Parental Involvement in Their Child's Education

There are two ways that parents can participate in their student's education: through parental involvement and parental engagement. Simply, parental engagement can be defined as parents and teachers collaborating in order to meet the student or child's academic standards for learning. Parental engagement looks like helping their child at home with assignments. Parental involvement in a child's education is huge and has a variety of forms it can take. For example, parental involvement could look like volunteering in their child's classroom. Today, parents need to be engaging in their child's education more than ever. With some schools across the country implementing either full or partially remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic, it is important for parents to be supportive of their child's learning when a teacher may not be as easily available. It has been proven that children whose parents take an active role in their academics perform well academically, are more likely to graduate, have good social skills, and are less likely to have behavioral problems.  

A father helps his son with his reading skills. 

I think that parental involvement, as well as parental engagement, are both necessary factors in the success of a child in their education. From my own experience in school, it was so memorable when either of my parents would come to do a read-aloud for my classmates. Additionally, I have vivid memories of both of my parents helping me with homework assignments, and even when I was little and learning to read for the very first time. Had I not had the support from my parents at home, I do not think I would have progressed through the mastery of standards at the pace that was expected. Additionally, while teachers should always be available and willing to help their students with anything that they may need help with, sometimes it is hard for teachers to individually address each and everything that every individual student is struggling with in the classroom. So, if at-home parents can help them with some of those foundational skills, it will help their child ultimately in the long run. All in all, parental involvement and parental engagement are important for a child's learning success. It can look like a lot of different things and may be different for each family, but it is important for each family to find what works for them.