Excerpt from The InterACTIVE Class, Chapter 6
To better understand a parent's perspective of education, think of someone who wears glasses--maybe even yourself! Your glasses help you see, or maybe you're completely dependent on them to function effectively. What happens when you take your glasses off? You view the word entirely differently. You have a sense of where things are located but you can't see clearly. Everything is blurred. You might be able to tell where people are located in a room by their movement or the sound of their voices, but you can't recognize them.
This is how parents often view your classroom. They know the basics of the school--when to drop off or pick up, how to register to volunteer or chaperone a field trip, the way grading is done, and when report cards come out. Depending on how you communicate with them, they may even know what standards and content you will cover in class during the week. Even so, most parents feel out of place and uncomfortable at school and around the classroom. They haven't been students in a long time, and they may be unfamiliar with the acronyms and red tape of the current educational system. They want to help their children, but they don't know how and often just try to stay out of the way. As a result, they have limited knowledge of what you are teaching and how their children are learning despite your most valiant efforts to communicate with them.
Over the past few years, we have developed a solution for this. We call it "opening the window to the classroom." When our firstborn started kindergarten, we started to shift our teaching. For the first time, we realized what our classroom parents experienced. After we sent our son to school for an entire day, we anxiously awaited the bell at dismissal, excited to talk to him about all the learning he did. But each afternoon, he returned with an anticlimactic "fine" or "good." He loved the kids in his class, his teacher was nice, and his daily routine was pleasant, but we weren't able to experience any of this with him. We longed to talk to him about what he had learned and share in the joy he clearly felt while at school, but his ability to remember parts to share with us was--well...we'll just say it "need improvement."
We realized we were not the only parents who felt this way; many others also wished to support and encourage their children's learning. Teachers have an army of parents willing to work with their children at home to enrich and extend what is taught at school. But the army needs communication from you. How are you opening your classroom window to let parents see inside? In what ways do you communicate with parents so they can support you at home?
These questions are answered as we share some of our favorite ways to get parents interACTIVE and involved in The InterACTIVE Class!
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Above was just a small excerpt from The InterACTIVE Class. We are so eager to share all that is written within these pages and we are excited to get the idea of #interACTIVE teaching and learning out into the world. Thank you for being part of our #interACTIVE family!