Educational team members should say thank you to each other     029

Australia has always been a country proud of its sporting teams, and this includes our Olympic teams, almost regardless of the area of competition. We like to support our teams, and get involved in different ways. But there is another team activity which is a far more importance for individuals, families, communities and indeed the whole nation. And this is the education game. Team members include students, parents, schools, government, various training institutions etc. Today I want to focus on two key members: parents and schools.

Now in many ways communication between parents and schools has vastly increased over what it was say fifty years ago. Back then some parents might appear once a year during Education Week. Closer to our time, perhaps during the 1970s, parent school involvement began to increase. There were parent teacher interviews to discuss children’s progress, and parents became increasingly involved in other ways, perhaps coaching sporting teams, helping out on excursions and special days. Of course there has always been the Parents and Citizens Associations, and this body has always had an influence on school level decision making.

More lately it seems however that parental involvement and concern with schools has taken on a negative or at least a controversial aspect. An article by Hugh Mackay, the well known Australian social researcher, about parents “outsourcing parental roles” (Sydney Morning Herald, 9 Aug 2004, p. 17) commented on rising parental expectations of school performance. Many parents are becoming busier so schools need to step up and “better maximise the potential” of each child. In a number of ways this is not real teamwork. Rather it is behaviour which can be counter-productive.

One of the ways in which this seems to be happening is parents doing too much for children and controlling too much of their schoolwork and educational decision making. The children never get a chance to go ahead and fail at something, or to pick themselves up after falling into some type of achievement black hole. Some of these parents are beginning to be a nuisance to schools, expecting immediate response and full access to teachers and others, telephoning and “demanding to speak to the principal about a minor thing”—is an example of what is now called ‘helicopter parenting’ (see Cosima Marriner, Teachers taught to ground helicopters, Sun-Herald, 28 Apr 2013, p. 7) and it seems to be a growing issue.

This is hardly productive teamwork, and this is particularly disappointing because schools are now facing all sorts of increased complexities, including the need to make more constructive connections with the wider world. Increased parental choice, devolved decision-making and school self-determination are just some of the elements in a dizzying mix which brings real human resource pressure on teachers and school leadership.

The concept of teamwork is well understood in the business world and indeed most Australian companies are using different forms of teamwork. Teams are meant to be encouraging, helping people build new skills, and generally raising organisational performance. But for this magic to happen the teams need to be carefully designed, selected, applied and supported. Mostly in school situations this does not and cannot happen. Generally parents are not able to select the school they wish their child to go to, and teachers cannot select the children they wish to teach, nor for that matter their parents. You might say a lot of people are ‘stuck’ with a lot of other people.

The mission of education however is too important for schools or parents to imagine for one moment that improvement cannot take place. Schools, teachers and parents are in many ways unsuited to working productively together, despite so many ‘partnership’ statements appearing on so many school websites. This column however is running out of space so let me suggest a starting point—saying thank you.

Sometime ago I used regularly to take children on overnight excursions to Canberra, and I might add while I’m on this topic is that teachers do not get paid extra for this. They are on duty 24 hours a day, unlike coach drivers who sleep serenely through each night, protected from noise usually by deliberately left vacant rooms on each side. Now adding up the numbers of parents and families involved the numbers are substantial but how many parents ever just said ‘thank you’. I can recall only one, and if my memory serves me correctly she was the President of the Parents and Citizens Association. If you are out there reading this then I appreciate your expression of gratitude.

But it also works the other way. How many teachers simply do not understand or appreciate the effort that it takes to get children up, dressed, breakfasted, with attention to homework the previous evening, and then off to school, more or less on time, day after day after day. It’s so easy for teachers to take this for granted and not even think about it. Parents need to be thanked for the efforts that they make, and thanked for the trouble they go to support children in doing homework and research projects. And thanked often.

So there it is—just a few more thank yous, between the team members, would be a good start. Where there is appreciation and good will many wonderful educational things can happen. There doesn’t have to be formal organisational structures, or success indicators, although these things have their place.  Let’s start today. Say thank you and then ask, ‘How can I help?’

All content copyright—Mark Thackray—Australian Educational Services