Week 8, Blog Post

Week 8, Blog Post: Literary review

            This week I brought all of my research together to create a literature review. My topic was: How can teachers form healthy relationships with parents that get them excited and actively involved in their child’s education? I had collected many articles, journals and books that pertained to the topic. For the assignment I chose the best ones that I felt described the topic clearly and with creditability. The hardest part of the assignment was the APA style of writing. Over the last eight weeks I have been struggling with citing my sources using APA. I went to an APA workshop offered by Brandman and it helped me a lot. I also used citation machine.net which was very helpful and recommended by other students. I had two of my friends proofread my report for mistakes which was very helpful.

            The topic of parent involvement in my line of work is extremely important. Part of my job is to encourage parents to get involved in their children’s education.  The parents first teach their children the foundations that they need for learning and developing. The teacher builds on the foundation to prepare them for the next level. It is so important for parents to know that their children still need their guidance throughout their education. Being positive role models for their child is the key to helping them to learn and grow. Teachers can only guide the parents and the children for as long as they are in their care. After they go on to the next grade the teachers change but they will always have their parents there for educational support.

            From this assignment I have learned that most parents are looking for invitations from teachers and their children to volunteer in the classroom. I also learned that there have been several studies completed on this subject. From these studies they have found that most parents do not feel like helping in the classroom because they don’t think that they can actually make a difference in their child’s education. The article titled, “Positive Relationships between Parent School Involvement and Public Inner-City Preschoolers’ Development and Academic Performance” (1999), found a direct link between higher academic performance in the children whom had parents that volunteered in their classroom. I feel that the old saying that it takes a village to raise a child is a true statement. In preschool classrooms where there are twenty children and only two teachers and no parent volunteers the children will have less communication experiences then they would if there were parents. The other great part about having parents in the classroom is that they can bring in some great ideas that help teachers understand more about the different cultures in the community. 

Citation

Marcon, R. A. (1999). Positive relationships between parent school involvement and public school inner-city preschoolers' development and academic performance. School psychology review, 28(3), 395-412.