Turning Points 2000 - Chapter 9: Involving Parents and Communities

This chapter stresses the importance of involving communities and parents in school. Besides the importance of children working with their parents and communities to improve and support their education, there is a political side to it as well. The community in some sense controls the education, and parents want to control their child's education to some extent as well, so it is important to get every party involved that wants to be. But besides the politics it is actually proven that parent involvement does help with student achievement because the student has their parent at their side supporting and encouraging them. Some families drift apart as a student gets older thinking it is to help their child mature, but it is alway important for student to have their parents there to guide them so the schools need to reach out to parents to prevent this from happening. The chapter offers different ways to include parents, such as simply monitoring their child's work. The community can also serve as a tool for educating middle grades students such as career education and after school programs. The extra support from parents and the community can really help a student succeed.

As Turning Points says, it’s a given that parents and the community needs to be involved in the education of the students in their area for many reasons. I really think having the support of the community and parents can really benefit a child. If a child does not have a strong family atmosphere then a teacher can either try and get these parents as involved as they possibly can in their child's education to promote family bonding and support. If parents just don’t want to then I think it is the job of the teacher to supply ample support from elsewhere to make up for the lack of family support. Any kind of support is better than none, and that is where the community can step in as well. Students can learn from going out in their community and experiencing what it’s all about, it just allows for a different way of learning and looking at things and is a sort of adventure outside the school walls.