Parental Involvement

I am an Egyptian, currently doing my Masters in Educational Leadership at Boston University. I chose a non sub-concentration to be able to take different courses from different tracks including teaching ELL, assessment and leadership courses, all of which supplement each other and include important aspects that educators should learn about. I believe that leaders should develop a comprehensive understanding of teaching by learning topics related to all aspects of education. In my opinion, being a leader is not just about being a good administrator, but being a competent instructional leader. Therefore, I am interested in children’s literacy, which I believe is the base of education, and the effects of parental involvement to later academic success.

I worked in a school that served students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and one of the main problems that we, as school faced, was the lack of parental involvement. This often manifested in the lack of support parents in the school had in extending their children’s learning process beyond the classroom. This may have been due to the culture of the school’s community that promotes an assumption that teachers should have full responsibility of their children’s education.

Parental involvement and support is essential for students to reach their maximum potential. Three things you should know about the difference that you could make in your child development. First, home literacy through sharing book readings is positively correlated with both oral-language and written-language skills, which predicts later vocabulary growth (Quiroz, Snow, Zhao, 2010). Second, parents reading to their children leads to more academic motivation and eagerness to learn (Loera & Nakamoto, 2011). Third reading to your child and giving him/her this attention would lead to better social skills (Quiroz et al, 2010).

Reading to your child especially during the early childhood period is essential for his/her growth and that’s the time when a lot of development in cognition happens. I am focusing on reading, as it is the first step to a child’s literacy.

Tips for Reading to your child:

1. Make reading time a routine everyday

2. Show interest while reading to make it fun

3. Take turns reading

4. Choose together the books to read

These are some tips that you can use to motivate your child to read and help them love reading, which would directly influence their vocabulary word count and literacy skills.

References

Loera, G., Rueda, R., & Nakamoto, J. (2011). The Association Between Parental Involvement in Reading and Schooling and Children's Reading Engagement in Latino Families. Literacy Research and Instruction, 50(2), 133-155.

Quiroz, B. G., Snow, C. E., & Zhao, J. (2010). Vocabulary skills of spanish-english bilinguals: Impact of mother-child language interactions and home language and literacy support. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 14(4), 379-399,511-512.