skills: advocate for their child within the school system: provide extra support if it is needed.

Teachers- deliver the curriculum; diagnose learning issues; provide learning opportunities within the system.

When a child gets support from both parent and teacher he or she is well on the way to reaching is or her learning potential. If some of this support is missing chances are that the child will never reach his or her potential.

Communication issues between parents and teachers prevent parents knowing how to support their child’s education.

Teachers tell parents – what their child can do, what they have taught in class, what the child needs to work on

Parents want to hear – how well their child is doing IN COMPARISON TO THEIR PEERS, whether their child has a learning problem, how they can help their child.

There is very little common ground on which to create effective communication.

As a result, parents do not know how important they are in helping children learn, they do not know why kids underachieve (neither do most teachers!) and they do not know what they can do to support their child’s education.

And teachers wonder why they send kids to tutors, spend fortunes on educational programs and try to teach their kids at home.

It is time to recapture the trust of parents and to empower them to take their place in the educational lives of their children. They all want to. I have never yet (35 years as a teacher) met a parent who did not want to help their child learn. But, until teachers can find a way to communicate with parents – and this is where cultural issues come into play – children will continue to be short changed and teachers will continue to be overworked.

I feel so strongly about this that I have retired from teaching and have set up a business to provide parents with the information and advice they need to help their children learn. I will be producing more information for parents and then some information for teachers on how to work with parents.

Let us use the resources we have, the resources that we are ignoring, before we complain that there is never enough to do what needs doing.

Let’s stop limiting a child’s education to what teachers can do and start helping parents support their child’s education. Then children have a chance to be all that they can be.

As educators, we have to make the first move. Parents have been marginalized for too long. They are either scared of the school system (I have many stories about that ) or ignore it because they feel that they have no power to change things.