Banning the Parents

 by Steven B. Orkin

 

 

Over the last three years (grades K-2), at some point during the school year, I've visited my daughter Julianna's class to read a story to her and her classmates. I love doing it. It's a lot of fun, it's an opportunity for Jules to feel special, it's a means of reaching out and making a connection with the other kids in the class, and thereby the community (i.e. their parents), to her teacher, and even to the school staff and faculty.

What's the message I'm conveying? That I care enough to take time out of my day to make an appearance at my daughter's school and do something for her and her class. I see no discernible downside to this activity.

However, it's extremely unlikely I will be visiting my daughter's school for this purpose this year.

Back in December, Nancy and I did get the opportunity to visit during Chanukah to teach the kids about the holiday. It was an excellent visit. The kids had a lot of fun, and so did we.

Further, there have been a couple of occasions over the course of the year in which parents were invited to the classroom to observe the kids reading essays or poetry, but nothing else individual or interactive.

Before I continue on, I feel it prudent to point out that I think Paul Spinella, Julianna's teacher, is an excellent educator. He's great with the kids, seems very creative and open to new ideas, and has the perfect combination of firmness and compassion in dealing with his students. With regard to my topic of the day, I think if it were up to him, there wouldn't be an issue. Further, Nancy and I have been very happy with the school as a whole. They have proven supportive and helpful on many occasions, and I have a good deal of respect for the principal, John Mullins. I just want to be clear that my intent here is not to bash the school, but rather use it to illustrate a profound issue which I believe is symptomatic of many schools across the country.

Okay then. Back to our story. During my visit in December, I mentioned to Mr. Spinella that I wanted to come in, and he seemed sincerely amenable to the idea. However, when I contacted him a few weeks ago to set a date, he indicated that at a recent grade-level meeting, it was determined that class time for the 'middle' grades (3-5) was too valuable, and therefore, parents were not permitted to visit the class for such purposes.

Being of a rather philosophical bent, I have concerns about this that go any personal disappointment at not being able to visit the class. I'm a grown-up (most of the time, anyway), and I'll get over it. So will my daughter, albeit a little more reluctantly. Further, I completely understand that class time is valuable, but value is a rather subjective thing, isn't it? To my way of thinking, the inherent value of cultivating rapport between the class and a parent outweighs the 'lost' time.

Let's do a little Math. The average class size in Julianna's school is about 20 kids, which means a maximum of forty parents. Let's factor in the single parents and the second parents that aren't able to take time off.  We can also filter out a few parents just aren't comfortable being in front of the class or for whatever reason are disinclined to visit. I would guess the school year is around thirty weeks. The average illustrated story book takes 10-15 minutes to get through, so a 30 minute visit seems sound. When we put all the numbers together, what we come up with is that over the course of the school year, all parents would have an opportunity to visit the class at least once. Total loss of time: One half an hour a week. This does not seem to me to be an unduly extensive amount of time to devote to parental visits.

On the list of international education rankings, which encompasses thirty-one countries, US public schools have been coming up somewhere in the middle. There are legitimate contributing factors as to why this is the case, why places like Japan, Korea, and Finland come up near or at the top, and places like Luxembourg, Mexico, and Brazil are near or at the bottom. The rankings don't really address why each country meets whatever criteria they use. It just reports that they do. In addition, it doesn't address fallout factors associated with the rankings. For example, if it turned out that Japanese children have higher statistical rates of stress, depression, or even suicide than the other countries on the list, this would in my mind mitigate the significance of their ranking to some extent.

Though there are indeed many positive aspects of our education system, we're kidding ourselves if we think there aren't likewise profound problems that need to be addressed (we can start by cutting summer vacation in half.). However, given the more esoteric benefits of the parent to students relationship, of community-building in the classroom, I contend that banning the parents is not a viable solution to any those problems.

Thanks for reading.