Principal TAPS into a Powerful Resource...Leader Winter 1999 #3

This Illinois school has high expectations for its kindergarten parents

by Virginia Murray

Booth Tarkington Elementary School in Wheeling, Illinois, is not a school that shuts parents out. On the contrary, for the past two years Tarkington’s kindergarten parents have all but been required to get involved in their children’s school life, and Active Parenting programs have led the way.

"We think of our school as being a learning laboratory," explains principal Avi Poster. "If we want our kids to be learners, they need to view the adults in their lives as learners, too." Tarkington teachers are, therefore, encouraged to tell their students about seminars or conferences they might be attending, and to share what they’ve learned. But what about parents?

Poster has long sought to increase parent involvement in their children’s academic life, and while at Tarkington he has instituted several programs for parents, including lectures by educators and dialogs with teachers and staff (in which they are able to explain teaching matters and get feedback).

Over time, one thing became clear: the parents wanted parenting education. "We all need affirmation as parents, and we need to improve our skills as well," Poster notes. And for many, teachers seemed to be the logical people to ask for child-rearing advice. The school took its lead from the parents, says Poster: "Parenting became the centerpiece of our core values."

Parenting education was not a new idea to him. During his 30 years in the business, he had tried various programs ("all Dreikurs-based stuff") in different schools, but found that they all had a major shortcoming: once the first, highly-motivated set of facilitators burned out, the drive for parenting ed faded away. What Tarkington needed, he felt, was a model that could sustain itself over the years, even after the program initiators had moved on.

Right around this time, reading teacher Carolyn Wiggins had heard about Active Parenting programs and shared this information with her husband, a pastor. He experienced such success with Active Parenting that Carolyn felt comfortable suggesting the programs for use at Tarkington.

Poster liked it, too: "We loved that it was video-based," he says. "We also liked that it didn’t require 10-12 sessions like some other programs do." Fewer sessions meant more parents could participate.

Once they had decided on a program, they invited Active Parenting’s Director of Training Susan Reed out for a Special Leader Training Workshop. ("We couldn’t have done it without Susan Reed," Poster notes.) Twelve leaders were trained (a mix of teachers, school staff members and parents) with the understanding that they would also become "missionaries" for future parenting education trainers. When leaders observe parents who seem to have the right stuff, they ask them to consider training to become leaders of future Tarkington parenting classes. "That’s how we perpetuate the program," notes Poster.

A steering committee (consisting of parents, teachers, the PTA and the superintendent of schools) was formed to implement the new focus, dubbed Tarkington Active Parenting (TAP). Poster made certain to get financial support from both the school’s PTA and the superintendent of schools, largely because he wanted TAP to have a clear commitment and support from all parts of the school system.

TAP targets all parents of kindergartners, although other parents are welcome to join as well. The course lasts eight weeks, and teachers challenge the parents to sign up in such a way that it seems expected. "We’ve made it a part of the school culture that all parents get trained in TAP," Poster explains. It helps to let the parents know that in doing so they will become "part of a community of educated, knowledgeable parents."

The steering committee decided that Active Parenting Today alone was not enough, so they created a hybrid of APT and Parents on Board. They also added some of their own components to reinforce or add to the Active Parenting principles, including:

new findings based on brain research
ideas on how to set up a brain-compatible home, a place where learning is celebrated (parents are encouraged, for example, to put their completion certificates on the refrigerator at home, to show their children that they are proud of learning)
how parents can help children become better readers
an overview of the many resources—counselors, librarians, and other support staff—available to them in the school system
where to go when all else fails (emergency contacts, mental-health agencies, social workers, etc.)

As always, there are many obstacles to overcome in order to attract a large number of parents. The school uses college interns to provide free child-care. Groups are scheduled on different days of the week to lessen the chance of schedule conflicts. The school’s significant ethnic diversity is not ignored, either: this year, for the first time, a group was conducted in Spanish; next year they are hoping to do one in Russian as well.

Participation has not yet reached 100 percent, but every year the numbers have improved. As word gets out, the optimistic Poster hopes that kindergarten parents will arrive at school asking "When do I sign up for TAP?" The hope is that after a few years all the parents in the school will have taken TAP, enabling teachers and parents to be speaking the same Active Parenting "language" when discussing children’s needs.

Along with developing a Russian program, the Tarkington steering committee is adding a new event to its upcoming TAP schedule: an alumni gathering in the spring, where TAP grads can get back together and discuss how the principles are working.