Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Importance of Parent Involvement

Written By
Serwa Agyeman
Parents are a significant part of the school experience for students. Since the Civil Rights movements, changes and improvements in the school system has been achieved largely to the credit of parents involvement in ensuring change took place. Our school system is still in need of this type of involvement from parents. Unfortunately, parents are not coming out in great numbers as we once did. I have no doubt that our Prince George’s County parents are just as concerned for the welfare of our students. However, I also believe that many of our parents are not aware of how much their involvement matters. Your presence and your involvement are paramount to the development and success of your child.

The parent liaison position was created to “boost parents' commitments to their neighborhood schools and eventually improve academic performance among students” and to “provide parents with access to information and help them navigate the school system bureaucracy, answering questions about how to transfer students or handling comments on teachers and school policies.” It is therefore imperative that parents take an active role and take advantage of the parent liaison position. Our neighborhood schools offer a number of workshops and meetings to parents to assist with bridging the gap and providing training, resources and information. While many parents have taken advantage of these resources, most have not. As our children matriculate from elementary school to middle school and then to high school the number of parents in attendance seems to dwindle. Please take the time to schedule a visit to your student’s school. It is important that parents attend workshops and meeting to receive valuable information that will help you and your students move successfully through their academic experience.

A parent blog has been created with upcoming workshops offered at both Frederick Douglass High School and Gwynn Park High School (http://fdhsgphsparentconnection.blogspot.com/). Any parent in the community whether you have a student at one of those schools or not are welcome to attend any and all workshops. We look forward to welcoming our parents to play an active role in our school community.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Photos of the 2010 Parental Engagement Conference

Your pictures and fotos in a slideshow on MySpace, eBay, Facebook or your website!view all pictures of this slideshow

The Middle School Years

Visits From Engaged Parents and Dedicated Educators