Where've I been, you ask... ?

I've been busy with school. I have resumed taking college classes after a 20 year hiatus. I'm having a good time with it, but it has eaten up of the time that I used to surf the net and read the blogs. I do miss it, but I'm keeping my eye on the prize...an education degree. I started this quest with the goal of teaching high school english. Now I've been exposed to pedagogy and educational psychology.

Anyway, one of my classes is online (I couldn't cut the cord completely) and we have discussion threads on various topics that we must comment on. It's been fun, and so much like blogging that I decided to copy my posts to my own blog.

The first topic is 'the role of parents'. This was one of my first posts. I was a bit reserved as is typical in the first few days of class.

Subject: young women and father figures
Author: The Professor
More and more as I teach in the public school system I see children coming from
nontraditional families. Sadly young girls coming from families
without a strong-positive father figure act out in school, desperately seeking
attention of any male figure. How do you believe the role of parents has
changed and how has this impacted school age children?

~The Professor


Subject: Re: young women and father figures
Author: Weenus
Compared to most of the posts in this thread, I had a privileged childhood. My parents, who are still happily married, were very involved in my activities and education. Most of my peers also had highly engaged parents. As an adult I realize their involvement was a primary motivator for our own commitment to education and strong work ethic.

My experience now is that few parents are participating in their children’s lives, both in school and extra-curricular, be it due to lack of interest, time or ability. I have attended countless school board meetings where I was the only parent in the audience, and many field trips where I was one of two or three chaperoning mothers. I cannot estimate the number of soccer games where the parents simply drop the kids off in order to pursue their own interests, hoping that the kids will find a ride home. In our local community, the same few families have organized the youth programs, coached the teams and created/sustained many of the functions that provide a safe environment for the area kids.

The by-product that I’ve witnessed is two fold:
(1) Many kids aren’t encouraged by their parent(s) to commit themselves to their
education and respect their teachers and other authority figures. They end up creating a more difficult community in and out of school, making it even more challenging for the kids who are dedicated.

(2) Teachers, already distressed by having to deal with too many students per class, cannot easily provide the instruction and mentoring that is necessary to produce successful students when much of their time is wasted on disciplinary measures, or tactics to gain and focus their student’s attention.