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January 15, 2006
Live Oak Parents
I also spent an evening with a great group of parents. When talking with parents, my most important message is always "You are your child's most important teacher."
Those of us in education help out and try to provide more specific learning. All of it is supposed to be developmental, one new learning building on another. It's sort of like learning the alphabet, then recogizing words, to reading sentences, and finally reading stories and books. We do that every day in classrooms, but parents are the teachers at home. They teach all kinds of things we don't teach.
Parents teach values and morals, traditions, family language and hertigage. The other night there were three groups in the meeting from three very different traditions. There were the English speaking parents, an Hispanic group, and a Punjabi group. The district had been very clear that they wanted to be able to address and provide support for all cultures in their school. All the materials were translated from English into both Spanish and Punjabi.
I applaud a district and a group of teachers who are willing to meet the needs of all members of their community. It's much easier to only deal with one group and one culture especially the one we know, but these folks were very clear, all groups were to be considered.
Funny tomorrow is Martin Luther King's birthday. I hadn't realized that when this piece took on such an ethnic theme, but it's what King was about. Working in schools, we take his work even farther, not including just Blacks, but any ethnic group. Our country came about because of immigrants coming here. We're made up of many different cultures.
Live Oak's parents are the foremost teachers their children have. From their parents they will learn how to live. We, in schools, will help them gain skills to live better. My job and one of the oldest jobs of school administrators is to help parents and teachers work together to make children's learning valuable for their future. I look forward to their continuting success.
Posted by Dr Joni at January 15, 2006 09:38 PM