Parenting is a full-time job. It’s the most “occupying” occupation. It is no wonder, then, that a parent has the most effectiveness, and the greatest potential, to be a catalyst for his or her child’s success.
Parents work tirelessly day and night to ensure the proper growth and development of their children. Therefore, educators rely on parents to be partners in their children’s education. A parent devotes endless hours, sleepless nights, heart-consuming worries, and rivers’ worth of tears to raise her children. That is how parents earn the axiom, “Mother/Father knows best.” As an educator, I can’t express enough the importance of parental involvement in a child’s education.
Usually, a child’s strengths and deficiencies are exhibited both at home and in the classroom. For instance, a child who can’t sit for 15 minutes at the dinner table probably has difficulty remaining seated during circle time. When parents and teachers collaborate, they bridge the home life and school life to mold a more well rounded child. Minor interventions can be used to tweak a child’s weaknesses. When the identical “program” is implemented in all of a child’s daily settings, the intervention is in full force and consistent, producing more effective progress.
I have experienced a case in which a child craved sensory input so much that she would bite her sleeve or put her fingers in her mouth excessively, clearly below age level. Her mom brought this to my attention at the beginning of the school year, and we collaborated to intervene simultaneously.
Mom gave frequent reminders at home, making it a clearly unacceptable behavior, not tolerable. At school, I ensured that she was granted an abundance of rich sensory activities, i.e, use of the sand center, Play-Doh fun, and other acceptable forms of sensory entertainment. As the year progressed, so did she, and I touched based with her mom at a minimum of once a month. As the school year continued, the issue nearly ceased. Without her mother’s persistence, I may not have zeroed in on the issue, and the child would have been denied a chance to improve.
On the other hand, I worked in a classroom in which a weak student was falling behind in grasping the Hebrew alphabet (Alef-Bais) curriculum. She would continuously come late to class, missing the essential circle time of the day. When the teacher expressed her concerns to her mom, the mother, although displeased, felt that she couldn’t do anything to improve the situation. The teacher repeatedly expressed her concerns but to no avail. (I don’t mean to judge this well-meaning mom; she was simply overwhelmed.) Obviously, the child suffered and continued to fall behind.
Parenthetically, when a teacher feels that a particular parent is genuinely aware, involved, and proactive about her child’s education, the teacher is, naturally, more apt to focus on the success of that child.
A parent is the most important advocate for a youngster. A good educator, spending so much time with a child in his formative years, plays a vital role in molding the child, too. A collaboration between parents and teachers allows for the two most crucial centers of a child’s life to unite, creating worlds of opportunity for greater success.
Esther Zwiebel is a New York state certified teacher and is the educational director of the Jewish Little Star Preschool in Eltingville.
