If you are a parent with a child attending Lincoln, you have a Parent-Teacher conference tonight from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. Come by to see who your children are complaining about or who it is that's bringing all these new ideas home to you. Either way, there is a responsibility of parents to their children and their education to make the effort for a few hours that could have some benefit to you and to your children.
The attendance at these events at Lincoln is something like the voter turnout for the elections two weeks ago, well, actually a lot better, as I think of that dismal 15% showing. The event tonight should not be intimidating and no one wants to hear bad news of any kind about their children. The truth is that these "conferences" are pretty painless, maybe even enjoyable, and no one has the attitude of, "Wait until I tell your parents what you've been doing," for the negatives.
What you might find out is what the semester course is about for each class, what is expected of your child and the class, and what you can do to improve the performance, that actually includes "learning," for your child's best experience at LHS. It is a good time to compare notes with the teacher on homework being assigned and find out if there's specific things to be done to help your child. I used to have a lot of students that wanted their parents to skip those meetings and a few times I was asked why I did not assign homework- so you see it's a good opportunity for you, as a parent, to find out about a few "corrections" on the information your student may have "misinterpretted" to the you.
The observation that continued for years with these conferences was that there was not a lot of "parent-friendly" attention paid to make the campus visit more pleasant and as convenient as it could be made. That bit of P.R. could be conducive to getting parents more involved with LHS and removed resistance that may exist. And if you have a student that is a "problem" and causes you calls from school for bad reasons, who could blame you for trying to avoid more bad news.? I noticed very little effort made to small details that could have made the event better. I thought that there should have been some more signage to help parents to find their way around the campus a little easier in case they did not bring their student-child with them for finding their way.
On days such as this, I would like to have seen a little more of the same touch that is given for student elections and pep rallys, maybe some balloons here and there, with some banners made for the one-day event to show where different information tables and offices were located. A large "schedule" or information page, centrally located could help and would show attentiong given to the event (even if it doesn't add much help, it shows there is attention happening to ensure a good experience). Some visits to the school library should also be encouraged to at least show parents that it exists. (My impression, not fact, but impression, is that the library is not accessible for much time outside of school hours when it might prove to be very valuable for many students.) For a schedule, I was not really clear about the approach taken until very close to the time of the "conference" date.
A note here on changing times just for the old alumni: There is nothing in the way that we had in the past with service groups or student organinzatioins like the "Knights" or "Ladyes" (I remember there was some odd spelling of that group), and I think, "Lads" and "Lassies" which mght have been the Jr. High corresponding component. A presence of other organizations working with students like Kiwanis and such are just unkown to me, and may be there now but I never really noticed it. My personal information is already several years old, but most of the persons there tell me that there was not much changing, that is, until the new principal arrived. Things are getting better, I am told, and this was specifically regarding parents' involvement.
All in all, from the observations made before this academic year, I could see why parents tended to avoid coming by the campus as they were expected to, in theory. This all appears to be changing under the new administration of Principal Torres, working to get more parent involvement initiated than before. Making the campus more parent-friendly and promoting an attitude of accessiblity should only help the school move to better performance in multiple levels.
There used to be a "Suggestion Box" by the Main Office while I was there, but after a few months teaching at LHS. I never considered it to be a meaningful opportunity for even slight improvement to happen, given the way things operated there. The really strong force for change, different from the teachers, is the one that is so often distant from the scene, and that's the parents. Enlisting the support of parents can make the teaching part less of an uphill struggle in most cases. Some parents, of course, will never be seen at conferences, for whatever reasons, and I suppose you can't do much about that without a bigger expenditure of time, and time is a scarce commodity for all teachers who try to get the needs of the students, the parents, the administration, and themselves, too, attended to in the alloted space each semester.
Although you would not expect parents to have much experience in formal ways for students to learn, they can, however, work on themselves and their children to be able to send them to school with good attitudes, attitudes supporting their learning and their obligation to help and allow their fellow students the same opportunities to learn. Parents can help with giving them the time to study and to stick to it every day to improve or acquire good work habits. Some firmness on the part of parents in this area would do a lot for the students who need improvement. Too often, parents have the expectation that the teachers are like auto mechanics who will return your car with the problem corrected when they come back. They want to return and find the enging running fine again, the strange noise eliminated, or the loud vibration quieted. It's not that way with children and everything, all the time, is what affects a student.
All this has passed over the attentive parent, maybe also overbearing at times, but the students that achieve at higher levels demonstrate that there is a lot that can be done in the current state of affairs. That current state happenst to be that constant evolution of LAUSD's learning theories and expensive building projects and program style revamping that it does in the hope of improving a behemoth of a District. But that's all a different level of operation with a history of bizarre actions and results, usually burning up too many of the limited supply of taxpayer-dollars that they constantly crave.
Many students at LHS do excel and continue to do well, and there is due some well-deserved recognition given to them. Further, some examination just might be given to what it is that makes for such student success in circumstances where there are so many cases at the other end of the spectrum. That might be an area that needs to be understood for the benefit to be shared by all students, if at all possible. It could only help.
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