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College of Education professor works to improve teacher-parent relationships
by Mark McGowan
Lee Shumow, a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Foundations, and the other grantees will produce a Web site to disseminate their projects to other colleges.
"There is quite broad agreement that parents are a vital influence on their children's school success, and that when schools and parents work well together, children are better adjusted than when they do not," Shumow said.
Yet teacher education programs are slow to catch up.
"Very few teachers now teaching have any preparation for working with parents," she said. "Some of the new standards for teacher education suggest it is important for teachers to understand children's backgrounds and to work cooperatively with parents and the community."
Shumow is at work with a wide spectrum of ideas, including taking parent-teacher cooperation outside the school walls.
"The purpose is to create and disseminate models and demonstrations of how colleges of education can prepare teachers to work with parents," Shumow said. "The gist of my project is trying to incorporate activities with other faculty throughout the teacher preparation program, rather than having a separate class such as `Relationships with Parents,' or some such title."
In Fran Falk Ross' reading methods classes, students are collecting ideas on how to help parents to teach their child to read. Classes in assessment designed by Lisa Mehlig include practice and tips on communicating those results to parents. Students in Linda O'Neill's philosophy of education class will interview teachers and write papers relating teachers' beliefs and practices and how philosophers conceived the roles of parents and teachers.
Students in child development courses learn how to ask parents to provide an understanding of how their child adjusts and learns. These students also will observe children and interview their parents for a written case study that will serve as their final exam.
"I have some great comments that these students made about how important they realized parents were in the process," Shumow said.
Shumow also is collaborating with the Kaneland School District, as required by the grant.
She is evaluating teacher-parent relationships, working with the district's reading coordinator to develop new learning approaches and teaching a master's-level course for 17 members of the Kaneland faculty.
"Each teacher is going to develop a parental involvement program for their class," she said. "Then, we're going to be able to use the teachers' projects and these activities we put in place as examples of best practices."
Some of the grant funds also will help incorporate family literacy events into Elburn schools this spring and into Elburn Days in August, which will bring school-sponsored reading activities out of the classroom and into a fun setting more inviting to all parents.
"We'll have some storytellers and other fun activities there, which will draw a lot more families than to a lecture or meeting," Shumow said.
"One of the most important influences on how involved parents are is how much the school invites parents to be involved, by having both an invitational climate and a responsiveness to the culture of the community and providing information to parents," she added. "It's a two-way kind of communication."
Shumow's research becomes more vital considering societal changes over the years, such as how rooted teachers are in the communities where they work and the role of women.
"When I was a child, the vast majority of American mothers were at home, and many of the mothers had a different relationship with the school than today," she said. "All of these changes in society have made it more important to focus on methods of connecting home and school."
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