Brief background of the case Most of Ming Ming Kindergarten’s parents are from Mainland China. They usually adopt the parenting style of authoritarian or neglecting. They will punish their children to discipline them.
Some of them give up disciplining them because they do not know how to or they do not have time to do so. Ming Ming Kindergarten does not have any parent-teacher association. Parents have low participation in school. Teachers will only meet the parents twice a year to talk about the performances of their children. The benefits of parental involvement in early childhood education It is important to promote parental involvement in early childhood education.
Parental involvement is critical to the educational success of children. If the kindergarten could acknowledge the relevance of children’s family, cultures and promote parental involvement, the school can develop a supportive environment for learning through meaningful activities that engage and empower families (Rhodes, Enz, & LaCount, 2006). Parental involvement could benefit to the three parties that I will illustrate below. First of all, parental involvement benefits the children. If the kindergarten and the families could work together, children could have a better chance to success.
It is not only in the school life, but throughout their lives (Henderson, & Berla, 1996). Parental involvement benefits the three parties – children, parents and school. I will illustrate them below. Parental involvement benefits the children’s learning. As the children understand that their parents will have communication with the teachers, they will work harder to be a good student.
Therefore it helps the children to achieve higher grades or scores and class attendances. Children are willing to finish their homework on time and they will do the homework nicely. On the other hand, parental involvement benefits children’s behaviour and self-esteem. Children will have more positive attitudes and behaviour.
They will feel better with themselves and will be more discipline in school and at home. Children will have a positive feeling towards the school. If the parents and the school can communicate well and exchange children’s issues successfully, children will be benefited by this. Because the parents and the school would exchange information, such as children’s needs and latest issues that could help the children.
Besides that, parental involvement benefits the parents too. Parents have interaction and exchange information and views with the school, they could understand the development and the needs of their children. On the other hand, they could exchange parenting skills and other information with other parents during the school activities. Therefore they could have a positive effects on learning parenting skills and styles to discipline their children. Parents could be more aware of their children’s learning through the intensive communication with the children. They could help their children to have better learning activities at home.
Therefore they have better self-esteem to teach their children. Parents could have better understanding about the school and better relationship with the school. Therefore the parents could have better support if they ask the teachers for assistances. Lastly, parental involvement benefits the school.
Teachers could have better communication and relationship with the teachers. It improves teachers’ morale and higher rating of teachers by parents. Teachers would feel valued and they will have a positive thinking to teach. Therefore children’s learning will be enhanced. Besides that, school could take kind of assistances and support to the parental involvement programs by the parents. These could affect the quality of the parental involvement programs.
As I mentioned before, children will be more confident and have higher self-esteem. They will achieve higher grades and class attendances. These could affect the teaching and the monitoring of the teachers in class as well. The kindergarten will have better reputation in the community, because most of parents concern about the education of the children who they choose to study in. Those schools that produce high achievement will naturally be valued and supported by community members.
The needs of the parents in Ming Ming Kindergarten Ming Ming Kindergarten is situated in Northern District of the New Territories. Most of the parents in the kindergarten are new-arrivals from Mainland China. The parents are facing various personal problems that will affect the parenting styles and skills to discipline their children. Most of the new arrivals parents are busy on working to earn their living. From this case, there is only one parent in some families and the other one is still in the Mainland China. Therefore it is possible that the only one parent is the breadwinner of the family.
They are very busy to work everyday. They may allow their children to study whole day class in the kindergarten. Children may spend almost ten hours a day in school. On the other hand, many of them are not able to attend the parental involvement program. It is hard for those parents to spare time to attend parental involvement activities.
Besides that, parents from Mainland China are usually with lower education level. They are having different culture with local people in various aspects. Some of them are not confident to talk with others or discuss their children’s issues. On the other hand, they may think that they do not know how to teach and discipline their children. Therefore the parenting styles of most of the parents are usually authoritarian or neglecting.
In designing the parental involvement programs, we have to focus on the parents’ needs and make the parental involvement programs fit them. Therefore the school has to understand the needs of the parents. First of all, the parents from Mainland China are busy on working to earn their living. They do not know how to teach their own children. Some of them will use severe punishment to discipline the children.
I think that these parents need the guidelines or support from school. Some of them are stressful according to the duration of work everyday. Maybe they do not have many relatives or friends to talk to. Therefore the teachers are important role to support and calm the parents. Parents who participate in the parental involvement programs who meet other parents that they could make more new friends in school. Some of the parents from Mainland China do not adapt the culture and the language in Hong Kong.
People in Mainland China speak Putonghua and they write in simplified form. They need longer time to learn to speak Cantonese, write and read traditional form. Kindergarten should take awareness of this. We should make sure the notice or leaflet that we distributed are suitable for all parents.
And we may invite a translator to help the parents from Mainland China to understand the activities that they attend. Parents from Mainland China may think that they are not respected sometimes if the school would only provide the language that they do not understand. The needs of the teachers in Ming Ming Kindergarten Teachers could only meet the parents two times a year to talk about the performance of the children. And there are no other parental involvement activities and parent-teacher association.
It indicates that teachers have few chances to have long talk with the parents. It is quite a big problem for the teachers not to discuss the children’s issues all the time. Children’s development changes day by day, it is essential for both of the teachers and the parents to discuss and talk about the development in different areas. Teacher should know about the family background, the children’s daily life etc.
in order to know to help and guide the children. However teachers in this school could only meet the parents twice a year to have a brief talk about the children’s academic performance. That’s why the teachers have less motivation and experiences in running parental involvement programs. It is because parental involvement programs are not in their year plan. They are not good at managing those programs.
They have less communication with the parents, therefore they do not have close relationship with them. The teachers cannot manage to handle the parental involvement programs successfully as well as they do not really understand what the parents’ needs and want to know and learn. Therefore, the management should provide training to the teachers. Putonghua training is important too. Firstly, they should provide talk or meeting about the information of new-arrivals from Mainland China. Teachers could know what the parents are facing recently.
Secondly, the management should encourage teachers to build a closer relationship with the parents. Teachers could ask more about the information about the families and may provide proper support when the parents face any problems. When teachers are talking about the academic performances of the children, they could also teach the parenting style and other skills. After building up the relationship with each other, teachers should encourage the parents to join the school activities, such as family picnic, Mother’s Day celebration activities etc.
Teachers should make the parents feel like to be one of the members of the kindergarten. Lastly, the kindergarten could establish parent-teacher association after two years when the teachers are confident to hold different activities and have good relationship with the parents. Year Plan Before the start of the school year. We will hold a talk for the new students. The topic is about welcoming the new students at the beginning of the school year. The target group is the parents of K.
1 students and other new students from K. 2 and K. 3. We will hold this welcoming talk in the hall of our school. The objectives of this meeting is to introduce the Principle, Vice Principle, teachers, other staffs to the parents. Principle will talk about the issues to be concerned before starting the new school year.
She will talk about the teaching objectives, policies and the vision of our school. The duration of this talk will be about an hour. Parents are welcomed to ask different questions after the talk. After finishing the talk, we will ask the parents to fill in the evaluation form. Appendix2) We will invite the parents and the children to stay to walk around the kindergarten.
They could stay to play in the playground as well. There are few routines for the teachers to follow. Teachers have to make “ Sunshine call” once a week to talk about the academic performances, the happenings in school, the issues of the children. They have to ask the parents how the children do at home as well. Its aim at getting closer relationship with the parents. We will hold an individual parent meeting for new students on September.
The duration is ten minutes. Parents are necessary to come. If they cannot spare time to participate, class teachers will talk with them on the phone. In this individual parent meeting, class teachers will talk about the children’s performances in the classroom. For example, how do they adapt the new school life in the kindergarten, how long time do they need to adapt the new school life, how many difficulties they faced, how did they overcome the difficulties on their own, was it successful, teacher’s suggestions, etc.
Class teachers will ask about how the children behave at home. The objectives of this individual parent meeting is to build a closer relationship with the parents and have a better understanding of the children. Class teachers will encourage parents to talk more about the children’s families, cultural backgrounds, daily lives, hobbies, etc. After the individual meeting, another teacher will distribute a memo to the parents.
That teacher will encourage the parents to write down comments for the individual parent meeting, the kindergarten and the class teachers. (Appendix 3) We will hold two professional talks in our school. The topics are “ The psychological development of the young children” and “ A good family background helps the children to cultivate morals”. The target group of these two talks are all parents. We will invite two professional educators to hold these two talks respectively. The objectives of these talks are to enhance the understanding of the children’s psychological development by observing their behaviour, help the parents to manage the resources of parenting and to learn the skills to build up a good relationship with the children, help the parents to build up a trustful, respectful and considerate relationship with the children.
Through these two talks, we hope that the parents are able to handle the role of being parents, understand the psychological development and the behaviour of the children, have a good family background to cultivate the learning and the development of the children. After the talk, we will separate the parents into small groups to have a workshop. In the workshop, teachers will encourage the parents to talk about their feeling about the talk, their families backgrounds, the difficulties of parenting the children, etc. Teachers and other parents are welcomed to provide solutions and suggestions.
Teachers will follow up to see if the difficulties can be solved or not in the future. In the middle of the school year, we will have an outing with the parents and the children. The topic of this activity is “ Care the community”. We will go to Mong Kong Kai Fong Association Ltd.
Chan Hing Social Service Centre to visit the elderly. The objective of this activity is to build up the spirit to participate in the community and help others voluntarily of the children. Before the outing, we will ask the parents and the children to prepare and make a consolatory card at home. Then we will ask the parents who will attend the activity to discuss and decide the related matters, things to prepare, the performances and the production of the souvenirs with the school. Parents are encouraged to involve the administrative decision in this activity.
After the activity, we will distribute an evaluation form to ask the suggestions from the parents (Appendix 4). At the end of the school year, we will hold an activity “ I am a good child”. All students and parents are invited to join. The objectives of this activity is to build up a good behavioural habit and enhance the relationship between the parents and the children. Teachers will give every children an assessment sheet.
Parents have to do the assessment with the children at home to assess the behaviour of them in order to help them to establish an appropriate behavioural habit. After the period of assessment, we will have a sharing meeting with the parents. They could share their opinions of this activity. The management of the school could understand the aspiration and different strengths of individual parents. Then it is easier for the school to hold other functions and arrange to invite the parents to be the helper.
Potential difficulties and solutionsFor the “ Sunshine call”, it may be difficult for the class teachers to call all the parents on one day. Sometimes, class teachers are not able to contact specific parent, because that parent is not able to pick up the phone during work. For this case, class teacher could talk with the parent when they come to pick the child up after school. If the parent will not come in person, class teacher could leave a voice message or write a memo and stick it in front of the handbook and ask the parent to call back. For the new students talk, I think it is beneficial for the them.
Most of the parents are willing to spend time to visit the school for the first time. However the parents are usually shy to raise questions after the talk. Therefore teachers will see if there are any parents who look confused and puzzled when they are listening to the talk. Teachers will encouraged them to catch the chance to answer. For the individual parent meeting, some parents are not able to come during school hour. We will talk with the parents on phone instead.
Or we could change the meeting time before or after the school hour especially for those busy parents. For the last three functions, they are quite challenging for the school. I think they are beneficial because normal parents must be interested in learning the techniques to teach their children. However most of our parents are new arrivals from Mainland China, their parenting style is either authoritarian or neglecting.
These functions will spend them lots of time and they may not be willing to take leave and spend the leisure time on them. Therefore evaluation is very important. We will distribute evaluation form after each activities. Our school will follow the suggestions and opinions to design the functions afterwards in order to fit the needs and demand of the parents.
Therefore management and the teachers will be empowered. We think that more parents will be attracted in the coming functions. (2790 words) Reference Henderson, A. T.
, & Berla, N. (1994). A new generation of evidence (1st ed. ). CS: Mott Foundation.
Rhodes, Michelle, Enz, Billie, & LaCount, Marilyn. (2006). Leaps and bounds : Preparing parents for kindergarten. (1st ed. ). CA: Young Children.
Appendix 1 Year Plan of Ming Ming Kindergarten (Parental Involvement functions) | | Date | Functions Name | Target number of | Duration | Evaluation | | | | parents | | | | July | Welcome talk | 60 | 1 hour | evaluation form | | August | Sunshine Call |/ | 1 year |/ | | September | Individual parent meeting | 1-2/ per meeting | 10 minutes/ per parent | comment form | | January | Professional talk | 120 | 2 hours | sharing workshop | | February | Professional talk | 120 | 2 hours | sharing workshop | | March | Care the community | 40 | 2 hours | evaluation form | | June | I am a good child | 120 | 1 month | evaluation meeting | Appendix 2 Evaluation form (New Students Meeting) 1. Is the duration of the talk suitable? __________________ 2. Was the talk well organized? __________________ 3. Did you get the desired information? __________________ 4. Any things unclear that you have to ask? __________________ 5. Any suggestions for this meeting? _____________________________________________________________ Appendix 3 Any comments/ suggestions for this meeting? ____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ Appendix 4 Evaluation form (Care the community) 1.
Was the activity well organized? __________________ 2. Was the material provided sufficient? __________________ 3. Did you enjoy to join this activity? __________________ 4. What did you like the most of this activity? __________________ 5. Which areas of this activity needed improvements so as to make it even better? ________________________________________________________________________ 4.
Any suggestions for this activity? ________________________________________________________________________
