The importance of parents

Hello everyone,

I may have said this before, but it bears repeating:

Parents are the most important people in the lives of children.

If I need to put it more specifically, let me say that parents are most important people in the lives of teenagers, too.

No, really. Recent research confirms it. Parents are even more important than peers. Parents are more important than friends or drugs or sex or rock and roll or any of the cliched things in a teenager's life.

I know they don't act like it sometimes (the teenagers I mean), but they really value their parents.

This includes lousy parents, outstanding parents, and all the parents in between. It includes angels and abusers, and everything in between.

Teachers are important, but we are never as important to our students as their parents are.

What this means for us is that we really will do our best work when we collaborate with the parents.

Most of the time this collaboration is tacit and unspoken. Parents entrust their children to us, and we stand "in loco parentis" (it means "in place of the parent," not "the parents are crazy")--we treat the children as we would treat our own children. (Many of the restrictions we have, by the way, are because some colleague or another has abused this trust--or has been perceived to abuse the trust--and legal or legislative recourse was necessary to protect the children or the parents' rights.)

Some of the collaboration is routine, such as when we send grades, have parent/teacher conferences, or make routine positive phone calls .

Occasionally the collaboration needs to be explicit and immediate. We need to call the home and report some misbehavior that must be handled collaboratively.

This last is the most important tool a teacher has to control student behavior. I wonder that teachers hold it as a threat, or delay using it. Frequent contact with parents (both positive and negative, both written and verbal, in person or on the phone) are indispensable. If you suspend a child from class, which you have a legal right to do for certain offenses, you MUST conference with the parents, either by phone or in person (unless they refuse).

It's true that parents are sometimes dysfunctional. The exceptional parent may scare you; a few times in your career, you may witness the removal of a child from the home; you may be aware of abuse, drug use, alcoholism, or mental illness. These are rare, however, and the possibility should not deter you from making a strong relationship with as many of your students' parents as is possible for you.

I'm both a teacher and a parent. I try to treat my students the way I wanted my children to be treated (my children are all adults now, but the feeling hasn't left me). Above all, I wanted my children to be well protected and well educated.

Don't forget the importance of your students' parents; collaborate with them; you will all be better for it.

Jeff Combe