Join the conversation

Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Matt Brown, who can typically be found blogging on education issues over at Relentless Pursuit of Acronyms.

When I pass along articles about education reform or discuss the challenges I faced when I taught with my friends, many of them throw their hands in the air and say “Matt, we can make all these policy changes until we’re blue in the face…it can’t help because parents just don’t care!” Some of my old coworkers expressed similar sentiments. I remain skeptical.

My old school held their first parent-teacher conferences of the year last October. I had just started teaching a few days before (school started in mid-August, but I wasn’t placed until late September), and I couldn’t wait to meet my students' parents and go over all the exciting things that were going to happen in Room 128 that year. I wore my best suit that day, much to the amusement of some of the staff (“Mr. Brown! You getting’ married after school today? You going to court?”), hoping that I could make a good impression.

People told me not to get my hopes up. Some said the meetings would be an exercise in futility. But I refused to be defeatist. When the time came, I sat in my classroom, smiling by my sign-in sheet and looking forward to discussing the year, our class goals and my students with their parents. Sadly, only one parent came, and she worked at the school. Our conversation lasted less than five minutes.

I wasn’t totally sure what was supposed to happen at a parent-teacher conference, but I suspected that parental attendance was a critical aspect. And I remember relaying the story to friends and other teachers that night with hints of disappointment. Many shrugged and said “What did you expect? They don’t care!,” but I wasn’t buying it. I wanted to do a little research behind the poor attendance.

One reason for the low turnout seemed painfully obvious. For reasons unknown to me, my district decided to have conferences from 1-3:30 PM on a school day. Most of my students came from single-parent homes, and most of their guardians worked or went to school themselves. We had a hard time getting a kid who puked picked up during the day, so getting a parent out of work to attend a conference seemed highly unlikely.

And later, after working with my students’ parents, I learned that many didn’t attend because they didn’t know what to ask or say. They hadn’t been to many conferences before, and as long as they weren’t getting phone calls about their child’s behavior, or Fs on the report card, they weren’t sure how the whole process worked. I couldn’t blame them. I had never given a parent-teacher conference…it would have to be a learning experience for both of us.

I worked with most parents at least once over the course of the year, and every single one specifically pointed out that they cared about their child’s education, and that they knew how important that education was. I certainly believed them. But it also became apparent that several weren’t exactly sure of the most effective ways to be partners with teachers in their child’s education. It’s like when I go to see my mechanic. I know that my car is important, and I know I need to take care of it. I don’t have a whole lot of experience with cars though, and I can sometimes get a little intimidated when I’m around the guy. So long as my car isn’t shooting out flames, and my mechanic doesn’t specially mention anything, I don’t ask a lot of questions. It doesn’t mean I don’t care, I just don’t know the best way to express it.

I get frustrated when pundits, or occasionally even teachers, say that parents don’t care. While I’m sure that over the course of a career, you may find a few families that are in fact totally out to lunch, throwing your hands up at the parents lets administrators, politicians and society off the hook. If parents don’t care, then we don’t have to worry about pesky things like school reform or teacher working conditions, right? What’s the point?

I suspect that a lot of the folks we dismiss as uncaring do care very much, they might just not know the best way to be a positive asset for their student.