Parents and everyone who assumes their role

Great timing on this question as parent/teacher conferences are held city wide(?) this week in high schools. As an advisor, it falls upon me to reach out to parents of the 28 students in my advisory to ensure that they attend this week; our school has the policy of witholding the first marking period grades until a parent etc. shows up.

Even with that in place, it doesn't always work that we see the parents of the students that we most need to conference with. That is, the students who are truants or who are in danger of not graduating, or ones we want to recommend for remediation or testing or counseling. Many of the parents of these students, who may have a record of school phone calls, are simply fed up with missing work and coming to school to "deal" with their child's next round of misbehavior. It's painful to sit in a meeting with that chemical makeup -- and I'm speaking here about meetings that the advisor, the deans, or the guidance counsellors will call in order to air concerns with the parent. (When the issue is academic, teachers are often invited to these too.) I have heard parents say anything from, "Well, I don't know what to do with him so I just give him to you," to, "I'm sending you to live with your father." We often share their frustration, but clearly this is can be devastating to the child and augment his or her behavior. Of course we have many parents of failing or troubled (I hate that word, but it'll have to do) students who are fully supportive of the message coming from the school and deeply appreciate the attention we have given the matter. And in general, the reaction I get from parents is along those lines.

This year I have an AVID advisory, which in many ways is a different ball game than the advisories I've lead the previous 2 years. AVID, if you haven't heard of it, is a national program started in California that targets mid-level students who have the potential, but perhaps neither the means nor the exposure, to go to a 4 year college. In our school, AVID students are culled from the top performing 8th graders, though we also accept students in the 10th grade who prove theor academic meddle in the 9th. As a note, our top performing students (students who test at or just above grade level on math and literacy tests) are typical mid-level students at places like NHS and Amherst High. At any rate, this is a very successful program in our school largely because of the efforts of our cooridinator who sits down with parents at orientation and makes sure that they are on board to support their children in their collge preparation. What you might have guessed by now, then, is that I already expect a much larger turnout than in years past.

Before I run off to school, I want to mention a few other things briefly that won't really have an explicit connection but I'm sure you can string them together. Whether you bother them at work, call them on their cell phones, or email them, parents are by and large incredibly appreciative that you have taken the time to do what you're doing. I believe it assures them that even though their kid is not in a competitive school, and is in fact in the very same building that once housed one of the most dangerous and low-performing schools in the city, someone in there cares and their child may actually walk away with an education. I currently teach 137 students. At parent conferences, it's likely that along with the advisory parents, I'll only see parents of kids who failed English this marking period, and a dozen or so of the students who just really like me and want me to meet their parents. The reason I used "parents etc." in the first paragraph is because there's a lot of etc. I have a student who lives with her aunt because mom died and dad doesn't much exist, a student last year who lived with his cousin for reasons he wouldn't explain, and another student this year who lives with GREAT grandma. There are 18 year old students who have legal autonomy, students who are in the foster care system and get kicked out the moment they turn 18, students who themselves are parents. All this puts into perspective those nasty conferences I've had where parents have told me to fuck off and of course the one where the student, his mom who he translated for, and I all cried at some point when Joni, who works as hard at school and in a restaurant as anyone to support his family, said that he was going to make it to college despite his learning disability and despite the fact that both his brother and father were to be deported later that month. You just can't make that stuff up.