Parents as Partners

When I think about the first few weeks in an early childhood classroom in a typical year, this one image always enters my mind. I ring our chime to start our Morning Meeting, and ask children to come sit in a circle. Most of my kids hug and kiss the grown-up who drops them off – a parent, a grandparent, a care-giver - and join us on the rug. But there is always one, or two, or five children – who cry or scream, attempt to make a run for it out the door and down the hall, or who tightly cling to a parents’ leg. Don’t go, they cry. Stay longer – No! I want to go with you. I look at the adult and I gently take the child’s hand. I whisper, It’s ok. She’ll be fine. I got her. I ask for trust. You don’t know me, but trust me. And they do. The adults pry themselves away, and the child keeps crying, sometimes for a minute more, sometimes all day. I show children our “Peace Corner”-  an area of the room with a comfy pillow, blanket, stuffed animal, books and drawing materials. I invite them to draw their parents a picture. Sometimes children stay in the Peace Corner all morning.  Sometimes they are teary all day. But they make it through. And they adjust, they come back the next day, and the next, eventually running into the classroom with just a quick wave or goodbye. 

These early weeks of school are typically all about transition. Transition from home to school. Getting used to routines in a new environment, navigating new friendships and relationships with adults. But this year in my class, school is home, home is school, and in those first few days in mid-August, there were no tears, no screams, no real goodbyes. Children were in their bedrooms, on their couches, at their kitchen tables. They needed no transitional objects because the objects were with them. They showed me their pets, their favorite stuffed animals, their musical instruments. I saw what they ate for breakfast. 

And in those first few weeks, rather than parents leaving their teary children at the door with a kiss and a hug, I look out at my classzoom and instead, I see a few more “students” than usual, only they are a lot taller. Because this year, parents are in my class. They are sitting beside their children, just off camera. They are working at a desk in the background, or lying on their child’s bed. Some parents, of course, are on Zoom calls of their own in other spaces. At most, though, given that these children are four going on five, a grown-up is usually not more than a room away, most likely within earshot of what’s going on. They are ready to step in at a moment’s notice, their eyes snapping up as they hear the inevitable: My glue stick won’t open. I can’t hear her! I’m hungry. What button do I press? And that’s when, suddenly, parents are in my classroom. 

They are watching, giving kids advice, offering responses to questions. They whisper gentle reminders, You need to talk louder so your teacher can hear you. Wait your turn. They help with word-spelling and encourage their kids to add more to a picture.  They offer to cut or glue or draw. Their intentions are good, they are trying to help, because young children’s learning is certainly not meant to be like this, and they are doing all they can to support their kids in this incredibly challenging situation. As a teacher, I find myself standing on this middle ground somewhere between wanting and appreciating parent assistance, and also striving to help children develop independence as learners. My guess is that parents are wishing for the same. This can be a “both/and” situation. As a friend and parent mentioned to me recently, “I feel like this whole situation is potentially creating Helicopter parents on steroids.”  Parents want both: they want their children to become independent, to have their own experiences in school, and also want to be a part of their child’s education,  especially given they are often right in the same room.

If you are a parent reading this, I’ll share what I told my families at Back-To-School Night: I’ve never taught four and five-year-olds online before. It is new territory for all of us, and we all need grace and flexibility in this unfolding classroom environment. 

We are partners. We always have been - even when school was in person - but in this case, that partnership is magnified. 

I can certainly understand teachers feeling discomfort with this new reality. In a recent meeting, a parent told me, “It must be hard having us all there watching you.” It’s true. We aren’t used to having adults constantly present. It can be unnerving. What will parents think of me? Of my teaching? Will they think I’m boring? Underprepared? Asking too much? Pushing too much? What about the other children? Will they compare their child to others? Or others to their child? 

I will never be able to predict or control what parents think of me, of other children, or of anything, for that matter. But I can control my own mindset about having parents as members of our classroom community in a new and very different way. 

And so I have a choice. I can welcome this new reality, and a new understanding of the essential role of adults as members - present members - of the classroom community. Or I can hold fast to a pre-pandemic model that gently takes hands and waves goodbye before Morning Meeting. But that model is no longer our reality, and I’ve chosen to embrace these new, taller additions to the classroom. Because I know that we need parents - they are more a part of our classroom than ever. 

A recent NY Times Magazine article quotes Keri Rodriquez, speaking in her role as the head of the National Parents Union: “Now we are facilitators of education, especially K-6. Education doesn’t really happen remotely without parents doing it. There are a lot of responsibilities on us.” I have always considered myself a facilitator of learning, and am happy to have parents along for this ride with me right now.  And while I wish I could whisk children away into our virtual classroom and give parents a much-needed break, I have realized that they are co-facilitators of their children’s learning, for now. They are my partners. I am relying on them, and although it is new, although it may be uncomfortable, the benefits of building strong relationships with parents and care-givers far outweighs the drawbacks. 

In Project Based Learning, we always have a question that guides us - a challenging problem we really want to answer - that we can't answer yet. My personal driving question right now is: How can I, as an early childhood teacher, create a strong and joyful community of young learners and family members in a virtual and/or limited in-person environment?

What I’m realizing is that part of the answer to this question lies in the role parents play in our classroom. In the past, I might have designed learning experiences thinking that I could not rely on any other help or support from parents. In this online learning world, that is simply impossible. 

Now I’m thinking, how can parents support and help guide their children, and partner with me? The weekly remote lesson plans I share with parents have a “Parent Guidance” section with suggestions, tips and ideas so that parents can better understand my approach to instruction, and offer additional support where necessary.  Our current PBL Unit connects home and school, leveraging children’s family background, interests, important spaces. Children have been sharing family recipes, details of recent trips, neighborhood maps, celebrations and traditions. I am grateful for the relationships that we all are building from the start - not just my relationships with children, but with parents and even siblings as well. 

There are so many things I wish I could do this year, but I can’t. I can’t hug a child when she is frustrated after making a mistake. I can’t kneel down beside a child as he shows me his writing. But I’ve noticed it is completely unhelpful to go down that path. Instead of focusing on what we cannot do, what we don’t have - I’m committed to creating a community out of what we do have. I know that the parents who join my classroom daily, who ensure their child holds a pair of scissors correctly, or help their child to complete a neighborhood map, or translate a child’s story from Korean to English, are enabling our classroom community to grow, even to thrive, in the midst of all this. It’s a new image of these early weeks of school, and one I’ll be glad to keep with me.

Sara Lev teaches Transitional Kindergarten in Los Angeles. She is the co-author of Implementing Project Based Learning In Early Childhood: Overcoming Misconceptions and Reaching Success (Routledge, 2020). Connect with her on Twitter @saramlev or on Instagram @Saram_lev.