Building relationships between parents and teachers

Megan Olivia Hall |  Nov 2013

2024년 2월 29일 shadowing 완료

 

 

TED Talker/연자

Megan Olivia Hall

Science and agriculture teacher

2013 Minnesota Teacher of the Year. 

So the most transformative moment of my teaching career happened when I wasn't even teaching it was when my son was born I felt like I had been struck by a tidal wave of love and when I found my feet again everything in life had meaning and purpose I realized that parental love is one of nature's great forces and that all parents feel some version of this power I returned to teaching for maternity leave with my heart open to the simple truth that parents love children and I still try to remember everyday that every child in every class I teach is the meaning of someone's life every child I teach is someone who deserves honor and respect and now four years later when I hear my son Dylan chatting up a neighbor about the newest Cinderella movie or complimenting a playground buddy on the color of their shirt he reinvigorates my commitment to honor and respect young people.

Good teachers do not have to be parents but parents and teachers do have a lot in common and I think sometimes teachers and parents forget that we want the same things for our kids but in my 16 years of teaching I've never met a parent or a teacher who didn't desperately want their child to succeed when Dawn was about two years old my husband and I were strolling with him through our neighborhood on a sunny Saturday afternoon were checking out all the neighborhoods gardens and we ran into a college acquaintance of my husband who told us that his children attend the local gifted and talented magnet and then he told us most of the children in this neighborhood go there and I couldn't help but sink does geography determine giftedness that can't be right.

 

It must be that the resources available to families which are greater in more affluent neighborhoods determine academic performance I read a recent study that compared zip codes and school funding and academic performance and in this study the researchers found that students from low-income families that attended high income schools outperformed those who attended low-income schools even if the low-income schools had the best and most  expensive intervention it's the human resources that make the difference the student body in which everyone just assumes that they'll be going to college the faculty made up of teachers that sat out career positions in calmly academic environments and the parents the parents with the resources and the time to run a PTA and to volunteer in school so even with all of these parents and all of these teachers desperately wanting our children to succeed not every child succeeds and in America the children that do and don't succeed are statistically predictable by family income and by race.

 

This gap feels to me like the Grand Canyon we used to call it the achievement gap but I am teachers like me are renaming it the opportunity gap because it is fundamentally about the resources and opportunities available to families the opportunity gap is big it's real I see it every day in my classroom and it's scary and we all have a responsibility to unravel it but I'm not going to unravel the whole thing today instead I'd like to talk about one simple thing that teachers can do and one simple thing that parents can do to get our kids across that gap when teachers reach out to parents and parents reach out to teachers our connection bridges the gap every day I see students working hard to cross the gap and too often crossing the gap feels like this would you put the person who you loved most in the whole world on that bridge what if you didn't know what was on the other side whether it was worth it or not what if when you were a kid you tried to cross the same gap and had a bad experience what if the people on the other side didn't treat you very well and one of the person you love is afraid .

 

Every year I take students on a service trip and I have seen during the adventure part of our trip hundreds of them faced on ropes courses and rock walls and some of them like this courageous young woman can overcome their fears but for most of us our aversion to risk is so great that we avoid anything that appears rickety or unreliable for most of us we need a better way across the gap at first I thought of teachers as the bridge builders in education after all we do create opportunities for our students to get across the gap every single day but over time I now realize that it's networks of schools and families and community groups that build the bridges programs like the national college readiness avid program and in the district where I teach the power of you which pays for all st. Paul public schools graduates to go to st. Paul college for free.

 

Teachers do help build  the bridges but we have a more up-close-and-personal role we are down on the ground in the classrooms and we know which students get on the bridge and get across and which ones don't and we often know why in a lot of days we feel helpless about it because teachers don't make the big decisions in education yet we don't have the power to build these bridges to make them more welcoming or inclusive but we do have the power and the  privilege to work with individuals we can get down on the trail with our students and their families and we can find their safest crossing and furthermore because teachers are devoted and caring our families trust us to help them we are the trail guides we know how to help and we can build relationships that offer up opportunities to help.

 

I had an opportunity to help this young man last spring he doesn't look very happy in this picture and he's not he's angry with me we are at the top of a ropes course in northern Minnesota and that's like superior in the background 
and as I am snapping this picture he's saying to me I hope here happy and he said that no one's ever gotten me this far out of my comfort zone before and it turned out that this student even though he had fundraised all year to go on this service trip at the last minute started to act like he didn't want to go so I emailed his parents and I asked them if they knew what was going on and they told me that he is deeply shy and he was worried that he wouldn't know any of the other kids on the trip and so between the three of us has mom and his dad and me we figured out which of the kids going he knew we talked to him about and he did decide to go after all let me tell you he opened up on this trip like you wouldn't believe sure I mean he completed a ropes course several stories above the ground but he did something even harder for himself he opened up to his peers he started conversations even with the adult chaperoning the trip when we had a problem to solve he said solutions and at the end of the day when we were sitting around the campfire he made everybody laugh social connection was a student's gap and he closed it on the trip because I reached out to his parents.

 

I've been teaching this student for years and she is smart and mysterious and capable and like every other teenager on the planet she faces some obstacles to her academic success and whenever she hits a little bump in the road her mom and I are back and forth on the phone we make sure that she registers for all the accelerated 
classes would make sure that she stays in them and then when she needs some support we make sure she gets it and this fall her mom said to me my daughter is staying with you she's staying in your advice you call me you are the teacher who calls me.

 

So, here is one simple thing that teachers can do to close the gap we can reach out to parents if every day we picked up the phone or sent an email to one family and started one positive conversation about one kid say oh I don't know I really like the way your daughter asked me about the homework assignment or your son had some really great comments in our class discussion today at the end of a month that teacher will have 20 positive relationships with 20 different families that's 20 families walking around saying our teacher really cares about our kid and that's 20 families who are eager to pick up the phone now when you call and eager to read your emails because they expect something positive to happen and you know what the more I connect with parents the more positive stuff does happen those moments of connection give me the details that make the difference so you teach me what I need to know to help a kid the best evidence.

 

I have of those moments of connection are the letters and notes I get from students and parents and like many teachers I keep them in a box a lot of teachers have the special box where we keep all the letters mine is right next to my desk it's in the top drawer of the blue filing cabinet when I have a hard day I open up that door and open up that box and I read those letters and they give me confidence and energy and strength they make it possible for me to go forward unafraid to advocate for my students to say what they need to get me down on the trail finding the best path for them parent connection gets me moving.

 

so here is one simple thing that parents can do to get students across the gap reach out to teachers give us the details we need to make the difference historian Howard Zen who wrote a people's history of the United States says that we don't have to engage in grand heroic actions to participate in the process of change small acts when multiplied by millions of people can transform the world the natural tendency unfortunately has been to leave teachers and parents out of the big decisions so teachers don't make the big decisions in education and neither do parents but until we do we should not ignore some myriad of little decisions we already do make we know our kids and we make countless little decisions everyday that impact their chances of success what a powerful gift for a student to know my parents and teachers are working together they want the same success for me when you combine the title force power of parental love with the professional expertise of a devoted teacher we can get our kids across the gap together we could transform our schools into collaborative communities that put the children we live our lives for at the heart of all that we do thank you.

 

Words&phrases/어휘공부

• unravel :  investigate and solve or explain (something complicated or puzzling). they were attempting to unravel the cause of death
• service trip : Trips are built around visiting a community to devote a short period of time to a specific cause and are brought to life by the unforgettable moments that come from meaningful volunteer work, cultural exchange and service learning
• rickety :  poorly made and likely to collapse. we went carefully up the rickety stairs
• avid: having or showing a keen interest in or enthusiasm for something. an avid reader of science fiction