Fiona Worcester

Educational Philosophy

ED612 - School and Community Relations

Mr. Bernie Gurule

July 13, 2010

 

When I first read the title of the class, School-Community Relations, I thought to myself sarcastically, “Well, Kumba-ya!” I wondered if, with just one year to get a Master’s in Teaching, I really needed a whole class in this area to become an effective teacher. These feelings quickly dissipated, however, as the ideas presented in class wedded themselves to deep-seeded feelings I had been trying to ignore as “facts of life”. I now admit, without begrudging, that this class was highly educational for me, a potentially invaluable tool for me to survive and succeed in what I hope to do: educate.

 

Kids are in school for six hours per day. Sadly, for some parents, school is a daycare. More sadly, for many high school students I know and have known, school is a prison. Regardless of this (potentially valid) attitude towards school’s offerings, the fact remains that students spend about a third of their waking life during school weekdays in the classroom, a huge amount of their time. While I have heard many students say, “well it’s not a job; I’m not getting paid”, school is least as critical as full-time adult employment, if not more so, as it can determine their future employment options as adults. One issue is that “real life” and “real work” seem insulated, outside the school, a world away. Students don’t realize that their time is as valuable as money. How can we make this integral, yet highly under-rated and under-utilized, period of time in their lives more relevant, more appealing to students and parents, and more integrated within the larger context of the community? The answer is a simple “focus on School-Community Relations”. Kumbaya.

 

In my first line of offense in this battle, I will seek to provide as many assets as I can directly to the teens in my classroom. With gender equality, globalization, and technology has come a new autonomy and individualism, and the prevalence of “the traditional American family” has given way to a myriad of contemporary American families. Children these days are expected, as the rest of us are, to be independent and do their best to serve their own interests. This myth of child competence has left many children with less support, encouragement, and supervision. I plan to do my best to create assets for our children in the school environment by being interested in my students and taking the time to get to know them, by providing individualized homework help and an open classroom in which students can work, by keeping a running announcement and bulletin board of opportunities for students to get involved in various community activities, and by hosting clubs and extracurricular activities over the course of my career as a teacher.

 

My next step in battling this goliath of apathy is to work hard at communicating with parents and guardians. As described in the PTA’s National Standards for Parent-Teacher Involvement, when parents are involved in their child’s education, teachers, parents, students, and the community as a whole benefit. I have their child for one class period per day. They will have had their child for a short lifetime. From the community members I met during panel interviews in the course of this class, I have learned that parents almost always appreciate direct, regular communication, even if they do not respond immediately. The fact that parents are often glad to receive timely discipline calls and eager to do what they can to improve the behavior of their children is encouraging. With the aim of bridging the gap between home and school, I plan to send general class messages home twice per quarter (every three weeks) informing the parents of what we will be working on for class and how parents can potentially help. Separately, I will include more specific compliments and comments on their own child’s behavior and academic performance. I plan on introducing myself to parents through telephone calls, as a way of letting parents know that I am paying attention to their kids, and that they, the parents, are also important to me.

 

It will be difficult, and therefore important, for me to remember to put myself in the parents’ shoes. Judging non-responsive parents harshly will make me feel worse about the work at hand, rather than better, and will only work against my goal of collaborating with parents. There are so many valid reasons why parents do not call back that the only sensible thing to do is to keep trying and assume the best. I will become part of the apathy problem if I allow myself to become frustrated or give in as a result of unrequited communications.

 

With the goal of making school more interesting and relevant, I also plan on creating assignments that require the participation of community members. I have a unit project planned that would require students, after undergoing training in the classroom, to interview adults in the community on one of three topics. This oral storytelling project would culminate in the student telling their interviewee’s story to the whole class while being recorded, as well as creating a written version. The best of the recorded oral stories (as judged by a panel of interviewees) will be broadcasted over the school intercom, and perhaps on a local radio station. All interviewees will receive copies of the written stories as well as thank-you notes from their respective student-interviewers.

 

            There are countless additional topics of importance in school-community relations that I hope address, including the particular importance of preparing SPED students for life after school, the issues surrounding religion in school, and the potential power of portfolios to spark enthusiasm in my English class. However, the fact that I lack the time and space to do so here drives home the vastness of the big picture more than discussing all of them ever could. In my brief MAT experience, I have become convinced that the best way to improve the institution of school is through the conscious and concerted promotion of better school-community relations.