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Involving At-risk Families in Their Children

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Title: Involving At-risk Families in Their Children


1
Involving At-risk Families in Their Childrens
Education
2
Learning Outcomes
  • Students are able to
  • Describe the meaning of at-risk
  • Describe how at-risk factors affect collaboration
  • Discuss models dealing with at-risk families
  • Provide strategies for schools to deal with
    at-risk parents/guardians

3
Related Web-site
  • Title of the document ERIC
  • At-risk families schools becoming partners by
    Lynn Balster Liontos (1992) Forward by Don Davies
  • http//eric.uoregon.edu/pdf/books/atriskfs.pdf

4
What Contribute to The At-risk Factors?
  • The divorced families
  • Blended families
  • Family poverty
  • Gay and lesbians households
  • Child with disabilities
  • The abused child
  • Family violence

5
Why is parent involvement so important for
at-risk children?
  • Children usually embrace the familiar home
    culture and reject the unfamiliar school culture,
    including its academic components and goals
    (Hamilton-Lee, 1988)
  • Family, school and community are key elements in
    the educational process, and all three parts of
    the system must work together for the educational
    process to be successful (Nancy Feyl, 1993)
  • Low-income parents feel a sense of exclusion and
    powerlessness

6
  • Both (teachers and parents) understand the
    others setting and expectations schools can
    become more home-like and home can have a school
    component
  • Those children who come from at-risk families are
    generally lacking in terms of human capital,
    I.e., parents educational background as well as
    economic and social status)
  • Deficit in parents social capital the
    relationships and interactions that take place
    among people)
  • Note Traditional methods of parental
    involvement do not work with at-risk parents

7
What Contribute to Children At-risk?
  • They are usually poor minorities often from other
    cultural backgrounds (Liontos, 1991)
  • Giving the increasing divorce rates, the growing
    number of single parent families and families in
    which both parents work, even children of
    well-educated, middle class parents can come to
    school unprepared because of stress their
    families are undergoing (James Cormer)

8
  • Students who fail to read well by 4th grade often
    have a greater likelihood of dropping out and a
    lifetime diminished success (Corporation for
    National Service, America Reads Challenge) What
    is the implication for our educators?
  • Statistics show that the high school dropout rate
    is 29 in the United States, 5 in Japan and 2
    in Russia (U.S. Department of Education)

9
The Senario
  • I never see the parents I need to see!
  • Most students are at-risk at some time or another
  • The family size, which was 4.7 persons in 1995
    decreased to 4.52 in 2000, is forecast to further
    decrease to 4.3 in 2005. So What are the
    implications?
  • School children have the following
    characteristics (Mclaughlin and Shields, 1987)
  • 14 are illegitimate
  • 40 will have lived with a single parent by the
    time they reached age 18
  • 30 are latchkey kids

10
  • 20 lived in poverty
  • 15 have physical and mental handicaps, and
  • 10 have poorly educated parents
  • Over 40 of fathers had never read to their
    school-aged children (The National Center for
    Fathering, 1999)

11
  • Many administrators, academics, practitioners,
    and public policy analysts are not aware of newly
    emerging insights, especially from outside their
    own fields and I was dismayed at how little of
    this knowledge was being utilized to change the
    prospects for the children growing up in the
    shadows, the children most at risk (Breaking the
    cycle of disadvantage (book) by Schorr,L and
    Schorr, D)

12
  • National Household Survey on drug abuse (1996)
  • 6 had at least one parent in need of treatment
    for illicit drug abuse
  • 4 lived with at least one parent who was
    dependent on alcohol
  • 14 lived with one or more parents who reported
    past-year use of illegal drugs, while 11 lived
    with at least one parent who reported past-month
    use
  • 50 live in household where at least one parent
    reported cigarette use in the past month

13
  • Words from First Grade teacher (Reeves) to
    Carnegie researchers
  • You send notices home, theres no response. You
    ask parents to come to conferences, they dont
    come. You send homework home, you can see that
    parents arent paying any attention to it. They
    arent helping their kids.
  • How do we help them?

14
Models Working With At-RiskFamilies
  • The No-Fault Model
  • Dont place all the blame on either family or
    the school.
  • We are all responsible and we must work together
  • A Non-deficit Approach
  • Respect families for who they are Look for
    assets and strengths

15
  • Empower families
  • Helping individuals remove obstacles that impede
    their efforts to achieve equal status in society
  • An ecological approach
  • Look for connectedness in the educational
    processes Each realm influences others
  • Collaboration as the only way

16
The Missing Link
  • For all research on low-income and at-risk
    children, few studies have asked whether parent
    involvement can help these students achieve at
    levels expected for middle-class children. Most
    studies have compared groups of high-risk
    children receiving special treatment with control
    groups of their peers. (Henderson, 1998) So,
    What should we do?

17
At-risk Who are they?How Are They Linked to
At-risk Families?
  • Low achievement
  • Unable to cope
  • Poor attendance
  • Dislike schools
  • Lack of social skills
  • Poor study skills
  • Financial problem
  • Limited language proficiency
  • Low motivation
  • Discipline problems

18
  • Pregnancy
  • Dropout
  • Child of divorce/orphans
  • No extracurricular involvement
  • Substance abuse
  • Unhealthy physical appearance
  • Poverty
  • Negative peer influence

19
Not Achieving Minimum Levelof Competency
  • Obtaining grades Ds and Es in UPSR and Es in PMR
  • UPSR 186,179 39.8
  • PMR 156,337 38.5
  • SPM (failed) 32,599 9.1
  • EPRD (Sharifah Md Nor)

20
Dropouts
  • 2003
  • From yr 3 yr 4 89
  • From Yr 6 Remove/Form I 45,565
  • From Form 3 Form 4 16,391
  • From Form 4 Form 5 14,570
  • About 10 of students continue their schooling
    outside the MOE systems after Year 6
  • EPRD (Sharifah Md Nor)

21
Challenges Ahead Education of At-riskStudents
(Sharifah Md. Nor, UPM Inaugural Series)
  • Enhance the early intervention programs for
    at-risk students
  • Problems associated with the failure of at-risk
    students
  • Large classes
  • Teachers skills and willingness to teach
  • Skills in diagnosing students
  • Teachers burden
  • Lack of funds, space and support from all parties

22
  • Enhance at-risk students socio-psychological
    learning environment
  • Teachers expectations and treatment of lowest
    stream students
  • Alternative grouping strategy
  • Enhance school membership Changing the climate
    of at-risk schools
  • Labeling of at-risk schools such as sinking
    schools and placement in ICU, and etc.
  • Enhance educational engagement Make learning
    more meaningful for at-risk students
  • Example Teachers are boring, if we dont
    understand, they shout at us, thats why we skip
    the class.
  • Create more experiential learning, offering
    vocational subjects in normal schools

23
What Must We do?(Sharifah Md. Nor)
  • Reduce class size
  • Research-based school improvement programs
  • Collaboration with partners
  • Change the paradigm
  • Attracting the best people into the teaching
    profession

24
Enhancing The Involving At-risk Families by
Understanding Them
  • Begin with the correct paradigm Many family
    forms exist and are legitimate (stepparents and
    the like)
  • Divorced families
  • Children and parents who are experiencing divorce
    process have special needs and issues
  • Teachers will benefit by knowing about these
    special needs
  • A number of effective communication and program
    strategies are available to deal with the needs
    and issues
  • The complexity of the
  • Divorced family sub-system ex-spouse subsystem,
    single-parent sub-system, visiting parent-child
    subsystem, sibling subsystem
  • Remarriage subsystem blended family
  • Children explicitly state that they want their
    teachers to know about their separation/divorce
    so that the teacher will be more tolerant and
    understand of their behavior (Frieman, 1993)
  • I dont want my teacher to think that I dont
    care about my work
  • I want her to know so that when Im feeling sad,
    she know the reason and not yell at me. (Both
    are first grade students)

25
  • Research indicates that teachers should be
    particularly attentively to children who reside
    in homes where the father is the custodial
    parent.
  • The findings indicate that boys and girls reside
    with their fathers do not perform as well
    academically as their matches from two-parent
    families/children who reside with only their
    mothers.
  • Implications for teachers/school administrators
  • As informal counselors
  • Referring parents and children to community
    agencies for formal intervention
  • More emotional energy is required of them

26
  • Blended families
  • As of 2000, blended stepfamily outnumbered all
    other types of families in the United States
    (Darden Zimmerman,1992)
  • Most stepchildren report feelings of anger,
    hostility, denial, loss, anxiety, fear,
    excitement, curiosity, hesitancy, happiness,
    jealousy, and unrealistic expectations
  • Teachers and other school personnel can help to
    facilitate this adjustment period by helping the
    child to recognize and accept the wide array of
    emotions experienced and set realistic
    expectations for accepting and adjusting to new
    life

27
  • Stepfamily Education can help to accomplish the
    following goals and ease the transition and roles
    of the reconstituted family
  • Helping stepchildren understand the complexity
    of stepfamily functioning
  • Helping stepchildren and their parents develop
    positive relationships
  • Teaching stepchildren and their parents to
    communicate effectively with their parents
  • Teaching stepchildren how to manage their
    emotions

28
  • Poverty
  • The poverty level of a family of four is 18,050
    (Douglas-Hall Koball, 2005)
  • Approximately 17 of U.S. children live in
    poverty
  • Students bring effects of poverty with them to
    school, administrators and teachers must
    understand and deal with poverty and its
    consequences
  • Teachers will subconsciously take middle-class
    expectations of parent-school relationships into
    their classroom with them when dealing with
    low-income families
  • Example given by Sherman, 1994, a Kentucky
    Science teacher
  • Some of them get up with the problem every
    morning How do you wake up without an alarm
    clock or a parent there to wake you up? How do
    you wake up and go to school when you probably
    dont have a bed to sleep in the night before?
    These kids could beat anybody.

29
  • The limited school involvement of low-income
    parents can be attributed to their lack of trust
    in school personnel, as well as a lack of
    understanding of the way schools function
  • Parents in poverty, like parents of all other
    socioeconomic groups, love their children, but
    may feel uncomfortable in their childrens
    schools
  • Poverty causes parents in poverty having little
    energy to deal with family problems outside of
    fulfilling basic daily needs

30
  • Tips for working with low-income families
  • Check your attitude Dont blame them
  • Know the environment with which your low-income
    live
  • Gathering basic information about low-income
    families
  • Communicate with low-income parents
  • Getting low-income families actively involved
    Create a partnership Flexibility, practicality,
    and creativity can help to achieve this
  • Become involved in the community
  • Be sensitive to the financial limitations of
    low-income families

31
  • The abused child
  • What is child abuse? Definition (PL 93-247, 1977)
  • The physical or mental injury, sexual abuse,
    negligent treatment or maltreatment of a child
    under the age of 18 by a person who is
    responsible for the childs welfare under
    circumstances which indicate that the childs
    health or welfare is harmed or threatened thereby
  • Most of the victims were abused by their parents
    (84)
  • Responsibility to report vary according to
    individual country law

32
  • Types of maltreatment
  • Neglect and medical neglect
  • Physical abuse
  • Sexual abuse
  • Emotional maltreatment
  • Other

33
Obstacles to reaching at-risk parents
  • Low-income parents see schools as
    institutionalized authority. Therefore they
    leave it to their teachers to educate their
    children
  • There are economic, emotional, and time
    constraints and logistical problems
  • Teacher attitudes about at-risk children
  • They have low expectations for at-risk children
  • They believe at-risk parents dont care and dont
    want to get involved

34
  • Schools tend to see the parental role as
    traditional, passive and home-based
  • Gap between knowledge and action springs from
    traditions which segregate bodies of information
    by professional, academic, political, and
    bureaucratic boundaries
  • Schools often organize events for their own
    convenience and pay little attention to the needs
    of at-risk parents

35
Themes for School Reaching Out (SRO)Institute
for Responsive Education (IRE)Boston
  • Providing success for all children
  • None should be labeled likely failures because
    of their social, economic, or racial
    characteristics of their families/communities
  • Serving the whole child
  • In order to foster academic development, all
    other aspects of development (social, emotional,
    physical) must be addressed by schools and
    families.

36
  • Sharing responsibility
  • The development of children is shared among the
    responsibility of the school, the family and
    other community agencies

37
General TipsHow to begin working with at-risk
families?
  • Different types of parent involvement seem to
    produce different results (Epstein)
  • Be sure youre totally committed
  • Work through a coordinator
  • Be prepared to be innovative and flexible
  • Use personal outreach. Home visits are a must.
    Have adequately prepared and sensitive school
    representatives to go into homes to meet with
    families
  • Do not hold your first activity at school. Use
    natural and informal settings (such as social
    centers, market and etc) to reach and talk with
    parents. Informal settings are less intimidating
    to low-income parents
  • Make your first event fun, start with something
    social

38
  • View an interested parent as a potential partner,
    not a problem
  • Letting them know specifically what it is they
    must do
  • Consider providing the following
  • Child care
  • Interpreters
  • Meals
  • Choose different times to schedule events
  • Do not give up if the initial response isnt
    overwhelming
  • Cultural differences are both valid and valuable
  • Many family forms exist and are legitimate

39
  • All families have strengths. Dont view at-risk
    families as failures
  • Partnership with at-risk families is impossible
    without collaboration with other community
    agencies
  • All families and individuals need to feel
    empowered

40
High School Dropout Prevention
  • It is harder to involve parents at the secondary
    level than it is at elementary level for the
    following reasons
  • High schools are usually larger then elementary
    schools
  • Teenagers developed autonomy and independence
  • Subject specialization

41
  • The literature on parent involvement in their
    childrens secondary education suggests that
    parent involvement at this level is potentially
    as effectively as at elementary level, though it
    is much rarer to expect parents of secondary
    students to become involved as home tutors
    (Suzanne Ziegler, 1987)

42
Building on successful programs
  • Schorr describes six challenges that we have to
    consider
  • Knowing what works
  • Proving we can afford it
  • Attracting and training enough skilled and
    committed personnel
  • Resisting the lure of replicating through
    dilution
  • Gentling the heavy hand of bureaucracy and
  • Devising a variety of replication strategies
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