I searched a long time, and did a lot of research, before choosing a school. And I love GG’s school. It was very hard to get her into it, but now that she is in, TT will have a place, so I only had to go through it once.

One of the great things about this school is parent participation. We have to put in a minimum of 40 hours a year of volunteer hours. Some of which has to be classroom time, though some of it can be working concession stands at evening ball games, or providing maintenance on the playground or the building (which can be done on the weekend).

The classroom time gets us familiar with what is expected of our children. You can drop in at any time, there is a table at the back of the rooms with notes and instructions about what needs to be done and the tools and materials to do it. While you are working, you are listening in on what is going on in class. You can either change classes with your child or you can go to your favorite subject (like art, or the computer lab) and do all of your work in that room whether your child is there or not. And they start changing classes as early as kindergarten in this school, in kindergarten there is an art teacher and a foreign language teacher and a music teacher and a computer lab teacher and a PE teacher and then their regular teacher – later they change for the individual subjects, too, of course. But they change classes in kindergarten, and it is not confusing for them.

But, the point is that parents are welcome in the school at any time. Kids are not embarrassed to have their parents around, it’s normal to have several parents there eating lunch with their child and the child’s friends.

And, there are few discipline issues, so the teachers actually get to spend time teaching instead of trying to keep order in the classroom. There is a lot of communication between parents and teachers, and the kids simply know that their parents are going to find out about anything that happens, even the small stuff. Even if I don’t hear it from the teacher, odds are I’ll hear it from another parent (who was probably there when it happened). And, with parents that involved with their child’s school, they are going to be the kind of parents who are proactive about things like manners and rules and homework and good grades.

Another thing the school does that I love, before something new is introduced to the kids, there will be an evening class for the parents: “How to help your child with their _____ homework”. Some things are taught differently than the way we learned them, and when our kids come to one of those subjects then the teachers have one of these classes for the parents.

Which brings me to my most favorite thing. Remember in math and algebra, when it didn’t matter that you could get the right answer, you had to do it the way the teacher wanted, and you had to show your work? There is very little of that.

The teacher will show all of the ways to work a problem, and then say “do what works for you”. Sometimes the exercise might be “show three ways to work this problem”, but most of the time it’s just “solve the problem, show your work”. And for kids who think conversationally, it’s okay for them to write it as a paragraph instead of showing it mathematically.

For an algebra something or other where this is the first step of many, then the entire sequence is shown before the individual steps are taught, and then the kids understand why they are having to do this step a particular way instead of the “easiest” way. But once a child is proficient with the entire sequence, they are welcome to do it another way if they want. As long as they can explain how they got the answer (either mathematically or conversationally).

I am allowed to take GG and up to three of her friends out of the cafeteria (with their trays) during their lunch period so I can help them study something. In warm weather we can go outside, in cool weather I have to clear it with a teacher to use an empty classroom, but that’s no problem as long as no one else has already requested the room. She often asks me or RK if one of us can do this for her. And, of course, we almost always figure out a way to make it happen.

Does your child’s school go to this extent to involve parents in their child’s education? I believe that GG’s school is rare in this, and I think that’s a shame. Parents need to be involved in their kids’ education. They need to hang out with their child (and friends) at school and understand how the school day goes and what is and is not expected of them. When I was in school it was embarrassing for my mom to show up at school, but GG doesn’t see it that way. At her school, it’s embarrassing if you are the only one with parents who do not show up.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Daily Life, GlitterGirl. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.