ABBY MARKERT Noticing Blog

Ray School prides itself on parent involvement. Parent involvement and community involvement in the students education is extremely important and is even in the mission and vision statement for the school. I have found with my short time in Ray School that this feature holds true. The parents of the students are very much part of the school environment. I have also found that students whose parents are more involved in the class and with the students curriculum has a beneficial effect on the students.

One of the tasks that my MT has me do is go through the student’s homework and notice folder. These “Ray School” folders are a way that the teacher can communicate with the parents and visa versa. These folders act as a liaison from that classroom to the home. Parents are asked to initial the student’s calendar inside the folder when the student does the assigned homework and my MT or myself star the calendar when we get the homework back. I believe that this system is very useful and helpful for all of the parties involved. This method also forces the parent to be more involved in their child’s academics. One of the big things that I have been noticing is the correlation between the parent involvement and the student’s achievement and academic level. When I go through each students homework folder I am able to see what student’s did their homework and those who did not and the parents signatures or what other notices have been taken out. It seems that those student’s whose parents have been highly involved have students who are at grade level or above. Those student’s whose parents have not signed anything or taken any information sheets out of the students folder, have students who are lower than grade level. I realize that this isn’t always the case but what I have been seeing it has been. It is important that the teacher and the school do the best they can to include the parents and make them involved because it does affect the student. But how do you make a parent get more involved? I feel that my school and my MT do an excellent job in incorporating parent involvement and trying to force them to be involved as much as possible. How do you express to parents further the importance of being involved?

I know that in my future classroom I want to try my best to find ways for parents to be involved because it shows in the students work. My MT and I have decided to try and incorporate more parent involvement in more of the classes. In our “Everyday Math” workbooks we decided to pull out each section and staple it together. This way the small section can travel with the student to and from school. This will show the parents what the students are doing in the classroom, what the students are able of doing and what they are not, and much more. I think that this will help encourage the parents to be more involved and hopefully increase the students understanding.