A few important notes for the FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

From the (Interim) Principal's Desk:

Dear Parents and Guardians,

It was so nice to see the wonderful turnout for Open House and Tiger Time.  The teachers spent a great deal of time preparing for the event to provide you with information and give you an idea of what the students would be learning for the coming year. 

Monday is our first day back for all students.  Please be patient with transportation to and from school.  Our bus fleet will all be driving new routes, and it usually takes a few weeks to work out the kinks.  If you are driving to school, please obey all the traffic patterns and do not drop your child off anywhere but in the Kiss and Ride loop for their safety.  Our school is in a high traffic location.  It is not safe for students to be crossing roads.

A reminder that cell phones that are brought to school need to remain off and in their backpack throughout the entire school day.  If you need to contact your student, please call the office and the message will be processed.  Please reinforce this new School Board policy outlined in the SR&R.

We all want to be involved in our children’s lives and schooling.  What type of involvement pays the most dividends?  The research article that follows explores different types of involvement and the impact they have on students.

What Kinds of Parent Involvement Really Make a Difference?

In this article in The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Angel Harris (Duke University) and Keith Robinson (formerly at University of Texas) affirm the importance of parents to their children’s academic success. But Harris and Robinson note that researchers disagree on the type of parent involvement that is most helpful. Is it helping with homework? Reading to children? Engaging children in home learning activities? Teaching social skills? Communicating with teachers? Attending meetings and events at the school? Being involved in school decision-making?

None of these are what really make a difference, say Harris and Robinson: “We argue that traditional measures of parental involvement fail to capture the fundamental ways in which parents actually help their children academically… [T]he mixed results observed in previous studies indicate that parental involvement does not operate through the typical channels posited by researchers, educators, and policymakers.”

So what does boost student achievement? According to the authors’ research, it’s stage-setting. The analogy is to what a theater’s behind-the-scenes workers do so actors can perform successfully in the show. “Thus,” say Harris and Robinson, “a good performance can be characterized as a partnership between two critical components: (1) the actor embodying his or her role, and (2) the stage-setter creating and maintaining an environment that reinforces (or does not compromise) the actor’s embodiment of the role. Likewise, many parents construct and manage the social environment around their children in a manner that creates the conditions in which academic success is possible.”

The most effective parents, say the authors, set the stage for their children’s academic success by the life space and messages they orchestrate:

  • They provide a secure home and neighborhood environment so children don’t have to worry about food and shelter and getting to and from school safely.
  • They make strenuous efforts to get their children into good schools.
  • They are supportive of academics, but also of non-school activities like ballet or piano lessons.
  • Their support comes across as caring about children’s overall success, not pressure and micromanaging to get an A in math. This can be conveyed indirectly, for example, by a desk rather than a TV in a child’s bedroom, and lots of books and magazines in the home.
  • They convey the critical importance of academic achievement to future options and life success.
  • They show confidence in the child’s intelligence and ability to do well in school, fostering a positive academic identity and a sense of responsibility to not let the family down.

All this produces a strong academic self-concept in young people. Harris and Robinson note that it’s possible to have that, but not a positive overall self-concept – and vice-versa. The best outcome is both – a strong academic and general self-concept.

Harris and Robinson’s big point is that it’s parents’ stage-setting, not being super involved in school activities, that makes the difference. “Whereas traditional forms of involvement comprise any number of parental activities,” they say, “stage-setting requires that parents focus on only two factors: messages and life space. Certainly, parents can be traditionally involved in their children’s schooling in some ways to accomplish each of these factors. However, stage-setting aims can also be achieved without employing any traditional forms of involvement. Thus, a busy parent with a demanding career can be a successful stage-setter with minimal direct involvement in his or her child’s schooling.” This hypothetical parent’s influence is at work under the surface, subtly shaping the children’s self-concept, aspirations, and future possibilities. By not micromanaging students’ homework and school activities, parents may produce more autonomous children who are better equipped to make their own way through the challenges of middle and high school.

Studies show that parents of all socio-economic levels have high hopes for their children’s school success. What matters is how those hopes play out day to day. Harris and Robinson suggest four possibilities:

  • Parents don’t convey the importance of education and don’t provide an educationally supportive home environment – This usually produces low achievers.
  • Parents convey the importance of education but don’t create an educationally supportive home environment – This usually produces mediocre or average achievers.
  • Parents don’t convey the importance of education, but there is an educationally supportive home environment – This usually produces average achieving students.
  • Parents convey the importance of education and create an educationally supportive home environment – This usually produces solid high achievers.

Clearly some parents succeed in making these messages more central to their children’s frame of reference and creating a positive life space, thereby broadening children’s horizons, enriching their psyches, and setting them up for academic success.

The major conclusion Harris and Robinson draw from their research is that “stage-setting explains a greater share of the link between social class and achievement than traditional forms of parental involvement.” They believe that conventional home-school activities are not the most-effective drivers of students’ academic achievement, while the underlying stage setting – messages and life space – are what really makes a difference. It’s only because stage setting is so closely correlated with social class that it appears that SES is determining student achievement.

 

“A New Framework for Understanding Parental Involvement: Setting the Stage for Academic Success” by Angel Harris and Keith Robinson


From our Assistant Principals/ Deans

The assistant principals and deans are excited to start the new year! There are a few changes and we wanted to introduce ourselves. Here is the break down of how we will be supporting students and families this year:

 

Name

Email Address

Student Teams

Rose Moore, Assistant Principal

Kelsey Toure, Dean of Students

crmoore@fcps.edu

kltoure@fcps.edu

Explorers (7th grade)

Phoenix (7th grade)

Seekers (7th grade)

Titans (7th grade

Rob Plunkett, Assistant Principal

Kerri Kirk, Dean of Students

rjplunkett@fcps.edu

kekirk@fcps.edu

Griffins (8th grade)

Innovators (8th grade)

LJ United (7th and 8th grades)

Odyssey (8th grade)

Quasars (8th grade)

 

We wanted remind students that hats should not be worn in the building at school. If students are wearing hoodies, their hoods should be down and not on their heads while at school too. Please feel free to contact us with questions that you may have.


Pre-order your Yearbook now, for Early Bird Savings!

Yearbooks can be purchased at a $5 discount up through the first day of school!  CLICK THIS LINK and use the coupon code "EarlyTiger" to save $5!