Challenging Dominant Discourses About Families and Schools

Imagine if at the beginning of every school year, teachers greeted parents with some variation of the following. In a plastic baggie, place a cotton ball, a tissue, and a tea bag, along with the following poem:…

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In this article, teacher and school founder Ron Clark sets a combative tone for telling parents what their teachers really wish they could tell them if they could, beginning with, “For starters, we are educators, not nannies.” Clark goes on to list more complaints, supported with examples, of parents not trusting teachers and not taking them seriously. Whatever truths may or may not be represented in Clark’s article, I believe the key to repairing the breach between families and schools is that both sides should approach one another in a spirit of kindness and humanity, not in a spirit of accusation or opposition.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/06/living/teachers-want-to-tell-parents/

This satirized enactment of how teachers supposedly “really” feel about parents makes us laugh, but also points to our taken-for-granted ideas that parents and teachers have competing goals, rather than compatible ones. That they are on different teams, rather than playing different positions on the same team: Team Child.

http://www.reshareable.tv/teachers-message-to-parents-we-dont-suck-you-suck.html

The term “discourse” represents both the day-to-day “language-in-use” that serves to “enact activities and identities” (Gee, 1999, p. 7)—what James Gee calls “little d” discourses—and the myriad non-language elements of communications (posture, dress, gestures, and so forth) that assist us in the process of performing activities and identities. When these non-language elements combine with the language of given identities or activities, such that, these identities or activities are performed in credible ways, Gee explains, “big D” Discourses are at play. To understand how our attitudes about parent involvement (PI) develop, it is important to unpack the ways in which PI is talked about (the day-to-day language about PI), as well as the “big D” Discourses surrounding PI. Certain types of PI are deemed more legitimate than others. Certain parents are perceived as more or less involved (as well as more or less interested) in their children’s education. In truth, the dominant d/Discourses of PI privilege mainstream, majority experiences and marginalize the experiences of linguistically, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse (LCSD) families. Check out the two examples in my following posts, and then look for A Counternarrative for an example that contradicts the dominant discourse.

I want to change the conversation. For decades we talked about parents as deficient. Thankfully we are at least in our second decade of documenting and noting and promoting the ways in which parents are not. Yet our national discourse is still weighed down by rhetoric that shows a profound lack of respect for one another. I believe this is because our focus has been in the wrong place. We now have quite a number of books and articles that tell us families are more than bake sale planners, that they should be involved in making decisions, etc. But for all this advice, I am still asked by most principals and school leaders I meet for ideas on how to get their families more engaged. Why? Because the rift between families and schools is caused by a fundamental gap in relational understanding. It all comes down to relationship. Families don’t feel respected or seen, teachers don’t feel respected or seen, administrators may feel respected but certainly not seen…and the children are stranded in an ecosystem laden with mistrust and misunderstanding, rather than in a nurturing space where the adults agree to conspire together to give the children their best chance. I argue that the foundation for this agreement, this silent contract to be a team on behalf of the child is respect. Within respect there is trust and mutual admiration. Within respect, families and teachers see one another as natural allies, rather than natural enemies.