Dom's Late Blog Post

The article that I read was "Building on the Strengths of Families: The Promising Readers Program". This article highlighted a particular program, that was implemented from the P.T.A., in order to increase family involvement, but in and outside of school. The objective of the program was to increase the literacy rates, for low-achieving students (primarily African American or bi-racial). This article was extremely relevant to Allice's article, due to the fact that staff in this particular elementary school, was looking for effective, low cost practices, that would assist low achieving students in literacy. Studies show that parental involvement both in and outside of the school will have a positive influence on the students performance.

A lot of what I was reading in my article and in Allice's blog, was reflective of my own experience in the schools, and in dealing with lower performing students with literacy. For example, in my third grade class this year, the demographics in the classroom are primarily African American, except for a few caucasian, asian, and hispanic students. The low achieving students, that have difficulty in reading, also come from homes in which there is a lack of parental involvement. There is one student (caucasian) who is the most proficient reader in the entire classroom. It came as no shock to me, that this students mother works at Barnes and Noble. All he knows and reads is books.

My article also tied in with the work that I do in the Lansing School District, in which I mentor minority males from the local high school in the area. I also supervise an after school program, in which I work with 21 elementary students (k-4), three days a week. These students are labeled as "at risk" and "low achieving" students. My job, is to design and implement lessons, that help to fill the learning gap in the major content areas, in particular math and literacy. This is not to say that all of the students are performing low in these areas, but the students that do perform low in literacy and math, come from homes in which there is little to no support. The program that I work for (Promoting Academic Success, P.A.S.), used to have an outreach element in place, in which home visits were made, and relationships were formed with the parents, in order to increase their involvement. A lot of the parents look at this service as just a means of daycare or babysitting for their students after school. I cannot tell you the countless times that parents tell me to have their children complete all homework at school, due to the fact there is no time to complete it at home. The outreach component to this program should have never been cut out, because a lot of these students are struggling still, due to the fact that once the school day is over, there is no additional help outside of the after school program.

If studies show that there is a positive correlation between parental involvement in a students education, both in and out of school, then methods to get the parents involved need to continue to be designed. I personally don't believe that this is the answer to all low performance, as there are students that I work with, that still struggle, and a parent works in the school, in which they participate in major school events. I believe that students have an increased motivation when their parents are a part of the learning experience, but there are other cognitive and social issues that hinder students performance in literacy.