Honoring Family Involvement in the Learning Process

H4: Honor family/community involvement in the learning process. During my internship, honoring family involvement in student learning meant responding and meeting with parents who were concerned about their student’s progress, especially as my internship ended and the academic year came to a close. I received many emails from parents, wanting to discuss options and different strategies to ensure that their student finished out the school year well, which often also meant bringing up his or her grade in the class. Although on days when I was at school late, and had grading and planning to do, it felt overwhelming to also need to maintain communication with parents of multiple students from multiple different class periods. However, parents provide the key support for students outside the classroom, and in order to be successful, they must be provided with an understanding of how their student is performing. I found it rewarding to collaborate with parents to create strategic plans to support the needs of their sons and daughters. Parent support makes a significance impact on student success and supporting parents as they support their student at home not only honors the role of parent involvement in the learning process, but also honors the potential achievement of my students—one of my key goals and responsibilities as their teacher.

Another way I was able to support parent involvement in the success of their students, was to keep the online gradebook up to date. When a parent would email and inquire about what assignments his or her student was missing or the status of his or her student’s grade, I was able to point them directly to the gradebook, a concrete record of his or her student’s progress. Parents were very appreciative of this, as well as my religious updating of the class’ “Fusion page.” On the “Fusion page” I would post different assignments, activities, and deadlines for projects, so parents could access information about what was done in class, as well as print the actual assignments in order to support their student’s completion of class work.