To wrap up my thoughts on parents in regards to the workshop model, I believe that they need to be well informed on the process of the model in order for it to succeed in the classroom. Yes, it can succeed without parent involvement, however, I believe that involving parents in the workshop model can be beneficial for it's further development. By welcoming parents to interact with the model in the classroom during class time, they can better understand what their students experience at school and ask more informed questions about what or how their student is learning.
This is especially true in regards to students with exceptionalities. The openess and adaptability within the workshop model to suit various learning styles and levels benefits students who are not at the expected level or are high achievers. Assignments within the workshop model can be easily modified to work within the boundaries of any IIP or advanced learning.
As a future educator, I hope to have a "Get to know the Workshop" night where families can come experience the structure of the workshop model while gaining a deeper understanding of how it will benefit their child. In this way, parents will be able to voice their concerns, questions, or ideas to further develop the model and be informed of how the classroom works while their student is at school. It would open up lines of communication and give parents the initial push to more comfortably contact the teacher when events arise.
What is the Workshop Model? An inquiry project into using the Workshop Model in the classroom.
Partner with Families
Betty Boult, in her book 176 Ways to Involve Parents: Practical Strategies for Partnering With Families, she writes that "the key to parent involvement is demonstrating to parents that the school wants them to be a part of school life" (2006). I agree with this entirely because how often do you take part in areas of life that don't seem to want you involved in them? How much more likely are you to be involved in something that encourages you to be a part of it? Family involvement is very important in the education of a child whether that involvement takes place at home, at school, or through other events.
One great way to encourage families who often do not enter the school is to offer home visits. When a teacher is willing to go out of their way outside of school hours to meet families it says a lot about how much they value the family aspect of their students' lives.
Be sure than when parents are interested in being a part of the classroom and spend time volunteering that you are aware of their interests and dislikes. This way parents feel more comfortable and are doing more meaningful tasks because some parents become resistant to helping out when they are given less than meaningful tasks (Boult, 2006).
Finally, have open lines of communication. When you see parents, take the time out to make conversation and learn more about their lives. Thank them for their support, time, or skills that contributed to various classroom subjects, events, and so on.
Make the families feel appreciated and well cared for!
One great way to encourage families who often do not enter the school is to offer home visits. When a teacher is willing to go out of their way outside of school hours to meet families it says a lot about how much they value the family aspect of their students' lives.
Be sure than when parents are interested in being a part of the classroom and spend time volunteering that you are aware of their interests and dislikes. This way parents feel more comfortable and are doing more meaningful tasks because some parents become resistant to helping out when they are given less than meaningful tasks (Boult, 2006).
Finally, have open lines of communication. When you see parents, take the time out to make conversation and learn more about their lives. Thank them for their support, time, or skills that contributed to various classroom subjects, events, and so on.
Make the families feel appreciated and well cared for!
Quiz - for Teachers
- Do you phone or even visit your students' homes early in the year to introduce yourself and set the stage for a personal relationship?
- Do you phone or write a note home when a student does something good or achieves something positive?
- Do you invite parents to visit classes to gain first-hand knowledge on what is happening?
- Do the principal and teachers invite parents to drop in for coffee during the year to talk about school programs?
- Do parents receive a warm reception when they enter the school or are they ignored and left to find their own way around?
- Do parents perceive that they are welcome when they visit the school?
- Do you inform parents of the curriculum and explain to them the purpose of special events?
- Are you sensitive to the various family arrangements that exist within the families of the children you teach?
- Have you evaluated the effectiveness of your communication with parents?
Taken from Partners at School - A Handbook on How to Involve Indian and Metis Parents in School Activities.
Even when we encourage parents to be involved in the school, they still have the right to reject becoming involved. They should be recognized as important partners and be treated courteously.
Quiz - for Parents
- Is my child happy at school? Why or why not?
- Was I happy at school? Why or why not?
- Who invented school?
- What is the purpose of school?
- Do schools accomplish the purpose you named in question 4?
- Could a person learn without school?
- If you answered yes, then why do we have schools?
- If you answered no, explain why.
- What were schools like in the past? What are they like now? What will schools be like in the future?
- If you could change anything about school, what would you change? Why?
- If your child could change anything about school, what would he or she change? Why?
- Whose suggestions in questions 8 and 9 are more valid?
Bonus Questions:
- What does it mean to be "smart?"
- What word is the opposite of "smart?" What does that word mean?
This is a "test at the end" of Michael Reist's book (2010) that I challenge you to think about and even write down or share with your school!
Children and the Institution of Education
In his book, What Every Parent Should Know About School, Michael Reist writes about what he feels schools should be working towards, which is the embodiment of my ideas. A school where students are free to choose what they desire to learn because you learn best when you are happy, relaxed, and free to choose something that interests you. This freedom is captured by implementing the Workshop Model. This model allows for student choice, an endless adaptive dimension, and student engagement; three crucial implementations to allow growth and development.
Reist begins his book with this quote (which I love!):
As Reist writes, and I completely agree with, schools should be places where students thrive and flourish and become more confident and capable people than they were before. It should expand their personalities, not confine them. However, school ends up being a place where "confidence is eroded and one is made to feel incapable, where social relationship degenerate into a competition based on social acceptance and fear of exclusion...a healthy institution is one that is capable of self-reflection, self-criticism, and self-correction," something that all schools should aspire to resemble (Reist, 2013).
The school system has became a social institution that we force students to conform to and attend in order to 'educate the future.' It is so engrained into our society, that we find it difficult to change the way our students are educated even though we all have experience the ups and downs of it in our own lives, some of us as parents as well. Even though we have experience with the institution of education, we often fail to see it as something that parents can become positively involved with.
Parents are often only invited to concerts, fundraisers, and parent-teacher conferences. I feel that it is important to include parents in the system because they "would bring a very different perspective to the table, and they would also create a greater degree of accountability" (Reist, 2013). We can all get involved to change the institution of education for the better as it significantly affects our children and they way they experience the world.
Reist often refers to the school system as a pyramid. The base is all the students entering the school system, and the tip represents those of them who were able to conform and survive the expectations.
The pyramid could resemble something similar to The Hunger Games where only those who are able to conform enough to the expectations will make it - everyone else will be left to fend for themselves.
Yet even though the school system only works for certain people, it is still one of the most powerful an influential social institutions in our society - and occurs during one's most impressionable years. Why is it then that we promote competition rather than social interaction and cooperation?
The Workshop Model builds on the strengths of all students whether they are independent workers, enjoy collaborating with others, or need to work at a different level than their peers. This helps to create a more comfortable learning environment for all students in the system instead of creating the hierarchical pyramid previously discussed.
This freedom teaches responsibility - it allows for self-choice which makes students responsible for the outcomes. If we resort to traditional teaching from the front of the classroom all day long, we are not required to take responsibility because we are being told what to do rather than make our own choices.
Another aspect Reist discusses is that of play (2013). He notes that we have seemed to have forgotten the importance of play and all the lessons that come along with it. It allows us to make sense of the world, interact with others in an unstructured environment, and learn about ourselves and others. Unstructured play is an important part of education, yet we have students sit in their desks all day long and if they squirm and cannot focus for the entire day, we often view them as someone incapable of learning or someone having a learning exceptionality. Maybe those students need to learn concepts and information in an different way than they are being taught? I know I loose focus after sitting for a length of time and need to get up and move around in order to continue my own learning.
I challenge you to question the ways of the education system - what changes could be made to create a more interactive, encouraging learning environment?
Reist begins his book with this quote (which I love!):
This book is dedicated to every child who hates going to school. (We're working on it.)This book is a MUST READ for every educator whether you are in the system already, have been through the system, or are aspiring to be in the system. I cannot get enough of it.
As Reist writes, and I completely agree with, schools should be places where students thrive and flourish and become more confident and capable people than they were before. It should expand their personalities, not confine them. However, school ends up being a place where "confidence is eroded and one is made to feel incapable, where social relationship degenerate into a competition based on social acceptance and fear of exclusion...a healthy institution is one that is capable of self-reflection, self-criticism, and self-correction," something that all schools should aspire to resemble (Reist, 2013).
The school system has became a social institution that we force students to conform to and attend in order to 'educate the future.' It is so engrained into our society, that we find it difficult to change the way our students are educated even though we all have experience the ups and downs of it in our own lives, some of us as parents as well. Even though we have experience with the institution of education, we often fail to see it as something that parents can become positively involved with.
Parents are often only invited to concerts, fundraisers, and parent-teacher conferences. I feel that it is important to include parents in the system because they "would bring a very different perspective to the table, and they would also create a greater degree of accountability" (Reist, 2013). We can all get involved to change the institution of education for the better as it significantly affects our children and they way they experience the world.
Reist often refers to the school system as a pyramid. The base is all the students entering the school system, and the tip represents those of them who were able to conform and survive the expectations.
What happened to all the kids who started out at the bottom and didn't make it to subsequent levels of the pyramid? What kinds of people did the pyramid produce - both ones the pyramid worked for as well as those it didn't?
The pyramid could resemble something similar to The Hunger Games where only those who are able to conform enough to the expectations will make it - everyone else will be left to fend for themselves.
Yet even though the school system only works for certain people, it is still one of the most powerful an influential social institutions in our society - and occurs during one's most impressionable years. Why is it then that we promote competition rather than social interaction and cooperation?
The Workshop Model builds on the strengths of all students whether they are independent workers, enjoy collaborating with others, or need to work at a different level than their peers. This helps to create a more comfortable learning environment for all students in the system instead of creating the hierarchical pyramid previously discussed.
This freedom teaches responsibility - it allows for self-choice which makes students responsible for the outcomes. If we resort to traditional teaching from the front of the classroom all day long, we are not required to take responsibility because we are being told what to do rather than make our own choices.
Another aspect Reist discusses is that of play (2013). He notes that we have seemed to have forgotten the importance of play and all the lessons that come along with it. It allows us to make sense of the world, interact with others in an unstructured environment, and learn about ourselves and others. Unstructured play is an important part of education, yet we have students sit in their desks all day long and if they squirm and cannot focus for the entire day, we often view them as someone incapable of learning or someone having a learning exceptionality. Maybe those students need to learn concepts and information in an different way than they are being taught? I know I loose focus after sitting for a length of time and need to get up and move around in order to continue my own learning.
I challenge you to question the ways of the education system - what changes could be made to create a more interactive, encouraging learning environment?
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