Title: Educating Parents About Education | Edutopia
Headings: Educating Parents About Education
Educating Parents About Education
Many parents today have an educational perspective based on 20th century pedagogy and methodology. Teachers need to educate them about where education is now.
By Tom Whitby
September 17, 2014
Things Have Changed
Keeping Parents Informed
Parent Education Starts With Us

Content: As big of a struggle as it may be to affect the mindset of educators while they model and share those changes with their students, we must recognize that parents are left almost entirely out of the process. Keeping Parents Informed
If we don't want an adversarial relationship with parents, we need to educate them about the education of their children. Technology provides a number of methods for keeping parents informed. Of course, the most effective way of all is a face-to-face meeting. In the past, Parents Night or Back to School Night was the standard way of informing parents about the teachers' expectations. It was one night set aside for parents to check out the mean teacher they had heard so much about at dinner. We probably need to make that a more collaborative process. These nights could be more effective if we allowed parents to pose sessions on topics that they had an interest in. Teachers could pose topics that they thought parents should be aware of. Back to School Night could be just that -- a night to learn about topics relevant to education in the 21st century.