In dealing with parents and students over the last 15+ years, I have learned a very sobering truth.

Education is the responsibility of the parents. The state only supports parents in this role.

Perhaps a humorous story will help illustrate this point.

I once had a student who would be belligerent, disrespectful, rude, and mouthy all the time. He was just the worst. He was a bully, rude, and inappropriate nearly all the time. He would regularly say “F—- you!” to me and his teachers.

Unfortunately, I had to talk with his parents quite often. And wouldn’t you know it, I could see exactly where he learned all these negative behaviors from, especially when his dad said to me, “F—- you!” This student didn’t learn them in a vacuum, or at school. He learned them at home.

Home is where the real education takes place. Kids learn how to manage and adapt at school, but the real education takes place in the home.

No matter how much work we did with him, what he was learning at home was much more powerful than what he was learning in school.

He had family pressure, values in the home, and relationships at home that were all more powerful than what we could ever hope to exert at school.

This is the truth for every student we have.

Therefore, it is our responsibility to effectively partner with parents, not just tell them what we are doing to educate their kids.

Now, you would be correct in saying that some kids can come from a really bad home life and start to understand that they can do and be better. I agree with you. I still argue that their home is where they learn that they don’t want to continue in that life. In that example, their home life serves as the null example, which means that they learn all the things they don’t want to do.

I would also argue that if a school can help someone tremendously, it is because they are effectively partnering with the parent’s in-home education, even if the parents are totally against it or even unaware.

Here’s an example, one student was the son of a woman who was drunk almost all the time, abused drugs, and had abusive boyfriends in the home all too often. We attempted to partner with her in many different ways, but she always rebuffed our efforts and didn’t think we could actually help.

She constantly told us what we were doing was wrong and not helpful, and we conversed and attempted to explain how we were helping. She didn’t like what we had to say, and often contradicted us to her son right in front of us.

Here’s where what we did was effective.

We treated her with respect and still offered support to her son.

The one area we absolutely agreed with mom was that she wanted her son to be a good man. We were united in that purpose, but we went about it in very different ways.

We would still implement consequences for bad behavior, but we would always talk through issues and find ways to support him.

We still did our jobs to educate, even as the education was vehemently opposed by his mom.

Until one day, after not giving up in helping him, she saw what we were trying to do, and she finally started working with us, instead of against us.

She didn’t believe that we were actually trying to help her. Until she did. We were fortunate that we got to that point in just 18 months. Not every situation is so fortunate.

We were partnering with her, even though she wasn’t partnering with us, because we never spoke poorly of her, we never said she was wrong, we never denigrated her in any way. When we disagreed, we did so politely and kept trying to help her son become the man she wanted him to be.

This is tricky, because partnering usually involves cooperation of both parties. We didn’t achieve that for a long time, but we knew what most parents want for their kids:

Parents want their kids to be better than them.

I first learned this when I was sixteen and my dad said, “I hope you can be better than me.” He was about 50 at the time, and I thought, “How can you not have everything figured out by that time?”

Arrogant, right?

Now, I totally get it.

Every parent I have ever talked to wants their kids to be happier, more successful, kinder, more anything than they are. I have never met a parent who says, “I want my kids to be worse off than me!”

I have talked with parents who want their kids to not forget their roots, and say they don’t want them to not become better than them, but that’s always turned out to be bluster. In the end, they all always agree: I want my kids to be better.

So, that’s how we partner. We help their kids be better than their parents, in any way we can.

But ultimately, the responsibility is on the parents. They are responsible for raising their kids and we just help.

Some kids, we need to help more than others. Other kids, we could honestly do nothing and those kids would be fine.

In my last post I talked about going to support students who are struggling, not catering to them.

This theory applies here as well. Overtaking what parents are teaching their kids is not our job as educators. Partnering with parents in raising their kids is our job, whether they want it or not.

You might read this and think that you're justified in the abhorrent behavior of certain educators who are trying to indoctrinate their students.

That is not what I'm saying at all.

Going against what parents want their students to learn is not partnering with them.

Trying to indoctrinate them to our specific dogma or idealogy is not what I'm talking about.

It's about partnering with the parents, even when it is hard. Even when you want to throw your hands up in the air and give up.

Even when the parents are downright wrong, it's still their child and we can't (and shouldn't) overcome what they're teaching their kids.

When we partner effectively, it doesn't matter if we disagree, because we are both doing our best to support their children.