ESL Parent Involvement

I have set up many google alerts, some specific and some more broad. One is simply "ESL." From this google alert, I have gotten many interesting pages to read but the one that stuck out to me most this week was called "Proposed Rule Change for Adult ESL Classes could Impact Children" found here: http://www.kpbs.org/news/2017/jun/01/parents-learning-english-are-assets-their-kids-lia/.

Schools always push for parent involvement within their child's studies and rightly so, because research has shown that parent involvement can be very beneficial to the student. But, what happens when the parent can't help with homework or ask questions to the teacher because they aren't sure how to communicate with the teacher or read the homework?

In this article, they interviewed a Spanish speaking mom who is now enrolled in an advanced English classes. She was very excited to learn some computer skills so she could finally email her child's teacher. I think that it is very easy to just focus on the ESL students that are in our classes - but it could go much deeper than that - there is a need to help the parents as well.

Adult education is just as important because the adults help foster the youth's education. Many classes are being taken away which will hurt our students in the long run because they will not get English at home, their parents won't be able to help with homework, and parents won't be able to easily communicate with teachers or the school.