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~ in response to "How to Manage the Late to the Game Parent" by Holden Clemens
I love the movie "Back to the Future." I own the trilogy on DVD if anyone would like to borrow it. Instead of parents using the flux-capacitor to travel back in time to have their students do their missing assignments. I would like the parents to take a trip back in time before the use of Internet was integrated into the everyday lives of a teacher. They wouldn't even have to travel back that far in time. Maybe early to mid 1990's! What did we do before the Internet?
There are so many online tools that are used today to help parents keep track of their children's school work. To list a few: online gradebooks, online assignment calendars, email and online text books. Even with all these extra online communication tools, there still seems to be "parents late to the game or not at the game all together."
There are many possible explanations for what seems to be these parents' lack of concern. Perhaps they do not have access to a computer with the Internet. Maybe they work all the time? Maybe they do not have the skills to effectively use these online tools? Whatever the case may be, you can only do your best to contact them early and often by phone or "good ole" traditional letters.
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Works Cited
Clemens, H. How to Manage the Late the Game Parent. Retrieved June 27, 2011, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/parental-involvement-holden-clemens?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
Back to the Future is one of my favorite movies of all time! 1 point 21 jigawatts! What a great line!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of 1.21, as in a gpa, it is quite sad to find that you are right: many of the students' parents have all of the tools available to them to stay on top of their students' grades. Unfortunately some do not.
Still, we cannot give up. We must continue to use all of the technology available to us: blogs, online gradebooks, mass emails, websites, etc.
We also have to teach our students how to accept accountability. They have online tools to help them learn as well. Teaching students -- and their parents -- about the various technologies available to them to help them with their learning is something that we must do.
For some of the parents that don't respond at all, perhaps that is the indication that that is the reason why our students aren't doing well. Perhaps it is for those students that we must go above and beyond to try to help motivate them to succeed in the classroom. If we can do that, then maybe they will value education more and in the future, they'll not do as their dads and moms did.
And that'll be one less Biff in the world.