With COVID, parents in the United States realized very quickly that teaching is hard. Parents got front row seats to the lesson plans, which became more and more complicated the longer students remained in a home learning environment.
Let me tell you….teaching from home while also parenting was and remains at the number 1 spot for “eras where I was most stressed” awards. My 4 boys were all in elementary school with the youngest still not even in pre-K. Juggling that plus my own over 200 high school history students is honestly the stuff of nightmares. Honestly, what is more disturbing as a career educator throughout the remainder of the 2020 school year and heading into the 2021-2022 school year was that parents didn’t seem to know what teachers were doing with their children all day.
That’s weird right?
If you ask any teacher, they will immediately point out that the attitude, work ethic, and love for learning begins at home. Parents are the cornerstone to educational success, especially for different needs learners like those with neurodiversity and/or giftedness. So how exactly can parents create a solid foundation that can lead students to academic success?
In 2017, Sira Park and Susan D. Holloway completed a longitudinal study of the impact of parental involvement in schools that included 992 US schools with students in kindergarten through 5th grade, which ended up being over 17,000 students (Park & Holloway, 2017). They found that parents who attended parent-teacher conferences and school events positively impacted student achievement in both math and reading over time(Park & Holloway, 2017). This continued with positive impacts for students’ whose parents were involved in volunteering in the school (Park & Holloway, 2017).
This research provides solid empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of school-based parental involvement, particularly for mathematics achievement. We all know that parental involvement in their children’s education leads to higher academic achievement, but what can parents do to tap into this?
The foundation of all learning is language acquisition, which begins with parents talking to their infants. There are milestones from birth to age 5 which can heavily impact a child’s understanding of language (Park & Holloway, 2017). Children learn by mimicking what they hear and see with the spoken word (Park & Holloway, 2017).
This early stage of language development is imperative to future academic success as verbal language skill directly impacts a child’s ability to read the written word, specifically regarding vocabulary development.
Parents who read to their child 5 books daily leading into kindergarten have exposed their children to 1.4 million more words than children whose parents did not read to them regularly (Logan et al., 2019).
Additionally, parents who read just one book a day expose their little learners to almost 300,000 additional words by age 5 compared to parents who don’t read regularly (Logan et al., 2019). This same study also found that 1/4th of children are not read to or are seldom read to at home (Logan et al., 2019).
In education, we tend to say kindergarten through 2nd grade is where children are learning to read, but by 3rd grade, children are reading to learn.
Imagine a child coming into kindergarten having heard at least 1.4 million words. A very simple way to create a strong foundation for your child is simply to read to them. Obviously, the socio-economic levels of a family can impact the availability of books.
Public libraries are often readily available and close enough to not require expensive transportation barriers. Creating book exchanges with friends and family can increase the variety of books children can gain access to. One of my favorite free resources is Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library which sends children ages 0-5 free books in the mail. You can sign up for that service here:
https://imaginationlibrary.com/ which also sends books to children in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and Australia. Amazon also has free children’s books and a simple internet search will help you find more.
I have moved a lot. Specifically, 12 times in my adult life. The first thing I packed were always my books. The first thing I unpacked were also my books. Every time we start purging things, my kids try to get rid of books and I end up taking them out of the donation box and putting them right back on the shelf.
When I experienced a pretty severe TBI in 2019, the WORST part was how much I struggled to read. It took well over a year of occupational therapy for me to be able to pick up a book and read without getting nauseous or a headache.
The number one, most impactful and easy to accomplish task parents can do for their children is to read to them. Also, continuously reading adult texts models that learning is a lifelong journey. I’m not afraid to say that I went back to school to pursue my masters so that my own children, who were pretty apathetic about education in the post-COVID era, could see that there is ALWAYS more to learn. Creating an atmosphere where being a lifelong learner is just how life works is also important. Much to my husband's and children’s annoyance, if I’m in earshot of him or any of the kids starting a sentence with “I wonder….” I will magically show up with a scholarly article on the topic. I just pictured myself as Beetlejuice there. If one kid asks a question and I start in on the topic, suddenly everyone else has to go to the bathroom.
Another easy thing parents can do in their homes is make sure that there are dedicated spaces for learning. Hours 3:30-5:00 are magic hours where everyone in the house is learning something. Making sure there are pens, pencils, paper, crayons, etc are in a common space as well as in their individual learning spaces promotes the prioritization of learning as well. Notice I am not using the word “homework” here? That is purposeful. School work in general is just opportunities to learn. In another attempt to break my own kids out of the apathy prison is reminding them that education wasn’t always a right or accessible to the majority of the world’s population. It still isn’t in many places today. Aren’t we just so lucky we get to learn? That is not sarcasm. I believe that wholeheartedly. Give me goosebumps just thinking about it.
Ironically, I actually struggled with this. I threw myself into my own students and admittedly have only attended 2 field trips and have never been to a PTA meeting for the kids I parent. Teaching made it more difficult for me to be involved in my children’s schools. I would attend the things my own children were in, especially since they were at an arts elementary school. What I did instead was support the teachers from afar. My kid’s schools are shipping addresses on my Amazon account. I communicated with their teacher through email, chatting while doing extended day pick-ups, or at teacher events we happened to be at together.
This year, since I had shifted to working from home, I immediately volunteered to deliver coffee to the teachers on their first day back. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep the night before. If you are not able to spend the work hours on your kiddo’s school campus, you can support them from afar. My kids knew that I was involved in the background. Just saying “I emailed Mrs. Smith today….” let my kids know that I knew their teachers and I knew what they were learning in school. The youngest does love being picked up from the “real car pool” lane, but he does realize he’s super lucky that I get to do that this year.
As a personal request, please do not speak poorly of your children’s teachers in front of them. I have had a couple that were not my favorite educators, but my kids never knew that and if you asked them, they probably would have no idea which ones I didn’t really enjoy. I’ve definitely had parents who were not fond of me either. You can talk about it with your BFF over wine, but please don’t let your kids hear it. It gives your child a license to act out in class, which I promise you, they will.
As someone who's been both the teacher and the parent in this equation, I know how overwhelming it can feel. That's why I created the EDU Parent Community - a space where parents can access practical strategies, connect with others facing similar challenges, and get the support they need to be their child's best educational advocate. Join us and discover that you're not alone in this journey.
Logan, J., Justice, L., Chaparro-Moreno, L. J., & Yumuş, M. (2019). When children are not read to at home: The million word gap. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics
Park, S., & Holloway, S. D. (2017). The effects of school-based parental involvement on academic achievement at the child and elementary school level: A longitudinal study. The Journal of Educational Research, 110(1), 1–16.
Maryville University. (2020, December 17). What every parent should know about language acquisition milestones and speech disorders. Maryville University Online.
https://online.maryville.edu/blog/language-acquisition/
