By Tom
I was reading the Seattle Times the other day when I came across an editorial by the venerable Lynn K. Varner. In it, she describes an essay written by a guy named Ron Clark who quit his principal job because he was fed up with dealing with over-involved parents.
That’s too bad. It sounds like Ron Clark was a good principal, and it’s unfortunate that he was essentially run out of town by people who actually love him. He’s not alone, of course; the education world is awash with tales of helicopter parents who badger their children’s teachers and principals with complaints, questions and comments. They want to know more about a grade on a test. They want to suggest the next field trip. They want to know why their child is sitting in the back of the room. They wonder why their daughter is always picked fifth in kickball.
What they don’t realize is that in a typical elementary school there are 26 kids per class, and twenty classrooms in the school. A teacher deals with fifty parents each year; a principal deals with about a thousand. If every parent contacts their child’s teacher twice a week, either by voice or email, that teacher has to produce one hundred responses. If each response takes three minutes to compose and send, that’s five hours. That’s a lot. Nothing, though, compared to the principal. If she gets only one message per parent per month, that’s 250 responses per week. Her responses, of course, take much longer, since she probably has to find out exactly what happened in whatever classroom the child is in. If this takes ten minutes per message, then…well, you get the idea.
My point is this: teachers and principals in some schools spend an incredible amount of time dealing with parents. Granted, some of this time is well spent. Dealing with parents is an important part of our job. Parents have every right to advocate for their children and we have the responsibility to address their concerns. And there are legitimate concerns that do need to be addressed.
But this should even out across schools. There’s no reason to think that parents in school A, in the affluent, well-connected suburbs, should have more legitimate concerns than parents in school B, twelve miles away, in the high-risk low-income area. (If anything, they should have less) Yet, it seems that wealthy, connected parents have more concerns – and send more messages – than parents in less affluent areas.
In fact, educators in high-needs schools seem to have the opposite problem. They can’t seem to get parents involved at all with their kid’s education. They have low turnout for events, fund raising efforts are futile and permission slips go unsigned.
Then there’s my school. Right there in the sweet spot. Our parents are generally supportive, yet generally hands-off. Permission slips get signed, but emails go unsent. There are well-packed lunch boxes in every backpack, but no helicopters in the hallway.
And that’s just fine with me. When I tell my district colleagues from the rich side of town that I get about two parent emails per month, they ask if we have any openings. I get the same response from teachers in the other end of town when I tell them that I don’t have to buy any coats or shoes for my students.
Life in the sweet pot. And for that I’m thankful.
How about you? Which side of the sweet spot is your school? And how are you coping with it?
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My brother, who I love dearly, was the original “Apache Helicopter Parent.” He was a ruthless, obnoxious boor. He second-guessed every homework assignment, every test score and every seating chart. He hand-picked his daughters’ teachers from K through 12. He was not a partner and he was not an advocate. He was a jerk.
We’re not talking about whether parents should partner with their children’s schools. Of course they should. We’re talking about their knowing when to reign it in so that educators can do the rest of their jobs.
As a parent, I’ve tried to be minimalist in regards to my sons’ teachers for three reasons:
1. I teach in the same district in which I live.
2. I want my kids to develop their own advocacy skills.
3. I respect my kids’ teachers and their time.
And by the way, despite my brother’s efforts, his daughter ended up at WSU.
For better or for worse, by the time they reach high school parents are often (not always) one extreme or the other: disengaged or hyper-engaged. Part of the disengagement might be that the parent now has to manage relationships with multiple teachers over multiple subjects (and we all often see multiple versions of that student’s personality based on the content area, mix of kids, time of day…) The hyper-engagement is often due to this malevolent societally constructed pressure to get the best grades so kiddo can get into the best college and get the best job… and an A- on an essay in tenth grade English (even though kid’s overall grade is a 98.7%) will cause the child to end up destitute, or worse, attending WSU instead of UW.
I do believe that parents are valuable partners in their child’s education. I appreciate the parents who promote self-discipline, model a consistent value of learning, permit failure, and who facilitate their students’ success by fostering home routines that help reinforce the student accomplishing what is asked of them (i.e., regular homework or reading time, etc.). I appreciate the parents who accept reality about their child, warts and all, and want to work toward a strategies to help their child rather than expect me to dance while parent and kid maintain the status quo. I like the emails that read “I see a vocab quiz is coming up, my child hasn’t being doing well so what ideas can I use to help him prepare?” That, to me, is far more meaningful and powerful engagement than when I get daily emails asking if junior can make up a three point assignment from ten weeks ago or that “my child deserves to retake all those vocab quizzes…he says you didn’t prepare him.”
I’m not a principal, so I have no idea what that role demands in terms of parent contact–apparently quite a bit at the elementary level at least. I can see, though, how it would be something that could drive someone out of the job. The top two reasons I won’t consider pursuing my admin credential are (1) I do not want to chaperone prom and (2) I don’t think I could handle dealing with the power struggles that seem to emerge when dealing with parents.
Kudos to you, Staci. And I agree, parents are our partners. And I think we should definitely welcome them, but maybe not to the point where that’s all we’re doing. And If you follow the link on my post, you’ll see that’s what happened to Ron Clark.
With all due respect, three questions:
1. When do you respond to the “massive quantity of correspondence?”
2. What don’t you do in order to spend this time in this way?
3. Is this the best use of your limited time?
I don’t mean to denigrate parent communication, but I do mean to keep it in perspective. All of us have a tremendous workload, which means allocating time according to priorities. If I (or you) spend five hours a week emailing parents, that time has to come from somewhere.
I could not disagree more with this article. Parents are our PARTNERS in education. We should welcome them at every turn, even if that means responding to massive quantities of correspondence. I am a Principal who spends countless hours communicating with stakeholders, and am grateful for each opportunity. The sweet spot is when all parents are engaged.