Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Bright Futures in Sight

While I've been tutoring in at my VIPS school, I've been concentrating on the kids. I've asked my cooperating teacher tons of questions about the school, his program, the types of problems he's come across with the kids of an urban school. The question I haven't asked him was how the parent involvement with his students was. Generally the parents of urban students is not a good generalization. The stereotype for the parents is that they don't care about their kids education.

While this may be true for some of the parents, I think that most parents do care. I believe one of the challenges I might have if I taught in my VIPS school would be the parent interaction with their child's education. According to a report published by Kids Count in April, 2009 51% of children in Providence live in a single-parent family. This puts children that live in the single family homes at a huge disadvantage because their parents are working so hard to support the family on their own. Because their parent is working however many jobs however many hours a week, this leaves extremely little time for their parent to monitor their child's school career. Most kids that live in a single parent home become independent and don't keep their parent in the loop for their school work. This would be an extreme challenge for myself as a teacher to keep in contact with certain parents about their child's progress.

In order to address this challenge I would have to try my best to let parents know how their children are doing. I would most likely do this either by letters, updates sent home, or even calling and possibly leaving a message just so that their parent is updated on how their child is doing. I wouldn't just send bad messages home saying their child isn't doing well unless it was absolutely necessary. I would try to send positive messages home so that parents can be proud of their children and want to try and pay attention to their child's education as best as they can.

Another problem that I am hoping really wouldnt come up would be the parents bringing up my race and privilege if I was collaborating with the parents. The only reason i worry about this is because of the diversity in urban schools and the different races that dont have privilige that I do. It may not matter to them that I grew up in a similar situation as them, they might only see me as a white, priviliged female.This brings up Johnson and how he brought up that people dont realize their privilege. That if you acknowledge your privilege, its then that you can make a change. So hopefully by acknowledging that I am priviliged and respecting the views and the questions that the parents ask me, I will gain respect from the parents and they won't mind asking about their childs progress in my class.

I also hope to be able to take parents questions. comments, concerns, and sugguestions into deep consideration and be able to put them into affect in any way possible to make their childs education better so that they will have a bright future, which I'm sure every parent wants for their child.

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