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With Labor Day in the rear-view mirror, it's starting to feel like fall (even if the NY weather is tricking us into thinking we should still be on the beach). But my university started the fall semester three weeks ago now, and all of the local schools began either last week or this week. As I've looked at the cute pictures of my nieces, nephews, and friends' kids heading off for their first day back, it's occurred to me several times how hard it is for parents to juggle all of the responsibilities that come along with the change in seasons.
As a school psychologist, I've obviously always been aware of how tough it can be for parents to attend IEP meetings that are scheduled during the workday or to pop into the classroom for a special event, but these challenges resonate with me in a different way now that I am a parent too. Even for families who are lucky enough to have the means and flexibility to be available during the workday, it can be very difficult for parents and children to find ways to be all the places they want to be. For example, even in academia—where our schedules are very flexible—my colleagues who have school age children have to put their PhDs to good use figuring out how to do everything they need to do at work while managing school pick-ups that take place smack in the middle of the workday and then shuttling kiddos to sports and other activities that occupy them until the workday is over. And, in many of the towns in Westchester and Long Island where my friends' children go to school, countless activities geared towards parents are held during the school day, making it tough for working parents to feel like they can be active members of the school community.
But, as I said before, these are the back-to-school woes of lucky families, who have lots of resources and whose children attend high-performing schools. It doesn't make the challenges any less real (and I have an endless supply of sympathy for the working parents who continually try to find the balance between work life and home life, whose stories others have told better than I can here).* Yet, the families I think about most are the ones who lack many of these resources and struggle to be active members of their children's school communities for very different reasons.
There was an article in the New York Times yesterday that talked about the push the de Blasio administration has been making to develop and sustain community schools, where families can access a variety of medical, educational, and social supports under one roof. The hope is that this type of programming will make it both easier and more beneficial for parents to become involved in their child's education. It can be complicated to determine how effectively models like this work, in part because it's not always obvious which outcomes matter most. As the article points out, there is not always a direct relationship between parent involvement (depending on how you define it) and child success (depending on how you define it).
But no one disputes that it is a good thing to have actively involved parents, and I think it is important for educators, researchers, and policy makers to think hard about which obstacles are hardest for families to overcome. The final few paragraphs of that NYT article seem almost tangential to the main point of the story, but they contain really poignant and useful information for people who want to boost parent involvement to hear. In this section of the article, a principal from PS 112 in the Bronx says that most of the parents she interacts with can't read or write, and shy away from programs that might let others discover that.
As a school psychologist who primarily works with kids who are struggling in school for one reason or another, I know all too well that people avoid situations that make them feel incompetent... the class clown is almost always a kiddo who loves getting big laughs almost as much as he hates getting called on to solve a math problem or read aloud. We are doing a good job of protecting our egos when we play to our strengths and downplay our weaknesses, as students or parents of students. So it makes perfect sense that the majority of parents with limited schooling or who had their own struggles in school will be less likely to run for the PTA. But it also means that the children and parents who need school support the most are less likely to get it. It's a tough catch-22 that is difficult to solve systemically, but I am excited to hear how these schools fare this year. I've found that parents with low literacy levels can be the most passionate and enthusiastic participants in the parent reading workshops I run, because they know exactly what outcomes they don't want for their own children, so I am very hopeful that getting the message out in the right way can boost engagement. For me, going back to school also means recruiting parents for those types of workshops, so I'll share more soon about the "right way" to get information home to parents. Wishing all students, parents, and educators a good, short week!
*Good reads on the topic include Anne-Marie Slaughter’s piece “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” in The Atlantic and this post about working dads seeking work-family balance from Scott Behson’s blog.
