| Advocate for Parent Supports |
Education is a complex endeavor
involving young impressionable minds and thus should be approached as a TEAM
effort. All parents should be a part of a team that serves to provide viable
information about their children to the school community. Parents should be
able to use their multidimensional backgrounds as resources for the benefit of
the children and provide cultural as well as psychological insights into the
lives of their children. Parents usually supply the initial foundation of
resources to children by planting the seeds of culture, economic status,
personal ideologies, and societal position in a child’s sphere of influence. In a world
defined by multiple “people labels” subjugated knowledges and indigenous
ontologies, children often become lost, devalued, and/or sometimes diminished through physical
and psychological positioning. There is an established ideology that accompanies
negative labels and categories in reference to specific parent groups whereby
parent voices are not encouraged in the school community. It blatantly professes
that ostracized parents are not intelligent enough to stand up for their
children and when they attempt to advocate for their children they are ignored.
A school stance that ignores indigenous knowledge espouses arrogance and
insensitivity to marginalized groups. Parent support teams work to unearth new
participation frameworks for parents who do not fit into existing communities
of practice. Ultimately, support systems enable parents to access privileges, which can be transported
into a variety of lived world experiences.
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| Joyce, P. (2007). TEAM: Parent/Student Support at the High School Level. In J. Kincheloe & R. Horn (Eds.). In The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 3. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. |
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