Prompt #5 Delpit

5) The culturally competent teacher involves and works with families and community resources, understanding the differences in families, the important influence of family participation in students’ learning, and the benefit of collaborating with the wider school community. Imagine that you are the teacher of this classroom. What challenges might you encounter in collaborating with the parents of your students? How might you address these challenges? How might you demonstrate respect for the concerns or contributions of parents?

Getting parents involved in their child’s education could be a job within itself. Not every parent is as willing to participate in classroom activities as teachers would like, but this is their choice and we have to respect that. Many parents feel that the job of educating their child lies solely in the hands of the teachers and it is not part of our job to tell them differently.

If I were the teacher of this classroom, one of the big issues I would face is that only 5 parents out of 24 students show concern for their child’s education. That’s a whopping 19 that don’t have the time to sit down and take a look through their child’s take home folder and or assignment planner. That’s 19 students who can’t turn to their parents for help on a homework problem or for assistance on a project. As a result, these students are learning life lessons on independence at the early age of 8.

One other thing that could pose as another challenge for me would be the language barrier between me and parents. I feel that my six years of French would not come to any use in this type of setting and my Spanish vocabulary is lacking, to say the least. Addressing the parents and saying hello and then counting to five can only get you so far in a conversation before making you seem “loco.”

But these difficulties are not something that should get in the way of getting parents involved in their child’s education. We should look at them as speed bumps along the already bumpy course that teaching will lead us. We would just have to know to slow down and approach these bumps cautiously in order to cross over them smoothly and successfully.

This prompt made me think of Lisa Delpit and the culture of power. In our classrooms, we are all dealing with students who are more than likely coming from families that do not hold “cultural capital,” meaning that these students and their parents are members of a society where they do not hold the power, and they are more likely to acknowledge it than the people who hold the power. Before these students even step foot into a classroom, they learn how to function and survive in their social setting. So a child who grows up in an urban setting will have a different idea of what is acceptable in a society compared to the child that grows up in the suburbs. As Delpit says, parents “transmit another culture that children must learn at home in order to survive in their communities.” The codes of survival are usually not the same ones as the codes of power, making it harder for the disadvantaged student of a working class family to function to the same standards of the students are lucky enough to have the codes of survival and power almost interchangeable.

One other thing Lisa Delpit mentioned towards the end of her article is that for the “appropriate education for poor children and children of color can only be devised in consultation with adults who share their culture.” As Caucasian/White/European American (or however you want to call/describe us) teachers, we must be open to other outside voices, voices similar to our student’s, when it comes to the discussion of what kind of instruction is in these student’s best interest. That’s why parent involvement is so important. We need their input on how their children respond to certain instruction methods and how we as their children’s teachers can help their children succeed in a society that is against them.

I would value all and any input from my student’s parents. Parents need to see that they should be involved in their child(ren)’s education if they want them to get the most out of it. I would try to get the parents to see that through creating a classroom website. This way it would also be easier for them to contact me. By having a class website, parents and students could sign on to see what’s going on in the class and send me a quick email if they need to talk to me and don’t have the time to call. I check my email daily as it is now and I have a feeling that won’t change seeing that technology is just becoming more and more of a part of people’s daily lives.

As teachers, we not only have to have open eyes and ears, but open hearts and minds as well. Everyone is going through something, and we can’t pass judgment on them, but just be accepting of what they have to offer. Nobody knows more about our students then their parents, so it’s in ours and our student’s best interest to get their parents involved.