H4 – Honor family/community involvement in the learning process.
Values and citizenship are ideas that are often “caught not taught”. This means that through observation, practice and reinforcement of good behavior, students are formed into successful members of society. This is where families and the community come into play. These entities are the examples that students need in order to be able to mimic and learn good practices from. Kirk’s article addresses just that by mentioning that “the recovery of virtue in America depends in great part upon the reinvigoration of family” (1987). The venn diagram below shows how all pieces of a child’s life, family, school and community, contribute to the student’s success. Family involvement in student’s education takes different forms in different families. Some parents can help their child with their homework, no matter the subject, while other families cannot. Regardless of the level of academic support families can provide, they can provide morally sound examples of how values and citizenship are just as important in being successful in school. Contributions include academic as well as moral support and modeling.
An effective way to be sure that families are involved in this endeavor of improving the values and behaviors of our students is to address the subject directly. Parents and family members need to be informed that they, as much as the educator, is responsible for setting a good example. During a “back to school night” or parent meeting at the beginning of the school year, I will discuss the yearly academic goals and go over the content we will be learning. I will tell parents about homework requirements, assessments and other classroom activities their students will do. In addition to this information though, I will talk about classroom expectations and how they can help their students be successful in their behavior. Respect, communication, politeness and strong effort will be the focus. As parents, they can uphold these values at home so that students are constantly surrounded by morally sound people. With the outside influence and ability to observe good values in all aspects of their life, students will be molded into sound citizens and classroom management will be more successful.
Kirk, R. (1987). Can Virtue Be Taught? The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things Are Written in the Sky. Retrieved from https://mountainlightschool.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/sis-session-6-reading-kirk1.pdf
Online Teaching Portfolio 