Ever since school shut down last March and caused a sudden shift to remote learning, the question of parent involvement in student’s schooling became a heavily discussed topic. Parenting is a difficult job during the best of circumstances and is now even harder, whether your student is attending school fully remotely or under the hybrid model. All of us parents are struggling with the question of when and how to get involved with our children’s remote learning. Since remote learning in such a large scale is still very new to the world of education, there is not a lot of data gathered on this topic. However, according to Dr. Erik Black, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Education in the University of Florida who studied virtual schooling at the high school level in 2008, there are a few things we do know about parental involvement in remote learning.
The first is an absence of parental involvement in a student’s education will likely impact his or her academic progress in a negative way, and the same is true if a parent exhibits uber helicopter parenting behaviors. The question then is, how to figure out when and how much to be involved. The answer is it all depends on the individual needs of the students and their families.
According to Dr. Black, parental involvement falls into four buckets: encouragement, modeling, reinforcement, and instruction. What he has learned is that some parental involvement, particularly in the area of encouraging students and modeling positive behaviors are good things. In other words, a parent learning Algebra and reteaching it to her child is probably not going to be as effective as the parent encouraging her student to work hard and showing him behaviors related to good study habits and emotional regulation.
As a parent I can understand the unpleasant feelings one experiences when seeing your own children struggle. However, students will continue to encounter demands that will challenge (and at times overwhelm) them especially while we are in midst of a pandemic. I see parents’ roles in these situations are to guide them to resources where they can access help as opposed to solving the problems for them. If we continue to lean toward the latter, we will miss the opportunity to teach students the skills necessary to help them overcome the struggles they will inevitably face.
Therefore, if your students continue to have difficulty navigating their schedules, accessing remote classes, or learning the content that their teachers are teaching them, I suggest you encourage them to view setbacks as temporary events instead of seeing it as the end of the world. In addition, I suggest you model for your students the necessary skills to seek help from McCall teachers and staff. An example of those skills may be how to craft an appropriate email to teachers when asking for help. Consider this approach as opposed to you reaching out to the teachers and learning how to navigate schedules yourselves and reteaching it to you students. Both approaches may get you the same outcome, however, the latter takes away the opportunity for students to learn and practice the skill of self-advocacy.
One parent recently said to me that she has been working so hard getting her student ready for the start of school. If you ever feel this way about any aspect of school, I encourage you to ask yourself the question, “Am I working harder than my child?” If the answer is yes, then it may be time to consider where you are on the spectrum of parent involvement. It may be time for you to contact your child’s teachers or guidance counselor so we can help you figure out the level of involvement that would be appropriate for your student and your family.
