If You Ask Me/By Martha Knight

One topic at a recent Academic Improvement Committee meeting was that baffling riddle, how to get parents to interact with the school.

Well, many of them do. So the quest is to get more parents to do so. All the rest of them. And to interact more freely, more frequently, in more ways.

That topic has been raised many times since the AIC was created. Many possible solutions have been mentioned, and some have been tried, and more are in the works. But thought of as a riddle, the question could be “Why don’t more parents interact with the school?” or “Why don’t more parents come to the school?”

There are Elementary Boosters. This organization is open to all parents of elementary school students, and staff as well, as I understand it. 

Are there junior-senior high school boosters? Not exactly. There is no counterpart organization that parents graduate into, when their kids reach junior high. But, as has been pointed out, there are numerous specialized booster groups, which relate to numerous different sports and arts. Most operate to help support those activities, and to help with expenses. They arrange car pooling and fundraising and help out at events.

But there isn’t any PTO or PTA or PTSO as such, and hasn’t been for many years. That kind of organization used to provide liaison between parents and schools. Even then, some parents participated, and some didn’t.

As for the non-organizational, individual contacts between parents and their children’s teachers, or parents and administration or guidance or nurses or psychologists, how best can this be fostered? Back to the riddle: why doesn’t it happen more, with more parents?

In some discussions of that topic, answers or guesses have included these: Parents are so busy now. There are many one-parent families. Some parents have had off-putting experiences with the school sometime. Some parents did not have a good time of it when they were students. Some parents feel intimidated by “the system,” perhaps because those parents who lack college educations feel that professional school staff, all with college degrees, don’t respect others without college backgrounds.

And these: Parents might need child care in order to keep some school appointments, or to attend more school events. Transportation might be hard for some to arrange. Some parents find the security arrangements off-putting: having to be buzzed in, and needing to turn yourself in at the office.

These days there are some work-arounds that can foster more and better contact between school and home. There is social networking, so parents with access to the internet can access the schools’ website and the web pages of various grades and groups and organizations. But still, the face-to-face contact is desirable.

I can’t think of good answers, or solutions, for all the forms the riddle takes and all the suppositions that arise. Possibilities keep being examined. Perhaps closer bonds are being forged between school and families little by little, and this trend will continue. But I suspect it will continue to be a topic of concern, because it relates to the need for partnership between school and home.

My father seldom came to school when I was a student. He was a dairy farmer, and evening events were very difficult for him to work into his schedule and that of the cows.

My mother was involved with the school from the first day. Before, actually, for she taught my sister and me our first grade at home, before we were old enough to be admitted to school.

Mother didn’t consider that “home schooling.” It was just what people in her family had done. Her mother had been a school marm and also taught her children at home, and later Aunt Maud had been, and when the little ones at home were ready to learn to read and do basic arithmetic, mothers or older children taught them.

But as soon as we were in school, Mother visited often. She invited teachers to visit. The music teacher stayed overnight, played “Scarf Dance” on her portable Victrola and danced for us. 

Aunt Lulu was one of the local teachers, and she Mother ordered workbooks through her so our reading and arithmetic would blend with those of other students whenever we did start attending school.

Mother was part of the brigade of mothers who took turns bringing us hot lunches in the country school. She was active in PTA at Liberty Consolidated. If we were in operettas or plays she helped us practice and attended the events faithfully.

Once we were in “the town school” she continued her practice of visiting school. This was considered bizarre, and I must confess it embarrassed me, because other parents did not visit school.

She didn’t just pop in, but spent major portions of two or more days at the school, sitting in the back of the room silently, observing class after class.

This was not easy for her. She dressed differently from other mothers, with her hair in an old-fashioned bun, her clothes not like the current fashions. She suffered from edema, and was self-conscious about it, but never let that keep her from doing what she believed was necessary or even desirable. Knowing her children’s school, its teachers and principals, was part of being a mother, she believed. Leaning was important.

Left motherless at age five, Mother had been reared by her big sister and a domineering father. Her father would not allow her to ride the bus and go to the city (Corning) for high school, and so she had not attended school past ninth grade. Yet she had gone to business school and acquired secretarial skills, and she was very well read.

If any parent had “reasons” not to “come to school,” that busy farm wife and mother did. 

Every family is different, but it seems to me any parent can override whatever hesitations he or she has concerning in-person contacts with the school. Reasons for contact, and even visits, outweigh drawbacks: shared interest in that parent’s children.

Peace.

Drymar@gmail.com. 596-7546