Involving At-risk Families in Their Children

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Involving At-risk Families in Their Childrens
Education
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Learning Outcomes

• Students are able to
• Describe the meaning of at-risk
• Describe how at-risk factors affect collaboration
• Discuss models dealing with at-risk families
• Provide strategies for schools to deal with
  at-risk parents/guardians

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Related Web-site

• Title of the document ERIC
• At-risk families schools becoming partners by
  Lynn Balster Liontos (1992) Forward by Don Davies
• http//eric.uoregon.edu/pdf/books/atriskfs.pdf

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What Contribute to The At-risk Factors?

• The divorced families
• Blended families
• Family poverty
• Gay and lesbians households
• Child with disabilities
• The abused child
• Family violence

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Why is parent involvement so important for
at-risk children?

• Children usually embrace the familiar home
  culture and reject the unfamiliar school culture,
  including its academic components and goals
  (Hamilton-Lee, 1988)
• Family, school and community are key elements in
  the educational process, and all three parts of
  the system must work together for the educational
  process to be successful (Nancy Feyl, 1993)
• Low-income parents feel a sense of exclusion and
  powerlessness

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• Both (teachers and parents) understand the
  others setting and expectations schools can
  become more home-like and home can have a school
  component
• Those children who come from at-risk families are
  generally lacking in terms of human capital,
  I.e., parents educational background as well as
  economic and social status)
• Deficit in parents social capital the
  relationships and interactions that take place
  among people)
• Note Traditional methods of parental
  involvement do not work with at-risk parents

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What Contribute to Children At-risk?

• They are usually poor minorities often from other
  cultural backgrounds (Liontos, 1991)
• Giving the increasing divorce rates, the growing
  number of single parent families and families in
  which both parents work, even children of
  well-educated, middle class parents can come to
  school unprepared because of stress their
  families are undergoing (James Cormer)

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• Students who fail to read well by 4th grade often
  have a greater likelihood of dropping out and a
  lifetime diminished success (Corporation for
  National Service, America Reads Challenge) What
  is the implication for our educators?
• Statistics show that the high school dropout rate
  is 29 in the United States, 5 in Japan and 2
  in Russia (U.S. Department of Education)

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The Senario

• I never see the parents I need to see!
• Most students are at-risk at some time or another
• The family size, which was 4.7 persons in 1995
  decreased to 4.52 in 2000, is forecast to further
  decrease to 4.3 in 2005. So What are the
  implications?
• School children have the following
  characteristics (Mclaughlin and Shields, 1987)
• 14 are illegitimate
• 40 will have lived with a single parent by the
  time they reached age 18
• 30 are latchkey kids

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• 20 lived in poverty
• 15 have physical and mental handicaps, and
• 10 have poorly educated parents
• Over 40 of fathers had never read to their
  school-aged children (The National Center for
  Fathering, 1999)

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• Many administrators, academics, practitioners,
  and public policy analysts are not aware of newly
  emerging insights, especially from outside their
  own fields and I was dismayed at how little of
  this knowledge was being utilized to change the
  prospects for the children growing up in the
  shadows, the children most at risk (Breaking the
  cycle of disadvantage (book) by Schorr,L and
  Schorr, D)

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• National Household Survey on drug abuse (1996)
• 6 had at least one parent in need of treatment
  for illicit drug abuse
• 4 lived with at least one parent who was
  dependent on alcohol
• 14 lived with one or more parents who reported
  past-year use of illegal drugs, while 11 lived
  with at least one parent who reported past-month
  use
• 50 live in household where at least one parent
  reported cigarette use in the past month

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• Words from First Grade teacher (Reeves) to
  Carnegie researchers
• You send notices home, theres no response. You
  ask parents to come to conferences, they dont
  come. You send homework home, you can see that
  parents arent paying any attention to it. They
  arent helping their kids.
• How do we help them?

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Models Working With At-RiskFamilies

• The No-Fault Model
• Dont place all the blame on either family or
  the school.
• We are all responsible and we must work together
• A Non-deficit Approach
• Respect families for who they are Look for
  assets and strengths

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• Empower families
• Helping individuals remove obstacles that impede
  their efforts to achieve equal status in society
• An ecological approach
• Look for connectedness in the educational
  processes Each realm influences others
• Collaboration as the only way

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The Missing Link

• For all research on low-income and at-risk
  children, few studies have asked whether parent
  involvement can help these students achieve at
  levels expected for middle-class children. Most
  studies have compared groups of high-risk
  children receiving special treatment with control
  groups of their peers. (Henderson, 1998) So,
  What should we do?

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At-risk Who are they?How Are They Linked to
At-risk Families?

• Low achievement
• Unable to cope
• Poor attendance
• Dislike schools
• Lack of social skills
• Poor study skills
• Financial problem
• Limited language proficiency
• Low motivation
• Discipline problems

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• Pregnancy
• Dropout
• Child of divorce/orphans
• No extracurricular involvement
• Substance abuse
• Unhealthy physical appearance
• Poverty
• Negative peer influence

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Not Achieving Minimum Levelof Competency

• Obtaining grades Ds and Es in UPSR and Es in PMR
• UPSR 186,179 39.8
• PMR 156,337 38.5
• SPM (failed) 32,599 9.1
• EPRD (Sharifah Md Nor)

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Dropouts

• 2003
• From yr 3 yr 4 89
• From Yr 6 Remove/Form I 45,565
• From Form 3 Form 4 16,391
• From Form 4 Form 5 14,570
• About 10 of students continue their schooling
  outside the MOE systems after Year 6
• EPRD (Sharifah Md Nor)

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Challenges Ahead Education of At-riskStudents
(Sharifah Md. Nor, UPM Inaugural Series)

• Enhance the early intervention programs for
  at-risk students
• Problems associated with the failure of at-risk
  students
• Large classes
• Teachers skills and willingness to teach
• Skills in diagnosing students
• Teachers burden
• Lack of funds, space and support from all parties

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• Enhance at-risk students socio-psychological
  learning environment
• Teachers expectations and treatment of lowest
  stream students
• Alternative grouping strategy
• Enhance school membership Changing the climate
  of at-risk schools
• Labeling of at-risk schools such as sinking
  schools and placement in ICU, and etc.
• Enhance educational engagement Make learning
  more meaningful for at-risk students
• Example Teachers are boring, if we dont
  understand, they shout at us, thats why we skip
  the class.
• Create more experiential learning, offering
  vocational subjects in normal schools

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What Must We do?(Sharifah Md. Nor)

• Reduce class size
• Research-based school improvement programs
• Collaboration with partners
• Change the paradigm
• Attracting the best people into the teaching
  profession

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Enhancing The Involving At-risk Families by
Understanding Them

• Begin with the correct paradigm Many family
  forms exist and are legitimate (stepparents and
  the like)
• Divorced families
• Children and parents who are experiencing divorce
  process have special needs and issues
• Teachers will benefit by knowing about these
  special needs
• A number of effective communication and program
  strategies are available to deal with the needs
  and issues
• The complexity of the
• Divorced family sub-system ex-spouse subsystem,
  single-parent sub-system, visiting parent-child
  subsystem, sibling subsystem
• Remarriage subsystem blended family
• Children explicitly state that they want their
  teachers to know about their separation/divorce
  so that the teacher will be more tolerant and
  understand of their behavior (Frieman, 1993)
• I dont want my teacher to think that I dont
  care about my work
• I want her to know so that when Im feeling sad,
  she know the reason and not yell at me. (Both
  are first grade students)

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• Research indicates that teachers should be
  particularly attentively to children who reside
  in homes where the father is the custodial
  parent.
• The findings indicate that boys and girls reside
  with their fathers do not perform as well
  academically as their matches from two-parent
  families/children who reside with only their
  mothers.
• Implications for teachers/school administrators
• As informal counselors
• Referring parents and children to community
  agencies for formal intervention
• More emotional energy is required of them

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• Blended families
• As of 2000, blended stepfamily outnumbered all
  other types of families in the United States
  (Darden Zimmerman,1992)
• Most stepchildren report feelings of anger,
  hostility, denial, loss, anxiety, fear,
  excitement, curiosity, hesitancy, happiness,
  jealousy, and unrealistic expectations
• Teachers and other school personnel can help to
  facilitate this adjustment period by helping the
  child to recognize and accept the wide array of
  emotions experienced and set realistic
  expectations for accepting and adjusting to new
  life

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• Stepfamily Education can help to accomplish the
  following goals and ease the transition and roles
  of the reconstituted family
• Helping stepchildren understand the complexity
  of stepfamily functioning
• Helping stepchildren and their parents develop
  positive relationships
• Teaching stepchildren and their parents to
  communicate effectively with their parents
• Teaching stepchildren how to manage their
  emotions

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• Poverty
• The poverty level of a family of four is 18,050
  (Douglas-Hall Koball, 2005)
• Approximately 17 of U.S. children live in
  poverty
• Students bring effects of poverty with them to
  school, administrators and teachers must
  understand and deal with poverty and its
  consequences
• Teachers will subconsciously take middle-class
  expectations of parent-school relationships into
  their classroom with them when dealing with
  low-income families
• Example given by Sherman, 1994, a Kentucky
  Science teacher
• Some of them get up with the problem every
  morning How do you wake up without an alarm
  clock or a parent there to wake you up? How do
  you wake up and go to school when you probably
  dont have a bed to sleep in the night before?
  These kids could beat anybody.

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• The limited school involvement of low-income
  parents can be attributed to their lack of trust
  in school personnel, as well as a lack of
  understanding of the way schools function
• Parents in poverty, like parents of all other
  socioeconomic groups, love their children, but
  may feel uncomfortable in their childrens
  schools
• Poverty causes parents in poverty having little
  energy to deal with family problems outside of
  fulfilling basic daily needs

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• Tips for working with low-income families
• Check your attitude Dont blame them
• Know the environment with which your low-income
  live
• Gathering basic information about low-income
  families
• Communicate with low-income parents
• Getting low-income families actively involved
  Create a partnership Flexibility, practicality,
  and creativity can help to achieve this
• Become involved in the community
• Be sensitive to the financial limitations of
  low-income families

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• The abused child
• What is child abuse? Definition (PL 93-247, 1977)
• The physical or mental injury, sexual abuse,
  negligent treatment or maltreatment of a child
  under the age of 18 by a person who is
  responsible for the childs welfare under
  circumstances which indicate that the childs
  health or welfare is harmed or threatened thereby
  
• Most of the victims were abused by their parents
  (84)
• Responsibility to report vary according to
  individual country law

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• Types of maltreatment
• Neglect and medical neglect
• Physical abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Emotional maltreatment
• Other

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Obstacles to reaching at-risk parents

• Low-income parents see schools as
  institutionalized authority. Therefore they
  leave it to their teachers to educate their
  children
• There are economic, emotional, and time
  constraints and logistical problems
• Teacher attitudes about at-risk children
• They have low expectations for at-risk children
• They believe at-risk parents dont care and dont
  want to get involved

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• Schools tend to see the parental role as
  traditional, passive and home-based
• Gap between knowledge and action springs from
  traditions which segregate bodies of information
  by professional, academic, political, and
  bureaucratic boundaries
• Schools often organize events for their own
  convenience and pay little attention to the needs
  of at-risk parents

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Themes for School Reaching Out (SRO)Institute
for Responsive Education (IRE)Boston

• Providing success for all children
• None should be labeled likely failures because
  of their social, economic, or racial
  characteristics of their families/communities
• Serving the whole child
• In order to foster academic development, all
  other aspects of development (social, emotional,
  physical) must be addressed by schools and
  families.

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• Sharing responsibility
• The development of children is shared among the
  responsibility of the school, the family and
  other community agencies

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General TipsHow to begin working with at-risk
families?

• Different types of parent involvement seem to
  produce different results (Epstein)
• Be sure youre totally committed
• Work through a coordinator
• Be prepared to be innovative and flexible
• Use personal outreach. Home visits are a must.
  Have adequately prepared and sensitive school
  representatives to go into homes to meet with
  families
• Do not hold your first activity at school. Use
  natural and informal settings (such as social
  centers, market and etc) to reach and talk with
  parents. Informal settings are less intimidating
  to low-income parents
• Make your first event fun, start with something
  social

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• View an interested parent as a potential partner,
  not a problem
• Letting them know specifically what it is they
  must do
• Consider providing the following
• Child care
• Interpreters
• Meals
• Choose different times to schedule events
• Do not give up if the initial response isnt
  overwhelming
• Cultural differences are both valid and valuable
• Many family forms exist and are legitimate

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• All families have strengths. Dont view at-risk
  families as failures
• Partnership with at-risk families is impossible
  without collaboration with other community
  agencies
• All families and individuals need to feel
  empowered

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High School Dropout Prevention

• It is harder to involve parents at the secondary
  level than it is at elementary level for the
  following reasons
• High schools are usually larger then elementary
  schools
• Teenagers developed autonomy and independence
• Subject specialization

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• The literature on parent involvement in their
  childrens secondary education suggests that
  parent involvement at this level is potentially
  as effectively as at elementary level, though it
  is much rarer to expect parents of secondary
  students to become involved as home tutors
  (Suzanne Ziegler, 1987)

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Building on successful programs

• Schorr describes six challenges that we have to
  consider
• Knowing what works
• Proving we can afford it
• Attracting and training enough skilled and
  committed personnel
• Resisting the lure of replicating through
  dilution
• Gentling the heavy hand of bureaucracy and
• Devising a variety of replication strategies