Parental Involvement

The School-Family Connection gave an overarching understanding of the dynamics between school and family influences and how their positive or negative interactions directly impact students. There were two outstanding findings in this collection of data which I believe are the most important factors that influence students’ school and family life. The first one is the misconceptions among stakeholders (p.11). Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions and preconceived ideas among those involved in the school and family settings. As the article notes, “misconception links to mistrust” and this mistrust causes a significant obstacle in communication and understanding. School administrators and teachers, often times, have very specific notions regarding their students’ family support system and when these expectations aren’t met they are unable to adapt and create flexible programs or support sources for their students. Likewise, many parents or caretakers feel that school administrators and teachers have rigid responsibilities which do not meet their child’s needs. The lack of communication diminishes the possibility of positive interaction between those involved. Essentially, this is the core foundations for any human interaction. Without this very basic factor there can never be a healthy relationship between those involved in a student’s educational development.
The second crucial factor is resources that support student progress, especially infrastructure. Apart from having leadership development, intervention programs and outreach strategies (p.13) ,it is imperative that the infrastructure is well organized and flexible enough to these new developments. Without having a structure that allows free flow of communication without the posing obstacles (such as bureaucracy) then the parent-school relationship will not flourish.