Supporting Parents in the Classroom

Submitted by Erin Vobornik on Wed, 08/21/2024 - 11:43
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Helping learners overcome barriers to persistence is an important part of what programs do. As instructors, we often hear about these barriers when they prohibit a learner from fully engaging in the class. In celebration of the start of the new school year, it’s a good time to look at what adult education classes look like to learners who are also parents. 

Some of the challenges that my parent-learners have faced are:

  • Not making it to class on time because of school drop-offs and their children’s bus schedule
  • Missing class when children inevitably get sick and cannot go to school
  • Missing class because school breaks don’t align with their adult education class schedule

Adult education classes look different around the country. For those that are housed within K-12 districts, holidays are probably aligned. For others, learners may drive from other districts to attend class. 

Our parent-learners are at the heart of family literacy, and they continue to inspire their children to persist despite barriers. We want them to not only attend class, but learn, engage, and empower the next generation of students.

 

How do you support parent-learners in the classroom? What have you found to be their biggest challenge, and what has worked well?

Comments

Thanks for posting this timely topic as we jump into routines for the new schoolyear.  As the new community moderator for the LINCS Program Management group, I tend to look at this through that lens.  

How do you support parent-learners in the classroom? What have you found to be their biggest challenge, and what has worked well?

I agree that the three challenges you listed are probably the most common we hear because they do revolve around transportation and childcare - those two areas that I wish I had a magic solution for, but sadly don't.  I do, however, have a few thoughts on how programming can make it a little less challenging for parent-learners.

Because there is so much involved in running a program, it is convenient to follow the previous year's schedule.  This is not done intentionally, but, if schools follow 3-4 different drop-off and pick-up schedules in your area then it can be difficult to take all into account.  My typical advice to program leaders is to actually map things out on a calendar.   Begin by checking a few school system calendars for holiday breaks and to see what these carpool and aftercare times look like and then build your morning, afternoon, and evening classes after this.   In my area, many schools have aftercare that ends at a certain time - could you partner with the schools to offer AE classes towards the end of that block on that campus? This leads to another issue - location and access.  We want to meet our adult learners where they are...literally, if possible.  Are classes offered within the community - apartment buildings, libraries, etc.?  

Do you have ready-made distance learning materials for these parent-learners who cannot make it to class?  Yes, we love our online products, but do you have anything else that students can pick up to work on while caring for a sick child if they do not have access to the internet?  Do you have a texting system to check in with students who miss class? As a program, have your instructors worked on putting together these low-tech (or no tech) Teacher Verification Model (TVM) distance learning materials?  If so, share your resources or let us know how you came together as a team to build quality resources for parent-learners who can't make it to class.

 

 

 

I love this conversation - it demonstrates the kind of practical, concrete things that we as educators can do to assist our learners, in addition to actual content instruction. To build on Adrienne's comments, I was thinking of the benefits of using a Learning Management System with our classes, even our in-person only classes. Providing learning materials to absent students is a lot easier if much of the class work already lives in an LMS platform. The teacher doesn't have to do extra preparation of materials - just text the absent student to indicate which lessons in the LMS they should do to catch up. (There are free options for Learning Management Systems, some of which are mobile friendly in case students have a phone but not a computer.) And even in-class attendees benefit from using technology like an LMS - it's not just for distance learning! 

There are lots of barriers to attendance we cannot control, but I embrace this perspective of concentrating on those areas of help and support that we CAN control. 

Anita, 

I completely agree with having an LMS for in-person classes also. It's a great way to share resources and content with learners with barriers of all sorts.