“I’m afraid my child is getting left behind. As a parent, what can I do?” I hear this at so many doors. As a parent, we always want to support and advocate for our own children. Here are three things you can do.
Three things a parent can do
- Start with your child’s teacher. Find out exactly where your child is struggling or falling behind, so you are working on the right thing together.
- If needed, ask for a team meeting. In LAUSD we called it a Student Success and Progress Team meeting. The assistant principal, the school psychologist, a resource teacher and sometimes the school nurse sit down with you. They look at your child’s work samples, test results, behavior, attendance and health. At the end you get actionable next steps, and the team meets again to check that those steps are working.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for intervention. It just means extra help, during the school day or after school, so your child gets an additional dose of support.
And sometimes it is simply developmental. Your child could be a late bloomer, just like me. I was struggling when I was an elementary student. If elected, I want every parent to know that there is help at school they can lean on. Don’t be scared. Don’t be afraid.
Transcript
I’m afraid my child is getting left behind. As a parent, what can I do?
As a parent, we would always want to support and advocate our own children. So there are three things that a parent can do.
Number one, always work with your child’s teacher to find out exactly what your child is struggling or falling behind.
Number two, if needed, request an SSPT meeting, Student Success and Progress meeting. So the team meeting is comprised with the assistant principal, a school psychologist, a resource teacher, and sometimes school nurse. And they are going to look at your child’s maybe work samples, some of the test results, looking at behaviors and attendance, health. At the end of the meeting, usually they will come up with some actionable next steps. And sometimes they will need to reconvene and see, hey, are these actionable items working for the student?
Three is don’t be afraid to ask for if there’s any intervention available during the day or after school, so that your child can get an additional dose of support. Very simple. They can support your student at school, right?
If elected, I want to make sure that all parents know that there’s help at school, that they can lean in, and that sometimes it could be because of developmental, right, that your student could be a late bloomer, just like me. I was struggling when I was an elementary student. So don’t be scared, don’t be afraid. There are things that our schools can help all parents to support our students.
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