How to Be More Involved in Your Child's Education

Many times parents are not really responsive to volunteering at the middle and high school grade levels. The responsibilities in each parent's personal life are numerous. At this point in life many parents have multiple children, and career demands to deal with. There are so many issues that need your attention. Here are 4 tips to see how you can help at school this year, even if you have very limited free time.

Skills

Using your professional skills to help things run smoother at school is great use of your time. If you are too busy to volunteer during school hours, the teacher may need someone to make phone calls. Your connections in the community could bring in special guests to the class. Perhaps your networking skills could bring in some supplies that your child's class is lacking.

Contact

Be in some type of contact regularly with your child or teens teachers. Email may be the preferred method of communication. It is not the teacher's job to make sure that your child does their class work, home work, or to pass their courses. He or she is simply presenting the material needed to pass state standardized tests. Once you realize that, you see how important you as a parent are. Parental involvement and extra help at home can make the difference between pass or fail, for many students. The connections that you have with the teachers, can only help. Schedule time to do this each month. Your child may hide the fact that they are not doing so well. A direct link to the teacher may help you to catch your child up in coursework, so that they do not fail the quarter.

Trips

If there is a special trip that is being hosted by the school, why not volunteer to chaperon. Many special field trips take the whole school day, or involve travel out of the city. When taking large groups of children or teens out in public, you can never have enough adult supervision. However with so many parents working, many simply do not have the free time to always be available for these trips. Planning in advance, may let you be available to help with this one particular trip.

Organizations

Band or Football may important to your children. Choose at least one thing during the school year that you can do. Perhaps the Band booster club is having a fundraiser that you can help with one Saturday morning. Contact the Football coach, to see what you can do to further support the team. If you do not ask sometimes you may not know. Many notices do not make it home alerting you about some fundraisers or events.

Taking time to do something at your child's school is important. This small effort can help to build relationships with teachers and other parents. You will have a better insight into your child or teen's day at school. You will have a first hand picture of what the other children are like. The pressures and problems your child faces may have more meaning. If your child attends public school, this extra involvement can give you a better insight into what is actually going on in the school system. Spend some extra time this school year being an involved parent.