Cutting the Cord
August 1st, 2008 by Sherri McDonald
Two weeks into sixth grade, Ally arrived home from school on a Friday to find her mom energetically clicking away on the computer. A bulging Hobby Lobby bag sat on the desk, beside a stack of colorful online printouts.
Pausing, Danelle greeted her daughter and gestured with a flourish: “We’re nearly all set,” she beamed. “I have everything we need for the history project Mrs. Crawford posted online today on her assignments page. I know how much you love ancient Egypt, so I thought that’d be fun to do. Getting an ‘A’ on this is important; we want to start out stronger than last year. We’ll get started after you’ve had your snack.”
Outwardly, Ally nodded with half-interest and turned to the ‘fridge. She sighed and thought, Here we go again.
The problem? The “we” and the way computer technology is contributing to the challenge of well-intentioned parents’ over-involvement in their children’s school lives. Technology enhances students’ academic education, but it can hobble their personal development when parents harness its power to practice “virtual hovering”: the cybernetic version of micromanaging kids’ experiences — instead of letting them learn for themselves. The Internet has become the new proverbial apron strings.
No one’s advocating for pulling the plug on the Internet connection between parents and schools. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Across the nation, thousands of school systems are rapidly integrating online programs that not only allow but encourage parents to log-on and learn everything — from school policies and curriculum resources to their children’s real-time grades. Memphis City Schools (MCS) uses software like TeacherEase, where teachers can record grades for students. PowerSchool, used by the Shelby County schools as well as many independents provides a popular and vital link that engages parents, promotes the home-school partnership, and helps diminish the disconnect that leaves unsupported students feeling adrift.
But balanced involvement is essential and becoming a challenge for some parents to maintain when control lies only a mouse-click away. Emotionally charged and increasingly stressed by a competitive culture in which words like “college” loom large over even middle schoolers’ heads, many parents practice the policy: If “some” is good, “more” is better. That or they practice no involvement at all: an even greater problem.
Overwhelmingly, studies show that academic achievement — among students of all ages and backgrounds — is directly related to parental involvement. That is to say, the more consistently and appropriately a parent participates in her child’s education, the better that student will succeed in school. By default (and frustratingly obvious) the converse also is true: Students whose parents play little to no role in their children’s education disproportionately fall short of their potential and fall behind their peers.
Parent involvement is key to student success; it’s as simple as that.
The key to successful parent involvement, however, lies in two aforementioned words that constantly crop up in educators’ conversations: “appropriately” and “consistently.” Teachers stress that being mindful that school is not only an end — an experience — in itself, but also a means to an end — preparation for larger challenges in the future — can help parents gauge a healthy level of involvement.
Rhoda Stigall, a 30-year-veteran teacher and principal and now director of MCS division of Parent and Community Engagement, states that parents best help students by bridging home life and school life on a continuous, weekly “check-in” basis. She lauds technology as a leveling tool that helps working parents, in particular, be involved in their kid’s education. But, she adds, the Internet itself is only a means, and not the end to a parent’s role.
“Parents love having access to information about their students, from assignments to grades…[But] parents need support to become productively involved through technology. They need strategies to use Web resources to support their children in daily, age-appropriate ways,” she explains. It’s not enough, she stresses, to check-in only when there’s a problem; parents need to reinforce their student’s successes, as well. And using the Internet to know what and how their student is doing is not the same as doing something about it.
Problems arise, say educators, when parents either fail to act upon what they learn on schools’ Net pages or too zealously do so. Some parents learn about poor grades or problems and vigorously contact the school, venting their ire on their child, the teacher, or both, only to fade into the background again without following through to actively ensure their student makes necessary behavioral changes.
Others, like Danelle, obsessively access Web information before allowing their student to communicate school details themselves, making the Internet an unhealthy interface between them. When parents further preempt initiative by making decisions for their child, they hinder their student’s learning to take responsibility for school activities, and, by extension, for themselves.
Lucie Rutledge, an educator for two decades now teaching at Evangelical Christian School, says one warning sign of overinvolvement is use of the royal word “we”: “[Involvement] is such a judgment call. No one knows the child better than parents, and [allowing a student‘s] independence is a very difficult step…” However, the ultimate goal in raising and educating a child is to teach him self-sufficiency, she adds, and to be successful, children must learn it incrementally, particularly in adolescence. At some point, Rutledge empathetically says, ’we’ parents must learn to let their children imperfectly stumble along on their own two feet. Use the Internet as a support line, she smiles, but not as an umbilical cord.
Striking that balance is a challenge, agrees Emily Squires, educational media specialist at White Station Middle School, who might suggest an Internet click a day to keep frustration away.
However, different students need different levels of supervision, so parents should attend technology “help” sessions to explore when and how to intervene in kids’ problems and when to stand by and let students try and deal with them on their own.
Making that distinction is crucial, advises Catherine Schumacher, a counselor formerly in community practice, who now works at Memphis University School. She says parents naturally want to protect their children, but may hobble them if they micromanage in situations that can teach valuable lessons for life beyond school walls. Parents are kids’ safety nets, she notes, but if we never let our children fall, how will they learn to deal with adversity and learn what they’re capable of?
[School is where] students learn to be responsible and accountable for themselves,” Schumacher explains. “That includes reporting important information to their parents…Students of all ages will make mistakes [in keeping up with homework or preparing adequately for tests, but] mistakes are an important way they learn and grow.“ So use the Internet as a cross-check, but don’t preempt students’ responsibility by relying upon it, she counsels.
As Rutledge puts it, “ [Averting] mistakes by taking too much control of a child’s school life may make things easier in the short-run, but it doesn’t help students gain the judgment learned through cause-and-effect…When parents [use Internet information] to either jump on their students about problems or jump in to try and save them from the consequences of those mistakes, they do them a disservice.”
Parents need to understand that it’s their job to work with the teacher on behalf of their student, and not work for the student by mediating with the teacher, Rutledge continues. The difference lies in who’s being held answerable for what. It’s a problem when parents overuse the Internet to run interference for their kids or run their school lives. Ultimately, students must take charge for themselves, because by high school graduation, they’ll have to be able to do so full-time.
The Internet is a valuable communication tool,“ Schumacher says, noting many parents would like access to even more detailed information than often is posted, like real-time grades, which allow parents to see scores often even before their students know how they did on tests. However, she cautions, overly focusing on the “products“ of school — like grades and statistics — can miss the mark, when it is the “process“ (and progress) of learning that is most important in kids’ development.
Parents should use Internet assignment pages, posted grades, and other information as supplements to talking with their children, but the conversations always should come first,” Schumacher says. “The nuances of how and what students are thinking about their school experiences are just as important as the big-ticket items like grades…[And] that can’t be gotten over the Internet…”
So, be informed and be aware, but regularly power down the computer, and power-up table-talk. It’s kids’ task to grow up and parent’s task to let them, as hard as technology sometimes makes that.