There was a resounding message this week during an educational summit at Kent-Meridian, and even if you\u2019re not a teacher, it bears repeating.<\/p>\n
In fact, it\u2019s probably better you\u2019re not a teacher. You need to be a parent to truly appreciate it.<\/p>\n
The point was this: schools may be educating your child, but that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re in charge.<\/p>\n
Parents need to be stepping up to the plate, because ultimately we\u2019re the ones from whom our children are learning the most.<\/p>\n
At the BEST Summit (see page 7 in today\u2019s paper) Kent Schools Superintendent Edward Lee Vargas mentioned the \u201c80 percent factor.\u201d That is the time our children are with us – the remaining 20 percent being the time they are in school.<\/p>\n
We as parents need to be making the most of that 80 percent we have with our children, whether we are working parents or not (yup, I\u2019m in the mix on that one, as a full-time editor.) Because we\u2019ve only got one shot at getting it right, before our children go out into the world as adults – prepared or not.<\/p>\n
Given all the attention we place on assessment tests, and worries about how different schools rank in terms of passing grades, I think it becomes easier to let ourselves off the hook, in terms of what we\u2019re doing as parents to help our kids become adults and good citizens.<\/p>\n
Assessment tests only go so far, as does finger-pointing. We need to be looking at ourselves in this equation, because \u201ceducation\u201d doesn\u2019t just mean notebooks and pencils.<\/p>\n
Education is the process of learning. And some of the best learning happens outside the classroom, when you\u2019re not making a big deal about it.<\/p>\n
Education can be as simple as spending time with your children, talking. They need to understand your value system, and to try out some ideas of their own, with your input.<\/p>\n
How about a car ride, where they get to pick the radio station, and everyone just shares their day for a half hour?<\/p>\n
Education means involvement with your kids – it could be something as simple as shopping for groceries (and learning about the household budget) or as organized as a visit to the zoo (where you\u2019ll both probably pick up facts you didn\u2019t know.)<\/p>\n
Education also means the chance to screw up, or to pitch crazy ideas. Sometimes you have to literally get your tongue frozen to a light pole to understand why something isn\u2019t a good idea to try (trust me, I\u2019ve done this and it really does freeze.) We need to be there for our kids when these things happen, so the small screw ups don\u2019t become huge judgement errors down the road.<\/p>\n
Just being present for our children can go a long way toward the awe-inspiring process of becoming adults.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was a resounding message this week during an educational summit at Kent-Meridian, and even if you\u2019re not a teacher, it bears repeating.
\nIn fact, it\u2019s probably better you\u2019re not a teacher. You need to be a parent to truly appreciate it.
\nThe point was this: schools may be educating your child, but that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re in charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12144"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12144"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}