Despite the old cliché, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, I must confess that my motivation for reading Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children came from just that. Through many of the research courses and discussion seminars we take place in as TFA corps members and urban school teachers, we have learned that the achievement gap begins well before the first day of school, largely in part to vocabulary exposure. The difference in language experiences and their connection to outcomes are the premise of Hart and Risley’s research, but what most intrigued me was a comment on the difference in spoken vocabularies between adults and children.
The book cover’s jacket reports the findings that, “by age 3 spoken vocabularies recorded from the children from professional families were larger than those recorded for the parents in the welfare families.” This discovery made the existing vocabulary discrepancies all too meaningful and sparked my own interest in the features of “Everyday Parenting” outlined in chapter four of the book. Even with all that our early child hood teachers do to overcome these challenges in their classrooms, we must explore ways outside of the classroom to support them, knowing that from this data young children had higher recorded spoken vocabularies than the adults of the children in some of our classrooms. I find myself thinking that as early childhood teachers equalize early learning experiences for children, what can be done culturally to enhance the language experiences for parents, so that children can have more quality language experiences outside of school?
Chapter Four, “Everyday Parenting” discusses the ideas that amount of parenting per hour and the quality of the verbal content associated with the parenting are strongly related to the IQ score of the child. Hart and Risley go on to give many examples of what parents do day to day to add quality to their interactions and below are some summarized as the following features;
- They Just Talked…
- Talking for Sociability
- Talking to stay Involved
- They Listened
- Listening to Add information
- Listening to Encourage Commenting
- Listening to Prompt Elaboration
Upon reading this chapter and having the above knowledge about some parents’ recorded spoken vocabulary, what can we do as an educational community to encourage this in our students’ homes? Is there anything we can do or is this overstepping boundaries? Are there other experiences that can take the place of these features and still have meaningful results?
Molly -
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful point about the role of education that occurs in the home. Even when teachers are trying their hardest to instill education and knowledge, the reality of the situation is that a significant amount, if not the majority of, learning occurs at home. Be it social skills or academic vocabulary, children learn from their parents, and they always have.
At my school, Bay Brook Elementary-Middle, parents are invited to take GED classes and English as a Second Language classes after school. Parents are even invited to learn more about 100 Book Challenge so that they can assist their children at home, and most recently, our parents were invited to learn strategies to help their children prepare for the upcoming Maryland State Assessment. The more educated parents are, the better they can help their children succeed.
I do not think it is "out of school boundaries" to educate parents. In fact, I think it is a school's duty to make sure parents are actively involved in their children's education, and this sometimes means providing parents with the education necessary so that they can better help their kids. The role of the parent should not be discounted or undermined by schools; it should be championed. Only when parents and schools work together is knowledge taught and obtained by eager young minds.
Katie Packer
I think you make a really important point about adult literacy--a point that has come up in some of our other blog posts. Even in the first grade, I have students who struggle to complete their homework, because their parents can't help them. The material is simply too difficult.
ReplyDeleteWhen I consider this discrepancy in terms of vocabulary, I have to wonder: if a first grader's vocabulary exceeds that of her parents, who is to challenge her outside of the classroom? How is she to grow and learn and meet her full potential, if she is to be limited by her surroundings? And--most chilling--what must these parents be feeling? No parent, I'm sure, wants to feel as though they handicap their kids.
So what do we do? If I read your post correctly, you're asking what teachers and schools can do to increase adult literacy, so that parents can, in turn, help their kids succeed. It's not much, but I send a weekly reading packet home that my first graders must complete with a parent. It includes a fluency passage, a set of sight words, and six vocabulary words which they must learn to spell, and which they must use in meaningful sentences. Parents have had positive things to say about these packets--they provide them with the tools to help their kids.
My school has also been working to help parents (though we have a long way to come in this effort), by holding parent workshops in literacy, math, and test prep. By providing a safe space for adults to learn new skills, ask questions, and converse with their peers, these workshops begin to close the gap between parent knowledge and student expectations. They also show that our school values parents in the community. More importantly, they show a recognition that parents, despite their shortcomings, really do want to help their kids. I think this is often misunderstood in the communities where we teach: perhaps it's not that parents are too lazy or uninvolved to help students with their homework. Perhaps they have simply not been given the necessary tools to do so. As educators, it is our job to help bridge this gap.
Of course, my school has only held two such workshops. And as a member of the parent involvement committee, I myself need to step up and work harder to bring more to fruition.
Thanks for your post. It made me think about what I have (and haven't!) been doing to involve my students' influencers on a daily basis.
Chloe
An assignment in our early childhood class last fall (hi Kyla and Jamie!) addressed this very issue: what could we send home to parents that would help them teach vocabulary, reading strategies, sight words, or anything else to their early learners? Each of us was assigned to come up with a video project, and the results were really cool to see. Some people modeled read-alouds, showing parents how they could use even a simple story (with very easy words, like the printable Reading A-Z books that many of us send home with our children) to teach concepts of print, or how they could use an everyday task like putting away groceries to reinforce concepts like shapes, vocabulary, and colors. Watching these videos, all of which were very creative and inventive, brought up for me one overriding thought: the most important thing is that these parents TALK TO their children. I've seen so many parents and their children in Target or at Wal-mart where the child will ask "What is that?" and the parent will tell the child to be quiet or stop bothering them. Opportunities for learning vocabulary, practicing speaking, or learning critical thinking skills are everywhere in the lives of these children, but parents need to be taught how to take advantage of these moments. The problem is, as has been pointed out, how can we get parents to actually take advantage of these opportunities? I know that my kindergarten team is holding a parent workshop this month, but as Chloe said, we need to work harder. I think that the videos were definitely a good step towards thinking about how to educate parents, but we all need to hold ourselves accountable to the next step: actually making sure that parents get and follow through with this information.
ReplyDeleteBased on what others have mentioned, my school has done relatively little to address adult/parent literacy. Upon reading the measures that your schools have implemented to improve parent literacy, it was incredibly surprising to hear the active role that your schools have taken. Your schools truly are working to address all aspects of your students' education and despite that you may feel that your efforts are not enough, my views (from a school that does not provide any resources) of your existing programming are incredibly positive. I, as many of you do, believe that it is a school's place to address all areas of a child's education, including adult literacy. Its effects will undoubtedly support out students and I look forward to implementing several of the techniques mentioned.
ReplyDelete-Michelle
The need to involve and educate parents doesn't stop with literacy. There are a lot of concepts and skills in math that many parents of my 4th graders do not know how to help their kids with. I try my best to send home instructions and steps on the things we are working on. Additionally, I try to show parents how they can make simple games to practice skills, and provide them with resources to help their kids with things like multiplication facts.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how receptive parents would be to being taught the material again, because it may come with the insinuation that they are unintelligent or are "dumber than a 4th grader." However, I have found parents receptive to being given tips on how to help their students in school. Perhaps this is an avenue through which we can reach their parents.
I was happy to read this post, because I was just about to respond to another by asking what we, as educators, can do about the language gap that's starting at home.
ReplyDeleteI was also really interested to read everyone else's responses on things that they have been doing to support their parents in order to support their students. What I've noticed, however, is that everyone who has responded so far teaches elementary. I feel that these teachers can have the biggest effect at home, but my question is what can I, as a secondary teacher, do?
In high school, parents don't help their students with homework as much, and even if they do, it's almost expected that each subject teacher would know more about a topic than a parent. Therefore, any homework help that's given is minimal. Are there any secondary teachers out there who have suggestions on how we can help our parents?
The one thing I'm working on in my classroom is supporting my students who have children of their own. Some of my extra credit opportunities involve using Spanish at home with their children or reading certain things to their children. I'm hoping this is something I can develop more and use more often in my class next year. But is this enough? It might be helping the next generation, but is there anything I can do to help my teenage students now?
Lindsay
Milli's post reminded me of a conversation the other first grade teachers at my school and I had this past week. We were discussing our students' vocabulary, or rather lack there of, and the culture that our students experience at home. We talked about two things that I think are relevant to this discussion.
ReplyDeleteThe first was that some of my students (not all) live in homes were it is not seen as acceptable for the child to participate in adult conversations or really instigate conversations with adults. The child is essentially separate from the adult conversational world. Milli gave the classic example of a child's question in the grocery store of "what is that" and being told to simply be quiet. I think that another example of this is when my kids get picked up at school, a lot of my parents don't ask them what they did at school that day. Rather, they sign them out while on their cell phones and the child follows the parent along, singing to herself while the grown-up remains aloof. Clearly, this is not the case for all of my parents but I do admit that it is rare that I hear a parent ask their child the classic "How was school today" which disappoints me. However, it also brings me to question as many of you have pointed out, whether parents understand or know the value of these simple conversations. Moments like these seem trivial day to day but, as research shows, they obviously build up. I would assert that it is our role as educators to educate our parents as well on how important these moments are.
I would say that the other important thing when considering my students' limited vocabulary is how much they actually interact with adults at home. Many of my students live in single parent houses and have parents who work the night shift or simply, who are not in the house for more than a few minutes with their child. The child might be watched by an older sibling, cousin or even, nobody. How does this limited interaction with adults continue to limit their ability to explore words and talk? How can we find another outlet for our students to talk to and most importantly, converse with, if they don't have anyone to do so with at home? Again, this reiterates to me how important it is to allow the students to converse with adults at school and goes back to the running conversation in almost all the blogs about the importance of strong relationships with our students.
Molly,
ReplyDeleteI"m glad I came back to read your post somehow missing it the first time I went through our (awesome) blog!
I think, after having read the book and having read and commented on all the other posts, that you are asking the single most important question about this book: what can we do as an educational community to encourage this in our students’ homes?
Katie is right - it is absolutely not overstepping our boundaries to educate parents, assist parents, and get parents involved in any way possible. But in reality, how much can we do to encourage parents, help parents, and guide parents in helping their children, particularly in the first few years?
What I've seen so far, contrary to a previous post of mine on another blog post, is that some schools do quite a bit of stuff to reach out to parents (including GED programs, as Katie mentioned), while others do very little.
At my school, Ben Franklin High School down in Brookyln/Curtis Bay, there is little involvement of parents in any aspect with the exception of basketball. Parents are not encouraged to take GED classes, attend school events (like Award Ceremonies), or help their children study/do homework. As a secondary teacher, I've tried to reach out to parents, make a connection, and get them to help me out in any way possible. However, in a culture like we have at our school where parents are not a priority, it is far too easy for our parents to become disengaged.
Some schools are doing wonderful things - getting parents to GED classes, having parents take classes on the importance of early childhood education, and simply having parents involved in their child's day-to-day activities.
I still want to know, though, how we can get to MORE parents, get to them BEFORE they have their first child, and education them on the importance of talking to and reading to their child them BEFORE their child is even in Pre-Kindergarten.