No Parent Left Behind

This article made me rethink my thinking about parents and school. I initially held some of the ignorant and negative thoughts about parents not being involved because I know, as the article supported, that students who have parents that are not involved and reading with them at home, etc. suffer. As embarrassed as I am I thought these parents were lazy or didn't care to help their children at home. In reality the problem can be explained more logically that parents are, "so busy with the day-to-day responsibilities if feeding, housing, loving and caring for their children that they have little time to support school-related literacy activities at home. They believe they are supporting their children's educational development and fulfilling that parental responsibility by sending them to school. where effective teaching can instruct them in literacy." I feel that because I have never had experience in a very urban low income school I was never able to get enough real life experience and interaction with parents who are struggling to, as the article describes, simply feed and house their children. It is not that they choose not to help them with school work etc. at home it is more that they are too busy to or they feel that they are not intelligent enough to. I found the article very eye opening. When the article discusses banishing resentment towards uninvolved parents I found this to be very true. One of the struggles that teachers in impoverished schools face is creating "effective partnerships with parents that match the REALITY of their households" The word reality encompasses a lot of meaning and changed my viewpoint and made me feel ignorant and judgemental for my past feelings.



I found the way in which the authors and researchers had, in essence hunt down and contact some "invisible" parents through community members very interesting. They had to make themselves accessible to the families and parents and be careful not to disrupt their busy and stressful lives too much by coming right to their homes or the schools to interview the parents.



When the one parents was quoted saying," She talk more better than me. More talk. Why you wanna do that? She need to read" Although I am tempted to feel angered at this response when thinking about how the child of this parent may suffer because of her involvement or lack of understanding I am able to be more understanding that she doesn't know she is harming her child's growth by thinking she only needs to read not talk, she simply doesn't know. She can't be blamed for not knowing.



The following quote makes me empathetic and face the facts of the "reality" that these families face. "with nine kids and two adults livin together in a house with two bedrooms, we don't have space or time for all the kids to homework." This makes me sad but I know that this real and families all over the county and most likely in the schools that we are at have similar home situations occurring. As teachers we need to be understanding and strive to solve this problem although I don't know exactly how because the chapter ended without posing any real suggestions for teachers. . .I guess the point of the chapter was more so to present data and change the thinking of the readers.