Family Engagement In School Essay Sample

Both parents and teachers should recognize the fact that family engagement in the education process is essential. Children of any age value their parents’ interest in and support of everything they do.
At the early stages of schooling parents involvement can help a lot in the children’s adapting to new rules as well as ease the process of becoming self-reliant. The things that are approved by parents could be more easily accepted by children. Thus, teachers should collaborate with parents, inform them of what is going on at school, and engage them in the activities, both educational or social, in which they could be of help. As a result, parents, with teachers’ help, can play various roles: they can be supporters, collaborators, encouragers, decision makers, advocates, monitors, etc.
Schools, in their turn, must be ready to initiate parents’ involvement and initiate it efficiently. To get positive results of schools’ and parents’ collaboration, family engagement programs conduct surveys to gather information about families. The surveys let educators “know about family expectations for their child’s learning, promote shared decision making by asking for family input on program-specific practices and policies, learn whether families are taking advantage of the opportunities the program provides, etc. (Family Engagement: Conducting a Family Survey, n.d.). Parents’ response may drive the programs in some other, more resultant direction, if necessary. A more close interaction between parents and teachers will bring the education process to a higher level as it will help to monitor children’s successes and failures in all spheres of their life.

References

Family Engagement: Conducting a Family Survey. (n.d.). NAEYC. Retrieved from http://www.naeyc.org/familyengagement/resources/conducting-family-survey.