Parental Involvement

At a high School level, it is more difficult to connect with your

children, and get involved in their school systems. "Although this may be

true, more than ever, the ninth and tenth grade years are when the parents

and teachers need to pull information and insights about their

charges"(Welsh, Patrick 2003). This quotation is very important because

Welsh writes in the article, in the Ninth and Tenth grade are when the

student's friends made the choices that lead them to the use of Marijuana

and alcohol and minimal efforts in school. An English teacher at T.C.

Williams high School, talks about parent teacher conference day. "What

makes me nervous is the possibility of some parent, usually a mother,

ripping me about their kids grade, and me losing my temper"(Welsh, Patrick,

2003). The English teacher does state, "Even the most painful parent-

teacher meetings benefit the students." Such meetings are common, and they

are getting increased under the No Child Left Behind Act by President Bush

in 2001. "Even if the meetings with the parents are only 10 minutes, the

time parents take to spend with teachers can have an enormous impact on

their children's attitude toward learning and success in the classroom."

Another example of how the parents and teachers can communicate is if there

is a death or divorce in the family to help understand how a great student

can start to go downhill. One of the biggest students in the teachers

class, a 6'4 monster who sat int the back with the look on his face as if

he wanted to kill the teacher. Through communication with the parent the

teacher understood that it was the student's inability to understand poems

that were read in the class, while the girls in the class easily understood

the poems. With the information learned from communicating with the parent,

the teacher was able to reach out to the student, and help him with the

poems. "As a parent, I know it is very hard to meet with a teacher." "Even

the most painful parent teacher meetings benefit the students.

Migrant Students are probably the hardest to reach out to due to the

inability of the parents at school students to speak English. Hillside High

School is one of two public schools that serves it students in Appleton, and

Mexican Americans. The teachers had a very hard time though communicating

with the students parents because they did not speak English. The parents

needed to communicate with the parents because their students were falling

behind in their school work. In fact, only 39% of migrant students

graduated from high school on time. Hillside High School did not stop

though. They knew the importance of having the parents involved in the

school systems with the children, and started the Migrant Education Program,

which was developed for migrant students in order to create a sense of

belonging,