Program integrates parents into school day
Program integrates parents into school day
WARDEN — Schools are for children.
The classroom is intended for learning and students are encouraged to participate in activities.
More and more, that notion is being expanded to include parents as regular components of the classroom, at least at Warden Elementary.
"We are really trying to work on parent involvement in our school," said principal Jill Massa.
Every Minute Counts is the latest program Warden Elementary has begun to increase parent involvement with students there.
Parents sign up at their convenience for a time to come to the school and be with their child.
That shared time can occur at the beginning of the day, when breakfast is served to students, in the middle of class, at recess, lunch or any other time.
By having an open door policy it allows those parents who work and those who are not fluent in English to feel welcome and more comfortable about coming to school, said parent and volunteer Jill Skone.
Skone found out about the program from reading an article that appeared in another newspaper. The program had been piloted at Whittier Elementary in Pasco.
Skone said because Pasco had success with the program and has similar student demographics as Warden, she decided to present the idea to Massa.
One of the goals is to introduce parents to what goes on in the school system.
As parents become familiar with curriculum taught by teachers and what students are learning, district administrators are hoping the program will get parents thinking about just how important every minute spent with their child is.
To parents and especially those who are not native English speakers, the public education system can seem like an intimidating place to be.
"It's especially intimidating for parents who don't speak the language or had a hard time in school themselves," Massa said. "We wanted to access all different kinds of parents and not just the ones you would normally get as volunteers."
Parent Cheryl Yamane has a fifth-grade daughter, Madison, and is one of the parents who volunteers every week at the school.
Yamane believes unless people volunteer their time to be with students, they will just become another education statistic.
"They're kind of all of our responsibility," she said of students.
So far the program is a bigger success than the district thought it would be.
In its first two days the elementary school exceeded its initial goal to get 1,200 logged minutes of student/parent involvement time, earning more than 16,000 minutes by the end of the first two weeks.
"We just value the time they spend with their kids in school and that we can spend with them," said Jill LeGault, after school program coordinator in the Warden School District.
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