What is a parent to do?

The culturally competent teacher involves and works with families and community resources, understanding the differences in families, the important influence of family participation in students' learning, and the benefit of collaborating with the wider school community.

I spoke a little bit of this in my last blog post when I discussed the view the parents have of their role in their child's education. As a teacher, I will need to make it clear exactly what my role is in the lives of my students, and if I am expecting anything from the parents. Honestly, I wouldn't want to rely on the parents for anything when I become a teacher. The only thing that I hope for is for them to encourage their students to have big dreams, and to support them in the decisions they make. Maybe it was the way I was brought up, maybe it's just the difference I see in students everywhere - from the kids I tutor at The Little Zoo to the students that attend Rhode Island College, it's almost immediately evident which students are working hard for themselves because they want to do something with their lives, and which students are being pushed through life by Mommy and Daddy, without making a single effort of their own.

In the classrooms that I see at The Little Zoo, I feel that the kids are going through a similar upbringing to the one that I had. They are learning quickly that when it comes to school, they will have to be independent and learn things in school from their teachers. It is not the parents' responsibility to teach the child how to behave in school, or how to do their homework. I don't see this as a downfall; I actually see it as an advantage, not only to the child's education but to their personal ambition as well.

As a future teacher, I will need to be in contact with the parents of my students. This means that I will need to be open to different cultures, opinions and attitudes towards education, and different personalities. Some challenges might be a language barrier; if the only language spoken by either parent is Cambodian, any discussion between myself and them would be limited. The thing that I would make sure of, though, is that I would make an effort to learn about their culture, maybe ask the student to help me with some basic phrases, that would show the parents as well as the students that my main goal is to help their child. Another challenge might be a lack of interest on the parents' side. Regardless of race or culture or upbringing, there are going to be some parents that couldn't care less about their children, and it's heartbreaking to hear about a child being left at school until 8 o'clock at night because the parent "forgot to pick them up." I would still try to make it evident to the parent that I care. A lot of other cultures may see great success in something as simple as a child's excellent behavior in class all week, or a great story that a child wrote for an assignment. I want to be that teacher that can make a parent so proud with a note or a phone call letting them know how great their child is doing. I was in eighth grade when one of my teachers called my mother at work to let her know that I was excelling in the class and that he was so proud of all of the work I was doing. I had always been a good student, gotten good grades, but this one phone call, in comparison to all of my report cards and exam scores, made my mother cry. She was ecstatic, not only that I was doing so well, but that I had a teacher that really truly cared. I want to be that teacher.

My students that I helped at The Little Zoo were always very eager to tell me all about their familias and how they spend so much time together. After the Thanksgiving holiday, I asked my kids if they enjoyed their few days away from school. Star*, usually very shy, got so excited she shot out of her seat as she told me all about how she and her dad had gone fishing and caught a really big fish. "Really, miss Tina, it was like big shark!" I felt like I got to know a little bit more about each of them every time they told me about an adventure that they had had with their little sister or that their mom made their "most favoritest" dinner in the whole world. While their parents might not sit them down at the dinner table every evening and help them with their homework, they are teaching them other things, sometimes more important than what we can ever learn in school. As they teach their children about life, they are expecting us, the teachers, to teach them everything else.

Lisa Delpit in "The Silenced Dialogue" discusses the parents that "want something more. They want to ensure that the school provides their children with discourse patterns, interactional styles, and spoken and written language codes that will allow them success in the larger society." As a teacher in a multiculturally diverse classroom, we will have to assume that every parent will want this for their child. It is our responsibility to teach the students the rules and codes that are vital in this culture that they are being brought up in. The way a parent will teach their child about their culture and the rules and codes that surround them at home, a teacher has to teach each and every student the codes of the culture that surround them in this country.