Two years ago Principal Marta Plata of Manuel Jara Elementary School in Fort Worth, Texas, recognized her school needed help.
She realized her teachers could work tirelessly every year to educate students and empower them to be their best, but without positive reinforcement at home, many of the classroom lessons would not change student behaviors.
Partnerships
The school already had an established relationship with Primera Baptist Church, Fort Worth, a congregation that adopted the school two years earlier. So Plata enlisted the help of Primera Baptist to launch Parent University, a 13-week program designed to help parents get more involved in supporting their children’s educational success.
Parent University used Raising Highly Capable Kids, a research-based curriculum developed by Rezilient Kidz, an organization that seeks to help families through stronger community and church partnerships. While the curriculum is not overtly Christian, it was written with a biblical foundation and provides churches and Christian leaders resources to have a positive impact on parents in their community, said Mike Haley, director of Rezilient Kidz.
It’s a partnership model that could work well in Alabama, where approximately 15 percent of the population is illiterate and a quarter of all children live in poverty.
The Raising Highly Capable Kids curriculum is based on 40 Developmental Assets, a guide developed by the Search Institute, an organization that studies student success. These assets compare closely to studies that link poverty to a lack of resources other than finances, resources like literacy, a dependable and trustworthy support system, physical health and appropriate relationships and role models.
Important assets
The 40 Developmental Assets list includes school and community resources — caring neighbors, creative opportunities and religious participation, for example — as well as internal motivations like reading for pleasure and accepting responsibility. Church programs, such as after-school tutoring or literacy missions, can provide many of these resources, as well as encouragement to incorporate others into daily life, said Lisa Rose, director of church and community missions for Montgomery Baptist Association.
Rose knows from experience that engaged parents lead to more successful students. She has seen the results in her own children, as well as in children she has tutored as part of literacy missions work.
“Both of my children have special needs, so we had to learn to get involved as parents to better equip our children to be more successful in school. In literacy training, I tell tutors that they need to encourage the parents of the children they are tutoring to be involved as well,” Rose said.
First teacher
Parents are their child’s first teacher, said Meredith McClendon, certified parent educator with Parents as Teachers, a nonprofit organization funded through the Alabama Department of Children’s Affairs that provides free education support services to families with children as old as 6. Parents have tremendous influence even before a child is born, so parental engagement is critical from the very beginning.
“Parents meet so many developmental needs of their children in the first five years,” McClendon said. “If parents get involved when their kids are very young, they have a better chance of staying involved in their children’s education once they start school.”
Parent educators like McClendon work one-on-one with parents in the home to help them incorporate learning experiences into daily tasks.
Parent educators also help parents learn ways to build strong relationships with their children.
These early learning experiences are important, and they connect directly to the child’s formal education experiences.
“As kids transition into kindergarten, we talk to parents about being involved in their child’s education,” McClendon said. “You don’t just drop them off every day and that’s it. You volunteer. You join the PTA. You pin up what your child brings home from school. All of that keeps parents engaged with their child’s school experience.”
Parents also should stay in touch regularly with their child’s teachers, Rose said.
“Parents shouldn’t wait for the teacher to contact them. They need to be proactive from the beginning,” Rose said.
Email is great because it allows the teacher to respond during planning time. If a teacher sends home a weekly folder or report, parents can write comments or questions on those as well. And anytime parent-teacher conferences are offered, schedule one. The key is to stay engaged, and churches who are ministering to children have a tremendous opportunity to help both child and parent do just that, Rose said.
“We teach our tutors to incorporate hands-on, kinetic learning activities so the kids are not just sitting there hearing a lecture during a tutoring session,” Rose said. “Then we encourage the tutors to share some of these ideas with the parents.”
Face-to-face meetings
Rose also encourages tutors to have regular face-to-face meetings with the parents of the children they tutor. One-on-one is key in ministry, Rose said. Face-to-face meetings are an opportunity to encourage parents, but they also can help volunteers overcome any misconceptions they might have formed about the child’s family.
“You don’t know what the parent’s background is or how educated they are. Parents have varying levels of busyness and education, but even parents who are busy need to slow down and think about their child’s needs,” Rose said.
And for parents who may struggle to help their children with homework, tutoring activities can be repeated by the parent at home, which helps the parent learn as well.
“It’s so easy to work with the kids because they’re engaging and they love you, but it’s harder when you have to talk to another adult. But parents have to be engaged and many don’t want to. Even upwardly mobile, highly educated parents don’t always have adequate parenting skills, so when we’re working with children we’re ministering to those parents as well,” Rose said.
(BNG contributed)
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