Immigrant Families: Can Parents Help Children With Their Education?

Home is the first place that children are in and educated, which means home is children’s first school and parents are children’s first teachers. However, when it comes with the situations that parents do not speak the language well or low academic levels, which means parents themselves do not know the knowledge. What the parents can help children are providing children the educational opportunity and try their best to help children. Besides providing children an educational opportunity, how could parents help children with their education? School-home connection is a good option, but there are two sayings. One is having parents and teachers connected could promote children on education, the other is distract children from successful education.

In some cases, parents think teachers have the responsibility to teach children all they need to be successful; teachers think it is also parents’ responsibility to help children with their studies since teachers cannot take care of every student while in class. Connecting home and school together has positive effects, such as parents could know how the school educational system is, and how children are educated in school; teachers can know how children perform at home, what their culture are, and have a better idea on how to help students. Valdes stated in Con Respeto that teachers can be informed about what parents do not know, and parents can be taught how American schools work (Valdes, p 168). Hence, school-home connection promotes children to achieve their educational goals.
Supporting paragraph
In working parents’ family, father and mother needs to work for their income that they might not have enough time to take care of their children that the children would be sent to school or taken care by their grandparents. The parents do not know what the kids think and want; parents try their best to provide the kids whatever they want on substances. However, the children would like to stay with parents as much as they can. Parents do not have enough time to talk to children makes children have mental problems that they might think their parent does not care about them. children cannot focus on their study. Lareau stated that most children come from families where both parents are employed outside the home, often as professional, and many mothers work full time outside the home, some teachers at the school worry that the children do not receive sufficient attention at home because their parents are “too busy”” (Lareau, 2003). As the result, children receive low attention from parents affect children’s performance at school that children might get low grades on their disciplines, or not follow the rules well, which create the situation that “parents complain about teachers; teachers complain about parents” (Lareau, 2003). Therefore, even though income is important for a family, parents need to pay attention to children on their needs and education.
For Immigrant families, since English is not their first language, they have a hard time to communicate with others.

Even though U.S. government offers everyone an equal opportunity to be educated, parents need to work to support their families that they do not have time to go to school. Parents would like to send their children to school because they understand how important education is. Based on the differences of language, culture, and educational system, immigrant parents have hard time to get connection with schools. They do not what they need to do to be involve in school since they do not understand the language. Some immigrant parents speak a little English, but they are not confident enough to express themselves. Parents want to know how their children do at school and help with their study. Teachers also want to help children to achieve their goals. Lareau said that teachers want parents to be involved in their children’s education, to “sign homework, help with projects” and “be positive” (Lareau, 2003). This means school-home connection is important. Parents might not be able to help children with all the homework, but mathematic that parents can check their math homework and sign. Having parents to help with the project is a way for them to involve in children’s study. Parents might not understand what the project is, but they can have their children to explain, and then give children some suggestions. In order to help parents to know more about the school

educational system, teachers can invite parents to be in class with children. Even though parents do not understand, teachers can demonstrate, and parents can understand according to children behaviors and work. Parents could know more about the way that teachers teach. Amaro-Jimenez said that study after study has demonstrated that developing meaningful parental participation and collaborative practices between schools and homes lead to increased students’ academic success and positive behaviors in and out of the classroom (Amaro-Jimenez, 2016). Therefore, school-home connection will help children with their academic and behaviors.
Low academic parents might not have any ideas other than sending their children to school. They understand the important of education to their children that “they felt that education was important and that it was their duty as parents to send their children to school” (Valdes, 1996). Even though low academic parents cannot help children with their education, they can teach their children how to behave correctly. Maybe it is challenge for teachers to discuss about how to help children with their study, but it is not difficult for teachers to invite parents to involve in school activities and tell parents how their children perform at school to parents know how their school educational system is that parents might have a better understand about children’s school lives. Parents could talk about how their children perform at home, and ask devises about the home learning environment. Meyer and the other authors explained that parents and teachers each have valuable information to be shared about student needs, and common goals critical to achieving desired educational outcomes for the child (Meyer, Beth Mann, & Becker, 2011). Therefore, school-home connection via sharing valuable information helps parents and teachers have a better understanding on the children performance at both school and home, also it makes children think both parents and teachers pay attention to them that can promote their passion on education.
Discussion
Children listen to parents at home, and listen to teachers at school. if parents and teachers get a good connect with each other, they should have a better idea to help children to achieve their academic goals. Children come from different families, single parent family, working parents’ family, and immigrant family. However, it does not matter which family the children come from, parents’ and teachers’ goals are helping children to be succeed. Parents should not rely on teachers to teach children everything children need; teachers should not rely on parents can prepare their children to be ready to school because of some difficulties for parents. Parents and teachers need to get connection to know how children perform at school and home.
Working for income is important to a family, but parents’ attention is important to children.

In order to children can grow up healthily, parents need to be pay more attention to their children. Teachers’ education mission is teaching children the knowledge they need, but they cannot be with the children all the time. Immigrant family parents and children have a hard time to be in the U.S. education because of the different educational system and language. Spring said that immigrant groups arrive with a variety of educational backgrounds (Spring, 2014). This means teachers not only need to get more information about these educational backgrounds, but also try to communicate with the children and parents. Low academic parents try their best to provide children an education opportunity. They wish teachers could help their children as much as they could on education because they do not have the ability. However, teachers’ abilities are limited. Based on the same expectation of parents and teachers, school-home connection is the best option to help children to work toward their academic goals. teachers and parents need to share valuable information about the children with each other. For example, teachers would have parents know more about the school educational system, children’s school life, and their performance on study. Parents need to talk about their original educational system, culture, and the children’s home behaviors so that teachers can make an appropriate lesson

plan for the children. Thus, school-home connection promotes students to be successful on education via sharing valuable information.
Conclusion
School-home connection promotes students to be educated successfully. School-home connection is important for both teachers and parents. As parents know the school educational system, the way that teachers teach, and the children do at home, they could try their best to help their children. As teachers know more about the children’s education background, they could have a better understand on how to help the children. Before complaining about each other, teachers and parents should get to know each other, talk about the problems, and find out the methods to promote the children with their academic.