I was browsing around on the internet to find some stuff about math and some suggestions about good strategies and methods for becoming a good math teachers and stumbled upon what looks like a great website for not only mathematics but teaching in general. There is a bunch of information on this it talks about everything from how much how work to give to whole lesson plans.
I particularly fell in love with this one page where it addresses what most of us in class thought was a major part of becoming a successful teacher in any school set not to mention urban, which is getting the parents involved. The web address to this page alone is: http://www.nctm.org/resources/content.aspx?id=6340 It mentions stuff like creating an email address account just for the parents, create post cards to send to the parents and stuff like have a family day for math etc. One of my favorite things it mentioned was to try and recruit parents as tutors or helpers in the classroom once in a while if possible to serve as support for their child and other students.
It is just the tip of the iceburg as far as parent involvement goes but it does start the ball rolling. Remember the first step is breaking the ice and just making contact with an open hand is crucial. If anyone else has some good ideas please feel free to leave any suggestions.
Web address to MCTM: http://www.nctm.org/
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I like the idea of a family day for math, but as a teacher I would worry about inviting parents to be classroom helpers and maybe even tutors. While I agree that it's absolutely necessary to get parents involved, I think education already suffers from having too many chefs in the kitchen, so to speak. Everyone thinks they know what's best for schools, and, as the saying goes, "those who can't do teach." With these prevalent negative perceptions of teaching, I would worry that by inviting parents to co-teach or facilitate lessons, I would lose some of my autonomy and sovereignty within my own classroom. Not that I'm after control or power, but after spending the time to get a degree in teaching, I would like to think that, chances are, I know more about the subject than a parent who is not a teacher, and I would worry that tension could easily develop between the teacher and parent if parents were encouraged to work as, or directly under, instructors.
As a side note, while I agree with parent involvement in teaching, I do so under the pretense of agreeing with (limited) parent involvement in most things. What I wonder is why I don't hear people advocating for parents to be involved in medicine or other professions that also affect their children. I can't imagine someone making the argument that a parent should help the doctor take a child's blood pressure or find a vein for a blood test. It seems to me that, sometimes, advocates of parental involvement in education forget that teaching is a specialized profession just like any other.
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