Post
3: The Relationship between Schools and Home
Throughout my teaching career, I have
noticed a correlation between a student’s socioeconomic background and the extent
to which I am supported by their parents to discipline or correct student behaviors in my classroom.
My class rosters reflect a fairly even mix of Asian, African American, Caucasian,
and Hispanic students from a wide range of socioeconomic statuses. Thankfully, I do not encounter many behavioral problems, but I have faced typical issues with student cell phone use, disrespect, or lack of responsibility. Throughout the academic year I have many opportunities to meet my students’ parents and
doing so adds to my understanding of the student as a person. Interactions with
parents typically occur at our Parent Open House in August and the
parent-teacher conferences held in October and February. Additionally, I seem
to be in constant communication with many of them via Infinite Campus (our
online grading portal) or email. Though these encounters are brief and somewhat
impersonal, they do provide a snapshot of a students’ relationship with their
parents and the styling of parenting used at home. They also give me a sense of how much backing the parents give the educator in the event that their child's behavior needs to be corrected. Of course, my observations
are merely generalizations within my own context and do not apply to every
family, but I have found that quite frequently lower income families more willingly support the teacher’s class expectations and
encourage discipline in the classroom. For example, they will say things to me
at conferences such as, “Feel free to takeaway his cell phone” or “If she’s
ever not doing what she needs to for class, call me and we will change that.” Discussing
a child’s cell phone use, or any other behavioral issue, with students and
parents with higher incomes can also result in such comments and parental support.
However, I can recount conversations of my own and those of colleagues during which parents of a higher economic
standing have resisted suggestions for behavior correction. For example, a
few years ago during a parent-teacher conference, a teacher friend of mine shared with a parent that her daughter spends a lot of class time on her phone sending text messages. The
mother was baffled by this revelation and told the teacher it cannot be true because her
daughter turns her phone off during class. The teacher went on to assure the parent that
yes, her daughter does use her phone during class time and the phone is on. No
matter, this parent insisted that this could not be the case and that the teacher must have
confused her with a different girl. When reflecting on this, and incorporating
the economic side of the matter, I wonder if this is because those parents who
have resources, time, and money to dedicate to the rearing of their children feel
they are solely responsible for their moral and behavioral development. On the
contrary, those families with parents who work multiple jobs acknowledge their
absence at home, value discipline in their absence and as a result encourage
teachers to fill-in as parent during school hours. This theory somewhat aligns
with the development of Montessori education, where the school is viewed as an
extension of home and the teachers an extension of parental figures to help
shape young lives.
This is interesting to consider--is it
appropriate to view one’s teacher as an extension of one’s parent in terms of behavioral coach? The answer
to this can be tricky, especially when parents and teachers do not share the
same values. There are, I might argue, a set of certain valued behaviors that
one needs in order to function well in society, and I am of the opinion that these
should be taught, developed, and applied at school in order to properly prepare
students for the real world. Connected to this idea, I highlighted the following
from page 20 as I was reading The
Schoolhome: “When and only when there was a “harmonious interaction”
between individual and environment, she said, would the child develop normally
and love flourish” (Martin, p. 20, 1992). This made me think about my classroom
as a sphere of many differentiated individuals whose minds and moral compasses
are developing simultaneously and differently with the academic and behavioral
guidance of their educators in order to prepare them to successfully join
society. In other words, students “[…] need to learn to live in this world, not
just know about it” (Martin, p. 86, 1992).
This topic of student behavior is timely, as
just this morning I attended a back-to-school workshop pertaining to our school’s
behavioral model. This year our discipline committee introduced Positive Behavior
Intervention and Supports (PBIS) as our official behavioral model. As the name
implies, it focuses on students’ positive behaviors and encourages teachers to
use common jargon that ingrains the code of conduct for its students. Our
key words this year are Respectful, Responsible, and Ready. Each teacher was
given a poster with these terms and were asked to spend one of the first days
of class brainstorming with kids what these terms look like within our specific
classrooms. This activity allows them to take ownership of the school’s
expectations and qualify them for a particular context, which I think will make
a difference in how we approach student behaviors this year. I am curious to
know whether anyone else has had experience with this model and whether or not
it has proved successful. I know for a large population of kids, it is
essential that they are taught how to behave. Too often as high school teachers
we assume behavioral education takes place in the lower grades and is not
necessary in the teenage years, however students are constantly developing and
so too should their understanding of appropriate behavior.
Sharing:
https://www.pbis.org/
For more information about the PBIS behavioral model, please visit this website.
http://sugarspiceandglitter.com/montessori-blogs/
http://montessoritraining.blogspot.com/
http://www.onlinedegreeprograms.com/blog/2010/50-must-read-montessori-blogs/
To provide additional views of Montessori education, please explore the blog web addresses above. I do not have my own young children and I teach at the high school level so I found many of these accounts to be interesting and informative.
http://www.montessori-namta.org--www.montessori-namta.org/PDF/rathundeframework.pdf
For a look at the evolution and development of Montessori education, click this link.
Sharing:
https://www.pbis.org/
For more information about the PBIS behavioral model, please visit this website.
http://sugarspiceandglitter.com/montessori-blogs/
http://montessoritraining.blogspot.com/
http://www.onlinedegreeprograms.com/blog/2010/50-must-read-montessori-blogs/
To provide additional views of Montessori education, please explore the blog web addresses above. I do not have my own young children and I teach at the high school level so I found many of these accounts to be interesting and informative.
http://www.montessori-namta.org--www.montessori-namta.org/PDF/rathundeframework.pdf
For a look at the evolution and development of Montessori education, click this link.
Hi Stephanie! Like yourself, I teach is a diverse district with students of all races and socio-economic backgrounds. As I was reading your post, I kept thinking how similar my experiences with discipline and parental involvement were to yours!
ReplyDeleteI related to the correlation you discovered between resistance to behavior corrections and income level. I also notice that my lower income families are more supportive of disciplining their children. I have parents who tell me to take their child’s phone away or call them if their child is not behaving properly, too. Prior to my current job, I worked as a long-term substitute in an affluent area. I had many encounters where parents resisted my suggestions to improving their student’s behavior. During parent teacher conferences, I met with a parent whose child was receiving a C in Spanish 1. The parent just could not understand why her daughter was getting such a low grade. I explained that her daughter often socialized during class, did not complete homework, never saw me for extra help, or did not take advantage of quiz retakes. I offered ideas how her daughter could improve her grade. Despite all of this evidence I provided, the mother kept telling me, “I don’t get why she has a C in your class.” In addition to resisting my suggestions, I had several parents who made “false promises” to correct their children’s behavior. I had a student who never paid attention in class because he was working on homework for other classes. I spoke to his mother about this problem, and she reassured me that he would never take out other homework again in my class. Guess which student was studying for a biology exam the next day?
Maybe you see this in your classroom, but I notice that my higher income families are more communicative with me. They initiate conversations about their students’ progress and make arrangements for their children to make up tests/quizzes. Even though overly communicative parents can sometimes frustrate me, they do advocate for their children and push for what they think is best. This is not always the case for parents of lower income levels. These parents do not answer the phone when I call to update them on their child’s progress or respond to any of my emails.
It is interesting that you pose the question if teachers should be an extension of one’s parent by enforcing appropriate behaviors. I do feel that this is part of our job. If we are preparing students to be contributing members of society, then we have to teach appropriate behavior. By assigning homework and assessments, we teach our students the value of responsibility and time management. Adults cannot use their phones during important meetings, so students must be taught the same skills. Students need to listen and respect others. Not all parents teach their children these important behaviors, and some of that responsibility falls on us. However, I find the label “extension of a parent” intimidating. I am a young teacher without children of my own. During my first year of teaching, I was only four years older than my oldest student! Perhaps as I gain more experience I will feel more comfortable accepting this label and embracing the Schoolhome ideas on discipline.
Continued:
ReplyDeleteIt is great that your district is moving to a PBIS model for discipline. I do not have much experience using PBIS, but I do try to incorporate some strategies. The school where I student taught started using PBIS that year. Unfortunately, because PBIS was so new, the implementation was not perfect. We had 10 cards a week to hand out to students who displayed appropriate behavior. The students could turn the cards in to win prizes from a raffle. We were encouraged to complement four students in each class for their behavior. We phrased our disciplining in a positive away, using “Keep cell phones in your backpack” rather than, “Do not use cell phones.” I personally did not notice a huge improvement in my students’ behavior due to PBIS. Maybe student behavior has improved now that the school has had several years to implement it. My current district does not have a formal PBIS program, but I try to use some of the strategies I learned during student teaching. In my syllabus, I use positive language to state my rules. I try to praise a couple students each class for their hard work. Hopefully, implementing PBIS will make disciplining easier and more effective for you!
Hi Stephanie, thanks for sharing your thoughts! I think that your insight into the difference between high-income parents (who may be more likely to see themselves as solely responsible for their children’s social and moral development and thus resist input from the teacher) and low-income parents (who may already be relying on the assistance of other adults to help bring up their children and thus be more likely to welcome input from the teacher) is very well-put, and is a viewpoint that I had never considered before. It’s especially interesting because I think that often, there are negative stereotypes about low-income parents – that they “don’t care” about helping their children or they “don’t value” education, and this viewpoint serves to undercut some of those negative stereotypes.
ReplyDeleteI also appreciate that you shared some links about the Montessori system more generally. Like you, I was trained as a secondary teacher, so Montessori wasn’t something I really thought about, since it’s typically more of a pre-school approach. When I opened one of your links, actually, the very top post was about mixed-age groups in Montessori, and this made me think of an experience I had when I was working as a substitute. I subbed one day in a kindergarten class at Wexford in Lansing, a Montessori magnet school for grades K-8 which is part of the Lansing Public School District. Like I said, I have very little background in Montessori, so I really wasn’t sure what to expect. When I took the kids to lunch, I was shocked to see that the little kindergarteners I was spending the day with were sharing the cafeteria with eighth-graders! At the time, I attributed this to the fact that the school probably didn’t want to “waste” the empty cafeteria space (since the eighth-grade class was fairly small) and stretch out the time it would take to serve lunch to nine grades’ worth of students. It seemed to work, in this case, since the older kids seemed to dote on the little ones, and I saw more than one eighth-grade girl opening a milk carton for a kindergartener, or offering them part of a cookie. Still, I thought back to the way that my friends and I had behaved at lunch in 8th grade, though – just on the verge of entering high school, we thought we were hot stuff, and our topics of conversation weren’t always appropriate for kindergarteners. I assumed that, even though it seemed to be working out with these particular students, in general it was still a bad idea with a lot of potential for things to go wrong. Now, though, after reading Martin talk about “teenage boys and girls … taking charge of the toddlers” (p. 157) and reading the post at the blog you linked about the importance of mixed-age grouping in the Montessori system, I’m thinking that this set-up, and the positive way that it seemed to be working out, was by design.
Anyway, it sounds like you’re starting to get back in the swing of things for the fall. Good luck with PBIS and everything else!
Stephanie,
ReplyDeleteThanks for such a thoughtful post on the relationship between schools and homes. There are many things that you said that I definitely agree with and have had experience with. First, I would like to touch on the observation that you made about the parents from low income homes being more supportive of the disciplinary efforts made by teachers. I also have been encouraged by the parents of my students to take phones or to call them if there is ever an issue. In times where it feels like everyone in society is quick to blame the teacher it’s nice to feel supported. I think what you said about these parents needing more of a “schoolhome” environment might be true. The parents of my students have jobs and usually multiple children. They are not always home when their kids come home and have to rely on the older kids to help with the younger ones. With these families it does make sense that the parents want/need to rely on the teachers for help disciplining the kids and helping them to grow into well-rounded young adults. I feel like the families of my students wholeheartedly believe the phrase that “it takes a village to raise a child” and they know that everyone should be involved in the raising of young people. While I like the idea of so many people being involved in the upbringing of a student one does have to question if everyone would have the same set of values and ideas. However, even if the teacher has a different idea on what’s good for the student than the parent it might be good for the student to have experience with different sets of values. Meanwhile, perhaps the families of higher income students don’t have to work as much or have set people in place to help care for the children when they are not there. Therefore, they may be less reliant to work with the teacher on discipline because they think that it is not the teacher’s place or that the student doesn’t need any extra discipline measures.
Last year we began using PBIS in my school. We had a training on it in the middle of the school year and honestly it wasn’t that helpful. While I can tell you that technically my school does use PBIS I myself have never used it and when the administration presented it to us it was a little confusing. I’m sure PBIS can be very useful when used correctly and when people have the proper training for it it’s just that we like to start things at my school and never really carry them out to their full potential, which is unfortunate. However, I would be interested to hear more about how PBIS is used at your school and your opinion on its success.
I agree with your concluding statement that too often the assumption is made that the students learned something in elementary school. This is true of discipline and other academic material. Just because students “should have” learned something when they are young doesn’t mean that they did or that they mastered it. We of all people should understand the importance of reteaching whether it be with academic material or behavior. Therefore, we should strive to work with the families of our students to create more well-rounded young adults that are ready for the world.
Hi Stephanie,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post and the amazing conversation it generated. Really great stuff!
Like everyone else, I was really impressed with your analysis of income and involvement. We know that people with bad experiences in school are often less confident in interacting with teachers--and since income and education are linked in our country, this means that low-income folks might tend to make themselves more scarce around teachers.
But this insight that high income parents have the illusion that they are solely responsible for their own child's development and achievement is spot on! I know I suffer from that too. But I also know better, mostly because I had some bad experiences growing up and I have caught myself projecting those fears on to my kids--and when I caught myself doing that, I realized that so much parental behavior can be this weird sort of confidence that it's the parental narrative that shapes the kids' whole life. When I started to see that my child was going to be really different than me--more confident and effusive--than I thought: how great that he is his own person. No need to feel guilty.
I do think that is the dynamic, too: guilt. Because a parent can't imagine being rude to a teacher, they are shocked that their child is. It explains the element of disbelief, which is really, I think, barely repressed horror, shame and guilt at not being a "good enough" parent. But when we can step back and see that our kids are responsible for their own decisions, achievements, and growth, then I think it takes some of the pressure off. We can love them unconditionally and help them try to learn from the mistakes.
Great post!
Kyle