Parent Teacher Behavior

The correlation of a good parent and teacher relationship

Parents and teachers constitute two of the most important information sources of young children’s social skills. However, Parents and teachers often are very influential adults in children’s lives, and thus they can provide important perspectives and information concerning children’s behavior. Parents are unique compared to other adults in that they often have observed their children’s behavior across time and across diverse situations.

It declared that parents often are aware of subtleties in their children’s behavior and are able to observe them in different contexts, and, therefore, they should be included in the assessment of their children. Inclusion of mothers, fathers, and teachers as assessors allows for comparisons regarding their agreement about children’s behavior across situations with consideration of physical location as well as with sensitivity to differential behavioral values. (Mouly, 2000)

In research it has been found that teachers benefit from involvement with parents. Teachers who had high involvement with parents indicated that they were more proficient in instructional and professional activities, devoted more time to instruction, and maintained better parent relationships than did teachers who had little contact with parents. As a result of these reciprocal benefits of parent-teacher relationships, others have encouraged the use of home school collaboration programs to help modify children’s academic and social behavior in school. (Slavin, 2005)

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Parents play an important role in an exceptional child’s life and must inform teachers of their special conditions since no two children are alike. (Mouly, 2000) “Teachers can be very helpful in supporting a child’s treatment …once parents inform them about the disorder.” Parents can provide information to the teachers and school personnel about their child’s medication or other special needs. From here, teachers can provide parents with occasional progress reports. “Even if a child …is not active at school, teachers should be informed that …treatment can improve the child’s ability to learn.”

However, misunderstandings between student, parent and teacher are common, but can be lessened with early communication between parent and teacher. The first contact between parent and teacher should be made before problems arise with the student.

Parents can get involved in school activities in many ways, they can assist teachers with class once a week, volunteer to talk to the class on a particular topic, help with field trips or donate supplies for special events or projects.

Some techniques that have effectively been used when working with parents of exceptional students are as follows, effective use of home liaisons, teachers who go on visits with home liaisons to enhance communication between school and parents, treating the parents with respect, encouraging their continued assistance with their child’s education, and complimenting them on participation in their child’s education. Some other suggestions for improvements that could be made are, training parents specifically in their roles in Individual Education Plans and School Evaluation Teams; obtaining through interviews and observations, viewpoints and feelings of parents; communication through media forms (announcements about appropriate meetings); guest speakers for parent meetings who would give in depth training concerning parental rights, early intervention, and transition plans; all teachers should be required to make personal contact with parents even if there is no apparent intervention needed, this will keep the door of communication open; activities taught at school that would have a parent participation component included at home.

It is very important that teachers help the parents of exceptional children to learn their rights. (OCD, 2005) Some of these parents don’t know them at all and some only know bits and pieces that seem misconstrued. Teachers are required to have the parents sign their parental rights at all the meetings with the Diagnostician that would be concerning the child’s education. It would be helpful for the parents to know and understand what they are signing for them to feel more comfortable. Most parents are kind of scared to sign things that they are unsure about, and then they are tense and unable to really make the best decisions about their child. (Slavin, 2005)

In conclusion, I feel that working with parents of exceptional students will cause a mix of emotions. You are required to be on your toes at all times and they expect you to know everything, but as long as you treat them with respect and follow the simple guidelines from this paper, you shouldn’t have a problem. You just have to keep in mind that you are teaching their pride and joy exceptionalities and all.

References

Mouly, G. (2000). Psychology for effective teaching. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

OCD Resource Center, (n.d.). Child & adolescent ocd. Retrieved Mar. 20, 2005.

Slavin, B. (2000). Learners with exceptionalities.

Ford, D. (1996, Aug 05). Good parent-teacher relationship benefits children. College ofAgriculture and Home Economics, Retrieved Mar 20, 2005

Jones, D. (1997, Mar ), Working with navajo parents of exceptional children.

Communication is the key. Retrieved Mar. 20, 2005, from Children, Youth and Family

Establishing a parent-teacher relationship. (1998).