Variations between High School and Middle School: Parents at School

In this and subsequent pieces, I will explore the similarities and differences between middle school and high school situations through my experiences at NAF Prep and NAF.  In this week I will focus on two events, one in the middle school and the other in the high school, which both focus on bringing parents into the school.

At the middle school, the event was called "Back to School Night" and occurred in early October.  I remember looking forward to the event as a time when I could meet my students' parents and, through the process, get to know both the parents and students better.  Unfortunately, the amount of parents who came in did not allow for much of this interaction.  Three parents of three students came in for 70+ students, and two of those who came were the parents of students who were performing magnificently.  These are disheartening numbers to note when parental involvement (the numbers do not reflect a direct relationship with parental involvement) is so paramount to student success.  The eighth grade team being such a close team who had some idea of what the attendance would look like met together in the hallway and greeted parents there together.  I thought this was a pretty cool, first for entertainment when there was no parent to talk to and second to all add to each others assessment of the particular student's need when speaking with a parent.

The story in the high school was not so different.  The meeting at the high school was meant for parent/teacher conferences prior to the end of a marking period.  For this event, four parents came out of 120 students.  The timing of this event may have something to do with the low numbers; it was held from 2-4 pm.

The parental attendance of both of these events underline two important ideas for me: parental involvement and attendance.  Parental involvement was a goal my teammates and I constantly worked towards at City Year.  With parents working multiple jobs, having younger children at home to watch, or other family necessities to attend to, getting parents to school can be a difficult order.  But it is these connections which help a teacher highlight the good and hard work students are doing and also form a powerful relationship with one of the most influential people in a student's life, their parent.  Attendance is an issue I will take up in another post.