When you ask parents what they want for their children in adulthood, you get answers like these. When you ask employers what they want in an employee, you find the same qualities named. As a society, we have given schools the responsibility for working with students to prepare them for a successful future. But all too often there is no link created between parents and schools, despite the common goal of teaching students the skills they need to be successful, contributing, and employed, adults.
“21st Century skills” is the current language for referring to the skills students need to develop into productive members of society. These skills go far beyond mastering the core content areas in English, math, science and history. Successful adults need to know how to drive their own learning, track their own projects, and to communicate skillfully. Schools and teachers are not blind to the need to teach children social skills and self-reliance, but they are not measured by how well they instill these strengths in students. So often, with the demands of NCLB, the focus comes down to meeting content standards, while schools assume that parents will teach children the “soft” skills.
Contact between schools and parents is often similar to divorced parents who share custody of children, but are not on particularly good terms. Each needs the other to take significant shared responsibility for raising the children, but it is an overwhelming matter to consider wading into communication about shared goals, common routines, and values. Schools and parents develop a relationship around reporting on current activity and sharing the occasional celebration, but seldom have an avenue to deeper conversation. Schools, in their central position in the life of school-age children, have the opportunity to take the lead in this necessary conversation with parents.
The Hyde Schools have nurtured this conversation and shared commitment to raising children in both private and public school settings. In the classroom teachers consciously cultivate student ownership of routines, learning and accountability, which forces the students to develop communication skills, responsibility, and leadership. The Hyde Schools have a clear and accessible language of personal character development. Parents meet at the school throughout the year to learn the language used by the school (courage, curiosity, concern, integrity and leadership), how to reinforce these characteristics at home, and how to model them through their own behavior. The Hyde Foundation works with individual schools and school districts to design programs to begin and maintain the crucial conversation with parents.
A true partnership between school and home is in the best interest of the children in preparing them for the future.
Visit Hyde Schools
hyde.edu
hydebronxny.org
hydedc.org
Schools with parent programs on the Hyde model
pgcps.org/turningpoint
civacharterschool.org
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