Children Learn Best When Parents Learn With Them

by Renee DuChainey Farkes | Empowerment, Maria Montessori, MFA, Mixed Ages, Montessori Charter Schools, Montessori Education, Montessori Parenting, Parent Education, Parent-Teacher Communication, Planes of Development, Practical Life, School Leadership, The International Montessori Council

I used to think that our school’s mission was solely about each student and his/her learning; now I know that our mission also includes the parent as a learner. My personal journey from “I used to think…but now I know” occurred through observation and research during my 30 years in leadership at Kingsley Montessori in Boston and was confirmed in my travels last year visiting over 65 Montessori schools worldwide. In conversation, heads of school acknowledged the value of parent partnerships for the child’s learning outcomes as well as, strikingly, the parent’s learning.

The parent experience is not just about making parents happy; it’s also about helping parents learn and grow, which positively affects the student experience and learning outcomes. Through my research, I have learned that the parent experience is both related to and separate from their child’s experience. It is about self-identity and individual learning on how to be a confident parent. As parents learn and grow, they look to educators for support and guidance. The foundational stages that our student’s experience coincide with the parent’s own
developmental stages.

There are many benefits. When parents feel connected to the school, they are happier, they are more confident, and they actually become more self-assured as parents. We know that children learn best when they see the connection between the adults in their life—their parents and their teachers. This special partnership supports children to do their best work. Happy parents become strong ambassadors for the school, and word of mouth is the best advocate for new students and families. Parents can be a rich source of information and experience. What’s better than our parents having a great personal experience for themselves in addition to their child’s great learning experience? And happy customers share their enthusiasm with others. 

The Parents as Partners initiative positively affected enrollment, retention, student learning assessments, reduced parent anxiety, and made the community more collaborative and positive.  It was fueled by many “I used to think …but now I know” experiences by administrators, faculty, and parents, as we worked at opening our own and others’ minds to the potential benefits.

My objective in writing is to open minds to the benefits of embracing and enhancing the parent experience at your school and to introduce effective implementation strategies and processes. Please join me in a journey from “I used to think…but now I know.” We will cover the concept of Parents as Learners and introduce the Voice of the Parent so we can listen to it. What we know today about parents’ needs and wants is profound and provides significant opportunities and benefits to all of us. Some of these benefits include improved student learning, better parent (customer) experiences, strong student retention, and increased new admissions.

During the last decade, I have participated in a multi-year research initiative including surveys, school visits, parent interviews, and a variety of readings.  The non-traditional survey tool was created by the research and consulting firm Resonance Insights. In this survey, parents were asked to describe their ‘ideal’ school experience as well as their ‘current’ school experience. The results highlighted gaps between what parents desired and what they were actually experiencing. This gave us a unique opportunity to reflect on our work and think about the parent in a different way.

During a six-month sabbatical, I  traveled and met other Montessori heads of school. We engaged in this very topic—how to partner with parents in a way that enhances the student and parent experience, together and separately. These conversations acknowledged the potential benefits as well as the challenges. In addition to the many surveys and visits, I also reviewed the findings from AMI’s research on Montessori parent aspirations and motivations.  Here again, parents want to be brought into the experience so they can understand the process and aid in their child’s growth through partnership with the school.   Two books were instrumental in my learnings, Small Animals (Kim Brook), and Ellen Galinsky’s Developmental Stages of Parenthood. Both do an excellent job at helping us understand the Parent as a Learner.

Who is the customer in our schools? Is it the child, or is it the parent? Many teachers/administrators believe it is the child. I believe (and now know) the parent is the customer; the student is the consumer. The parent is the one who decides where the child goes to school and for how long. Much of this is based on the student’s experience, but we also now know that the experience of the parents is a key factor in whether the child will stay at the school (retention). While our mission is about helping each child to grow and develop in their own unique way, we should ask ourselves: What about parents growing and developing? Parents are growing and learning about parenting during the same time that their children are at our schools. Galinsky shows us that parents also go through their own developmental stages of growth, and they often look to us for support and guidance.

The parenthood experience is complex and diverse, yet it is also predictable and universal. Parents are well-intentioned and need involvement and connection. These feelings are linked to their aspiration to be good parents in harmony with themselves and their families. How do we open this dialogue?  How do we help our schools support the needs of parents? In my experience, we have a special opportunity to support each parent to reach their greatest potential, which directly benefits the child and the school. This opportunity for partnership is stunning!

The parent’s experience is both about the child’s learning as well as the parents’ own learning. This was breakthrough thinking for me and offered profound benefits. The parent experience and the student experience are together and separate. We must focus on the totality of this experience: the parent experience with school and the student (my child) and the parents’ own experience with the school for themselves (me as a parent).

Our Voice of the Parent research told us what parents wanted for their child from the school. They want to be sure that their child is a learner—that s/he is curious, adept, and will be a lifelong learner. They want their child to become independent, finding and following his or her own passion. They want their child to be treated with respect as a unique individual. They want their child, and themselves, to be connected to a welcoming community, to be happy, and to be safe.  They want to be assured that their child is well prepared socially, emotionally, and academically. And most importantly, they want teachers to love their child and for their child to have friends at school. They want teachers to see their child(ren) as unique individuals and to help them reach their greatest potential.

Our extensive research data affirms that parents want the school to help them not only learn about their child but how to be better parents.

And we now know what parents want from the school for themselves as parents. They want effective two-way communications between home and school. They want to understand that parents and teachers have equal roles in developing and supporting the child. They want to be involved in their child’s education and need the teacher to tell them how. They want to understand the process of learning and how it takes place. They also want to feel connected and have a sense of belonging in the school. They want to be assured that their child is in the best place for him/her to grow. Parents want to be proud of their child’s school and, in return, they will advocate it to others.

Parents today experience fear, worry, and, anxiety about whether their child is developing ‘on schedule.’ There is a general trend of parents seeking more information about their child’s learning and a less-than-full understanding of Montessori pedagogy. Over and over, parents have shared that they are uncertain, and they worry all the time. They report often feeling overpowered, out of control, and unable to set boundaries and limits with their child because they are unsure. They feel pressured to do the right thing and often not sure what the right thing is! The better we can understand our parents’ concerns, the more we can support them to grow and learn as they navigate from one stage of parenthood to the next, often at the same time, their children are moving from one developmental stage to another. They want help; they want guidance. They want to understand how and why. For schools, this is a wonderful opportunity; it is mission-centric for us. We know that parents have good intentions, through all of this worry and anxiety. They often report that they want to be the ‘best parent’ … tell me how!

The Voice of the Parent categorizes themes that drive parents and are ranked as follows: Me as a Parent (self); My Child, Teachers and Staff; Curriculum/methods, Outcome; Community/people; Communications/Participation; and Location/Facility. Within these categories, specific questions include the following:

Did I choose the right school for my child?

Is my child having the best experience?

How can I fully understand my child’s learning in Montessori?

Is my child challenged?

How can I be involved in my child’s education?

Is my child safe?

Does my child have enough friends?

Are the teachers the best?

Parents feel responsible for their children’s successful development and make a tremendous effort and investment to support that development. Acknowledging this and involving parents as partners gives parents confidence that they will be successful in their role.

My experience is that it is difficult for administrators/faculty to consider that parents are their customers, and their experience is mission critical. But when we allowed ourselves to consider it and explored our work in light of it, we create many opportunities. What is our communication style? What does programming look like? Are we focused on the parent experience? Have we defined the parent experience at our schools? The essential question is: Can we make the parent experience better?

 What can we do to enhance the parent experience? It begins with the Voice of the Parent, a whole new way of thinking about what we do and how we do it.  Creating a framework for embedding the Voice of the Parent into your school work is key. It is critical for success that all operations of the school are included: leadership; admissions; development; education; facilities; finance; and marketing and communications. Through this framework, every parent communication, calendar event, or other interaction must be reviewed and guided by what we call three clear points (TCP). Three clear points utilizes the domains of learning: Feel, Know, and Do. For each activity or action, we ask ourselves these three questions, which often lead to redesigning our format and/or our communications.

1. How do we want parents to feel?

2. What do we want parents to know?  (pedagogy before logistics)

3. How will we execute this task, responsibility and/or deliver the message? (make the shift)

Implementation begins with full commitment from leadership. Teachers and staff need to adjust their mindset to ‘parent as customer,’ and professional development needs to highlight the benefits to both the teacher and child. Using a survey to find out what parents want, as opposed to what we think they need is important because the issues may not be the same.

Once schools have this information, it’s important to define what partnership is at your school. Engaging the parent association to help with the work is critical to success. They should be involved from the beginning, allowing them to see the survey results and help define priorities since they are on the ground with other parents! And of course, communicating priorities and actions is important, as well as progress and outcomes/decisions. Keeping the parent association involved is extremely helpful because they can keep this new work on their monthly agenda and provide continuous feedback and updates.

This framework has led us to reconsider our spaces, to add programs, and to communicate with this new focus shift on how we want parents to feel at school.

Here are a few examples:

1. We created a more welcoming environment in our community open space for parents, adding a coffee bar, couches, tables and stools so they could meet together, or do their own work while waiting for pick up.

2. We altered morning drop-off in our elementary building—we now encourage parents to walk their children to their classrooms.

3. We reached out to new families with personal phone calls three times a year. This is a shared exercise by all members of leadership rather than just teachers. They continue their regular outreach, but this is part of our orientation.

4. We created a parent experience steering committee that meets three times a year to give input (not decision-making) on topics under review. This committee involves parents, teachers, and administration.

5. From time to time, we develop parent/teacher task forces to study an issue. A task force, as opposed to a committee, has a clear goal and timeline. It ends when the work is done.

6. We developed task forces (beginning and an end) on the major areas of review for the year. Parents report on the results to school leadership.

7. We worked with Chip Wood (author of Yardsticks) to redesign our parent-teacher conference and progress reports, now more focused on meeting parents expressed needs.

8. We have developed leadership retreats and professional development for faculty to aid them in developing parent partnerships.

9. We developed a Parent Speaker Series on topics determined by parents.

10. We developed “the Kingsley Way” to define our pedagogy, teaching, and parent expectations.

In summary, we embraced the Voice of the Parent and used it to create an action plan. Everybody was involved in the sharing of the findings, as well as in determining priorities. We had a strong commitment to execute the plan from leadership, faculty, and the parent association. Everybody benefits in moving toward the ‘ideal’ parent experience. Overall, our plan closed programmatic communication gaps, developed the leadership to be more customer focused in their work, and changed the mindset of teachers to better understand and leverage the role of the parent. As a result, parents were happier, retention strengthened, and parents became our best ambassadors for admissions events. A happy school!

My journey lead me to move from “I used to think…but now I know” on most aspects of the parent experience with substantial benefits for the students, administrators/faculty, and the parents. I urge you to consider the parents’ experience at your school and, more specifically, how your programs can, perhaps, better focus on the needs of parents as learners. We have so much to gain from what parents know about their children, and we have so much knowledge and experience to help our parents feel more confident and be the best parents they can be. This is the true partnership of the school and home, working to help each child achieve their greatest potential. Remember, children learn best when parents learn with them. Let’s respect parent insights and concerns and help them. Then, we will gain a more engaged and energized parent community. This is important work.

We understand the great importance of parents becoming partners in the education of their child during these formative years. Our work is for them. We believe that schools are transformational forces in the lives of our children and families. Please join us in this important work!

“Let us place the school in the home; not only that, but let us place it there as collective property, and let us place under the eyes of parents the entire life of the teacher, in the accomplishment of her mission.”

—Maria Montessori, Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica, 1909. P.45 ′

ML / Feb 2019 / Pg 15