Parents (It's Not What You Think)

This week I've talked a lot about parent contact and making sure that parents are informed about what is going on with their children. As high school educators, we often look to defer some of that communication under the guise that our students are young adults and should learn to start taking some responsibility for themselves. When you pause to think about that, you can quickly see how strange our culture is in regards to teenagers. Consider the following:

At 14 they can legally work (many of ours do earlier than that)
At 16 they can drive
At 18 they can vote and in some cases, hold an elected office
At 18 they can live emancipated
At 18 they can serve in the Armed Forces
At 18 they can gamble in a casino
At 18 they can establish credit, take out a loan and have credit cards
At 18 they are legally adults
Also at 18, they still need permission to go to the bathroom in school.
At 26 they can still be on their parents' insurance

Being a teenager in America comes with a strange set of rights of passage that are often contradictory. One minute, a teenager can be treated like a responsible adult and the next, they are treated like a child. No doubt, this dichotomy of expectations can create confusing situations for a student. But just take a minute to consider things outside of our culture.

This week I reconnected and had some time to talk to a 2017 graduate. He is Hispanic and we spent some time discussing what schools, communities, and families can do to help more of our Hispanic students get into college after high school. He took a minute to frame Hispanic culture, especially the culture of immigrant families whose parents did not grow up in the United States. He remembered his mother being supportive of his schooling but never involved. He was smart enough to know that other students in his classes had parents that spoke with teachers and counselors and helped advocate for their child being in the right classes. At about 14, he knew that he was considered old enough to handle those things for himself.  I asked him if we should do more to reach out to Hispanic parents. While I expected a simple "yes," his response shocked me. He told me that Hispanic parents don't know how to navigate that relationship because they didn't have it themselves and that if we wanted to help Hispanic students, we were going to have to teach their parents how.

It is easy for us to write off disengaged parents as people that do not care. However, by doing that, we assume that all parents are like us or grew up like us. That is far from the truth in most schools today. Helping students has to be an academic, social and cultural approach in diverse schools. Understanding this means that not all of our parent contact can be due to negative behaviors or bad grades. Most should be around supporting students and giving parents options and choices on how they can help, not just problems that they may not see as ones they should fix. We have to teach them how to help sometimes. Luckily, teaching is what we are good at.