Guest column: Involvement rewarding for parents and students

Published 12:00 am Saturday, March 15, 2003

Editor’s note: March 10-14 was Minnesota School Social Worker Week. This article was written by Dawn Berg, Sibley School social worker in collaboration with the other school social workers: Kim Anderson, Teri Nelson, Katie Nielsen, and Kim Danner.

Research from Dr. Joyce Epstein at John Hopkins University, as well as many other studies, has found tremendous positive effects of parent involvement with schools. When parents, school, and community form partnerships, students are more successful in school. They earn higher grades and have better attendance and higher graduation rates. Parents benefit from increased confidence in schools and better relationships in their communities. The best results for students happen when families, schools, and communities all work together to help students achieve in schools.

So how does this happen and are we doing this here in Albert Lea?

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Dr. Epstein’s research describes six types of parent involvement. In an article he wrote a few weeks ago, school board member Tom Eaton described two types &045; parenting and learning at home. The other four types are communicating, volunteering, decision making, and collaborating with community.

We have many volunteers helping in the Albert Lea schools. At Sibley Elementary School alone, more than 150 adult volunteers have worked more than 3,000 hours in a school year. This does not count the many middle- and high-school students who volunteer to help elementary students every day. Many of the schools in Albert Lea have active and hard-working PTA parent groups. The &uot;PTAs&uot; work on many projects, such as sponsoring and chaperoning field trips, organizing room parents, helping with special projects such as School Patrol, citizenship, assisting needy children and families, and producing elementary school yearbooks for students. That’s lots of work and many hours of volunteering!

For the past five years, the elementary schools have received a grants from the Freeborn County Family Services Collaborative Committee to implement parent involvement programs in the schools. These grants were written by the school social workers in partnership with parents and staff. The school social worker position at our high school was partially funded by this grant to facilitate connections with students and parents. All our school social workers have worked to develop programs relating to the other three types of parent involvement: communicating, decision making, and collaborating with the community. Each school is unique in how this is evolving.

Some schools developed a parent-involvement committee, to plan monthly parent and child activities, such as school picnics and breakfast events, like &uot;Muffins with Moms,&uot; &uot;Doughnuts with Dads,&uot; and &uot;Bagels with Buddies&uot; and family roller-skating nights. More than 300 parents and students have attended each of these events. They are fun ways for parents, children, and staff to come together to establish better relationships and communications. By attending, parents demonstrate to their children that school is important in their lives. Other activities of the parent-involvement committees include developing parent resource rooms or areas in the schools with books, brochures, and videos for parents and a meeting place. One school has even acquired a new computer for parents to use and the parents now do the school newsletter. Schools may sponsor parent/child workshops, where parents have opportunities to acquire greater knowledge and to meet and talk with other parents.

The most difficult and rewarding job in the world is parenting, and we believe that we all need to help each other along the way. Many community agencies and businesses are involved in these activities. Businesses may donate materials, money or their employees’ time to help with these activities. They may share resources, brochures or speakers for events.

Parents, schools and communities working together are the key to success for our next generation of children. If you are interested in further information, check out these Web sites: www.pta.org; www.npin.org; or www.eric-web.tc.columbia, or better yet, ask your school how you can help!