What I Learned

Before taking this class I was a very strong believer in family being the most important influence on children's lives. Throughout the class, I really cultivated that belief. I have spent alot of time on the idea that education should beconcentrated on families - when it is too often used as a tool to separate children from their families.
Too often I hear educators making negative comments about families and listing reasons why they cannot better connect to families. Instead, the focus of education needs to be on families. If parents are involved - kids will be successful. This is the way to ensure school reform.
Going forward - my mission will be to educate and include the parents, grandparents, siblings etc. of children in my care. I am going on a basic belief that families love their children and want to be involved - but are, in many cases, left feeling powerless and unneeded when it comes to schooling. I believe parents should be made to feel empowered about their abilities to care for and educate their children - They should be made to feel that they are the most important factor in their children's success (because they are), and children should feel empowered to create partnerships with families rather than feel that they are on their own and solely accountable for childrens lack of success.
I believe that the first step in including families is meeting families where they are - in their homes. A couple of good guides for how to conduct home visits can be found at the following sites:

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Guide_to_Home_Visits_44583_7.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin241.shtml - 46k

Let The Kid Be

A parenting article published in the New York Times entitled "Let The Kid Be" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/magazine/31wwln-lede-t.html?_r=2) was the impetus behind this blog. It listed trends in parenting across the centuries, the most recent being micro-managing kids time between soccer practice, violin lessons and tutors. I considered while reading this article that these parenting trends probably were aligned with educational trends (which one having the strongest influence, I don't know). Still, while parents have been mocro-managing, so have schools. Idle time, for the past century, has been considered something to avoid if we want college educated, successful children.

The Times article names a new parenting trend - one of letting kids be kids at their own pace - a non-chalance style of parenting where parents focus on their ownneeds and allow their children to pursue their interests at their own pace. I see this as a new trend emerging in schools as well. Clearly, the idea of filling every moment of a child's life with rote memorization is going out of style. Anti-micro-management talk is all the rage in educational sectors.

I, for one, am thrilled at this emergent style of raising children. I hate baseball practice and boy scout meetings - and I can finally admit that openly. I love letting my children play freely as children should - and I can admit that too without fear of negative feedback or judgement.

I hope this article is correct - because in a moment I am going to sit in the backyard with a glass of wine and a book while my children wrestle in the grass - and I wont have the pinge of guilt that they are maybe missing out on some important structured activity.


This article epitomizes why I hate baseball practice and cub scout meetings:
http://www.schoolcounselor.org/content.asp?contentid=484