First of all a caveat. I am not a parent! I have no real experience at being a parent. I do not know what it is like to balance a personal life, my career and children. Having said that here is what I think about parenting.
First of all, it looks damned difficult. I mean I have trouble "parenting" or teaching students in 50 minute intervals. I can hardly imagine the 24/7 demand on being a parent. My wife and I, right now, are pretty happy. We traveled to New York City with nothing to worry about, we enjoy road trips because they are calm and quiet, and we get to out for dinner or drinks as often as we feel and can afford. Which is why I find hearing about a potential loss of happiness that comes with being a parent particularly disconcerting. I mean look at this graph that shows up at 12:00.
The ted talk above and the chart that they include tells us that it is okay to admit that parents are often less than happy than non-parents.
Much worse, if you have a student that is just becoming a teenager you should expect to be extremely unhappy for the next few years. I don't personally put a whole lot of weight in these findings, but the idea that parenting is difficult comes across very clearly. Further, the parenting of teens is particularly nerve racking and difficult.
This is why many parents mistakenly use the early teen years (middle school and jr. high) to become less involved in their children's lives. Teens are also using this time to encourage their parents to become less involved in their lives. This quip from an article on how to Stay Involved in Middle and High School puts it nicely,
It's not unusual for middle- and high-school students to discourage their parents from coming to school, but parent involvement is important to your teenager's academic success. Studies show that parent involvement is linked to achievement in the upper grades, just as it is in elementary school.
That is what we are in fact talking about today. Parents are needed to help students be academically successful. Students in middle school are continually pressured to lose their interest in academics. Middle school, apart from public opinion is the time to make sure students continue their academic success, not the time to assign to it less importance.
Successful students and parents know this........... Enter Schoolzone.
Schoolzone is there to make it easier for parents to be involved in their students academic lives. Here are some Westlawn School usage statistics.
- Schoolzone is currently used by 100% of the staff for reporting on marks, attendance and lates.
- Fresh Marks are posted once a month by all teachers. With other teachers updating more often.
- Schoolzone is used by 100% of Math teachers to post homework, concepts being taught, exam dates and notes.
- At least half of the humanities teachers are using schoolzone to share some kind of class information such as homework or links to the textbook.
- Some science teachers use schoolzone extensively to report on what is happening in class, post links to class content and provide extra meaningful information for parents and students alike.
- The School is posting to schoolzone school news an average of 3 news items per week. These are important events that we want involved parents to be aware of.
Schoolzone is there to help the parents, and I am here to help you use schoolzone.
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