When Mom and Dad Don't Show Up

Sophia Pappas has a really terrific post up about parent engagement and teacher responsibilities. After trying--and failing--to engage the mother of one of her lowest-performing students, Pappas writes:

I grow frustrated and decide instead to focus solely on Tyrique and our work inside the classroom. With our efforts to target his needs in one-on-one, small group, and whole group interactions, Tyrique has now started to identify beginning sounds and some letters in words on his own. He can also write his name and read the names of his friends.

Is family support important? Of course. But what happens when difficulties with parental investment arise, even as early as pre-k? Does the child become a lost cause? Of course not. Should teachers relinquish their own responsibility? Just the opposite.

This strikes me as just about right. Communicating with parents and trying to engage them in their children's learning when appropriate is part of teachers' jobs. But teachers have relatively little leverage to change parent behavior, so focusing on what teachers can do to address children's needs directly often has better returns to effort than trying to engage unresponsive parents.

In an ideal world, we'd want all kids to have engaged, supportive parents who were eager to get information from teachers about how to support their children's learning and to put that information in practice. In reality, that's not always the case, even when parents love their children very much, for a host of reasons. And the kids who are getting the least support at home are also those who can least afford to have their teachers give up on them as a result of their parents' shortcomings.

Anyway, I've really been enjoying Ms. Pappas' blog since it launched in early December, so if you haven't checked it out yet, you should.