Back To School Night - Essay Example

Assignment Ref: Back to school Back to School Nights Introduction Parental visits to the school to get familiar with the teachers and the school environs help their active participation in the academic as well as social grooming of children. Further, during such visits, many parents have often are enthused by the very presence of so many other bright children and the happy-go-lucky ambience.What do these ‘meets’ achieve?According to Bochan (Make the most of your tour, Scholastic.com), during the ‘back to school night’ meeting, parents get a glimpse of the child’s daily life at school.

Typical ‘back to school night’ consists of the teacher(s) explaining to the parents the curriculum/schedules for the year, daily routines, teaching methods, grading system and homework policy, etc. followed by a question-answer session. This will give the parents a good understanding of the academic year ahead of the child and the role they have to play to make it a success. “Unfortunately both the quality and quantity of parental contacts with the school decline as children get older”, say Puma & others (Puma et al.

, Strong families, strong schools, US DOE, 1994) and point to the sharply contrasting statistics for the first graders and the seventh graders. They go on to add that involved parents help students to perform better academically, stay longer in school, and have better social skills. Teachman et al., also reinforce this view pointing out that, “…parent-child and parent-school interaction…” is related to dropping out of high school. (Teachman et al., Social Capital and the Generation of Human Capital, Social Forces, 1997) A child who routinely expects its parents to visit the school at least during the Back to School Nights, gets used to parents Back to school 2accepting responsibility and helping him out with homework and studies.

In a similar manner, the parents also get used to compulsorily visiting the school and interacting with the teachers.Back to school night is held within the first few days of the school re-opening and is followed by more such meets – each after the successive term examinations are held and the results announced. The second, third and the fourth meetings are indeed open house meetings to take stock of the progress of the child in the school along with discussing and implementing ways to improve performance.

Back to school night is an event of the evening and night. This is a time of joy and relaxation coupled with establishing or renewing relationships between the parents and the teachers. The subsequent meetings are for more serious efforts involving in-depth discussions for which sufficient time is to be earmarked to cover all aspects of a child’s progress and for all children. Thus, they are best held commencing from the morning and continued till all the parents get a chance to interact with the teachers in the presence of their children.

Back to school nights and open house meetings do not involve any special expenses since they are conducted within the classrooms or auditoriums with very little fanfare.Conclusion Parent/teacher interactions through ‘back to school or open house’ meetings help in parents understanding their responsibility towards schooling and better grooming of their children. ReferencesBochan, T.L., “Make most of your tour – Back to school night basics” as retrieved from on 15 February 2007.

Teachman, J.D., Paasch, K., & Carver, K., ”Social Capital and the Generation of Human Capital”, Social Forces, Vol. 75, No. 4 (Jun., 1997), pp. 1343-1359.Unknown, as retrieved from on 20 February 2007.