School isn’t just for kids – some parents are getting tutorials too

(Harrisburg) — Two kindergarteners walk into a school – John has parents who read to him every night, and practice counting at dinner.

But Mike is set in front of a TV, and his mom and dad rarely ask him questions.

Before a word is said in the classroom, John is already far ahead of Mike.

Now, a program hopes to help kids like Mike catch up, by working with his parents.

Inside Downey Elementary School, just off busy Cameron Street in Harrisburg, kids are being kids.

A federal grant and support from the business community are funding The Foundation for Enhancing Communities’s Parents and Partners program at the school.

It works to teach parents how to make a positive difference in their child’s life.

Jeanne Predmore helps run the program. I recently talked to her to get a sense of how it actually works.

Why is this needed?

“When you think of education and learning, you think of school and going for a teacher. But in reality, you’re learning every day. You learn a lot from your parents and your home life and that type of thing. So we want parents to feel as though they are their child’s first teacher, and we want them to feel capable and confident as yes, I’m your teacher and you can learn from me.”

“Because a lot of parents will say, well I don’t know that kind of stuff, and I’m not comfortable with teaching. When in actuality, it’s little things like painting, what colors are these, to talk about colors. Counting if you maybe have cereal out, or a snack, like maybe Goldfish is your snack, count how many fish are in your bowl, that type of thing.”

“So in actuality, you are teaching your child. You’re teaching them how to count, colors, you’re teaching them by the environment around you.”

What kinds of questions do you ask?

“Are you watching Jerry Springer?”

“What TV shows are you having your children watch?”

“Are you putting your children in front of the TV as a babysitting thing?”

Are you reading books every day, because reading books every day is the number one thing you can do to assure success in learning to read, because of the rich vocabulary.”

“Are you talking to your kids?”

“We surveyed the parents, asked them simple questions what’s your child favorite food, what’s their favorite color, what are they afraid of, and parents came to us and said we don’t know the answers to these questions, what do you expect us to know about that? And we were talking with them, well that’s a good thing to start with.”

How does this translate into results in the classroom?

“There’s an achievement gap between kids coming in who have had quality early learning and children who have not, and if that doesn’t get closed, as they move on in school, the gap gets bigger.”

“The federal government would like all kids reading on grade level by third grade, and if that gap keeps widening, we can’t bring the kids on to that area.”

“So part of our goal too, by encouraging the parents to be a child’s first teacher, we are helping to close that achievement gap for when kids enter school.”

How do parents react?

“Some of the parents come in and they sit back on their phones and just watch. They don’t really want to be engaged.

“But Leslie and I work very hard on trying to make sure we pull them in, and engage them and make them part of the activity. we have them do the activity with their kids. One of the big things is kids don’t recognize their names, or are able to write their names.

“We want them to use scissors, because a lot of parents won’t let them use scissors at home. And that’s one of the problems that kindergarten teachers are saying, that kids don’t know how to use scissors, they have never worked with PlayDoh, they don’t know what a glue stick is, that type of thing.

“So we’re trying to introduce them to those different activities, and in a fun, comfortable way so that the parents can say this is not scary.

“And how do you teach them to use it, and what are rules you can do. Markers are for paper, you don’t write on your friend, you don’t write on the table. Scissors, we only cut paper with scissors, we don’t cut our friend’s hair or clothes, or that type of thing. Setting boundaries, when you can use this, how you can use this, and what it’s used for.”