Living in the fast paced world of today, many parents and guardians are working professionals and are finding it hard to maintain work life, their life and be heavily involved in their child’s educational life. Parents are too busy providing a home life for their families that they seem to unconsciously rest the responsibilities of their child’s academia life on the shoulders of the school personnel.  Many parents may be unaware of what Parental Involvement (PI) really means and what it truly entails.

As a former high school educator, I have witnessed firsthand a broad spectrum of parental involvement. From a few parents being highly cognizant and overly involved in their child’s education to parents that showed the ghost effect and were always a “no show” while other parents fell somewhere in between the PI spectrum.  Parental Involvement consists of more than parents showing up for teacher conferences or attending social activities. PI is comprised of a true partnership between a student’s home and school life. According to a University of Washington professor, Margery B. Ginsberg, PhD; she states, “ For true partnership, parents and teachers must develop opportunities for two-way communication…the more we understand about parental involvement…the more we improve student learning (2012).”

  In my years of teaching high school where there was an array of students from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds the one thing that became most prevalent was the missing link of Parental Involvement. It was easy to notice a profound number of students whose parents were engaged in their education because the students showed better attendance, were self-motivators and always accelerated the highest in and out of the classroom. 

In order to allow students to be fully effective on any level of their academic life, parental involvement is the most important and provides the missing link to the student’s overall success.

Reference:

Ginsberg, PhD., M. B. (2012, July 19). Parent Involvement: A Two-Way Partnership with Schools|Roots of Action. Retrieved from https://www.rootsofaction.com/parent-involvement-a-two-way-partnership-with-schools/