First-class parenting

Like any supportive parent, Carla Helmreich does anything and everything in her power to help her son, Andrew, succeed in school.

Help him with his homework?

Check. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Carla Helmreich to help her sophomore son with his Integrated Math II homework, though.

Hire tutors?

Check. But some have worked better than others.

Make sure he’s using education assistance programs at school?

Check. She encourages Andrew to attend Hickman High School’s KMAC, or Kewpie Math Assistance Center, whenever he needs help with his homework.

Nationwide studies on parental involvement in children’s education say Carla Helmreich is doing exactly what she needs to do to help her son. Students who have actively involved parents are more likely to stay motivated in college and in their professional careers, research in the last 10 years shows. As adults, some parents may remember how their own parents supported and encouraged them and may draw on those same techniques to help their children.

Although it may seem obvious that parent involvement is necessary to a child’s academic success, it’s not always possible. Parents come from different backgrounds — various education levels, economic situations, races and ethnicities — that may make it hard for them to help.

The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory — a nonprofit education research, development and dissemination corporation — found that, fortunately, the relationship between parental involvement and benefits for students transcended differences in parents’ backgrounds. In Columbia, there are plenty of resources to help parents and their children overcome these disparities.

Learning the language

Language is such an integral part of life that it might be easy to take for granted. The ability to speak and understand English allows parents to read aloud to their children, help with spelling tests and communicate with teachers. But when English is not a parent’s native language and isn’t spoken at home, it can become necessary for parents to look outside for academic assistance for their children.

Linda Manning, a doctoral student at MU, saw the need for a bilingual tutoring program for Spanish-speaking children and began volunteering at the Centro Latino After School Program, which was established by fellow MU student Steffanie Sing in September 2002.

During the program’s first month, Spanish-speaking families came to the After School Program for computer courses, but only a couple of children came in to use the educational software. When Manning started volunteering in October, she said there just weren’t many children to help.

“After the second week, I said, ‘We really need to get children,’” Manning said.

On any given Monday through Thursday, about two dozen Latino children are bused to Centro Latino after school. They get a snack provided by the Central Missouri Food Bank and then meet with a volunteer to work on homework. Students who don’t have homework complete work sheets provided by Centro Latino, work on crossword puzzles or read to their volunteer. Centro Latino is in close contact with the children’s teachers, who fill out forms specifying subjects with which each child needs help.

Most children who attend the after-school program struggle with English, especially at school, and almost all families speak Spanish at home. Megan Vandeventer, Centro Latino’s education program co-coordinator, said the program began “mostly because parents weren’t able to help their kids with homework, because they sometimes have trouble understanding the language. It helps fill the gap between English-speaking schools and Spanish parents.”

It’s not just parents who recognize they must get help for their children; teachers also take into account that some kids can’t get the assistance they need at home.

“Schools with high Latino populations call us and keep us up-to-date,” Vandeventer said.

She said that although most English-language-learner teachers are aware of the program, Centro Latino volunteers are trying to make it better known to other teachers. Centro Latino serves students from 13 of 18 public schools in Columbia.

The staff at Centro Latino has seen signs of success within the program. Jaymee Tonkel, education program co-coordinator, said that last year, no child who visited Centro Latino was held back a grade in school. It may not sound like a lot, she said, but it reflects a change from previous years.

A 2003 study by the National Center for Family & Community Connections at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory found that when parents are involved in their child’s learning — even if it is not personally helping them complete assignments — children “tend to do better in school, stay in school longer and like school more.”

Last year, volunteers at the after-school program noticed a lack of parent involvement in the program and began requiring that parents pick their children up each evening. Parents are also participating in other ways. “Some parents come in and wait for their children to finish their homework,” Tonkel said. “Some parents actually bring their kids to the program after school.”

Beyond parents’ abilities

Older students are more likely to retreat to their bedrooms to finish their homework, coming out only to eat dinner or watch TV. Those who have questions about their assignments might be more apt to call a friend or find another resource for help, leaving their parents to wonder what role they play in their child’s education.

And sometimes children who do have questions find that their parents can’t help. Whether it is because students are taking honors and advanced placement classes or because material is taught differently today than it was when they were in school, some parents have trouble understanding and helping with homework as their kids progress through high school.

Carla Helmreich expresses exasperation when she sees her son Andrew’s math homework.

“They’re word problems,” the mother of the Hickman High School sophomore said. “Last year, I would read them and just throw up my hands!”

That frustration with math is echoed by Chris Harris, whose son Chris is a sophomore at Rock Bridge High School.

“There’s quite a bit of information that is not easy to recall as it once was,” the elder Chris Harris said. “Even the simple math problems can be more challenging for me than it once was.”

For parents at Hickman, however, the responsibility to help their children does not rest solely on the parents’ shoulders: The school offers students a refuge called KMAC.

Students can drop by KMAC, or Kewpie Math Assistance Center, during class and for a half-hour before and after school. They can get math homework help from the two to four teachers who staff the room each period, from MU math education students or Hickman High School Math Honor Society students. In its second year, KMAC sees 80 to 100 students each day, and the number of students receiving help has almost quadrupled since last year.

The KMAC program has several Spanish-speaking math guides for students who need their help.

For parents who can’t or won’t pay to hire a math tutor from an outside source, the program is a welcomed resource with advantages that hired tutors can’t offer.

“KMAC is one of the best things I’ve seen,” Carla Helmreich said. “I’ve hired tutors (when Andrew was in middle school), and some worked and some didn’t. I think that one of the reasons KMAC worked out so much better than a tutor is because it is math teachers that are teaching at that school with that particular textbook.”

Lisa Nieder, KMAC coordinator, said that although the student-teacher ratio is not exactly one-on-one, as it would be with a hired tutor, “it’s the next best thing.” Kids in the same class can sit down, get to know each other and help one another, Nieder said.

Andrew Helmreich, a sophomore at Hickman, said he looks to his peers for help and often calls a friend from class when he needs help with his homework.

“I’m relying more on friends than my parents because I’m trying to stay out of their hair,” he said. “I’m trying to learn it more on my own than relying on Mom.”

Regardless of where Andrew is getting his help, it seems to be working.

“I understand (my math homework) a lot more,” he said. Math is his most time-consuming subject, he said, but if he goes to KMAC to finish homework, he rarely has to complete any at home. His mother has also noticed that Andrew’s involvement in KMAC alleviates the pressure she feels to assist him with his homework.

“Really, I haven’t helped him at all this year,” Carla Helmreich said.

Doing it on their own

About 25 Columbia public school teachers interviewed for this story say students shouldn’t need help from home and should be able to complete their homework on their own.

“The homework I send home can be completed independently by the child since it is an extension of what we are doing in the classroom,” said Nancy Bond, who teaches third grade at Lee Elementary School. But, many parents still help their children with their homework — which is great, she said.

Pete Doll, who teaches consumer math, algebra and geometry at Hickman, said that although parents are welcome to help, students at the high school level should be capable of finishing it independently or by using one of the many resources the school has to help.

Other teachers give students time at the end of class to begin their homework. By doing so, children who have questions can ask teachers to explain the material before they go home to work on it.

Regardless of whether a child needs help with homework, teachers, researchers and parents alike recognize the importance of various types of parent involvement. A 2002 review by the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory of 51 recent studies found that students whose parents are actively involved in their homework reap several benefits, including higher grade-point averages and scores on standardized tests, enrollment in more challenging academic programs and better attendance records. Researchers defined parent involvement as participating in learning activities at home such as helping with reading skills and checking homework, talking about what children are learning and having open lines of communication with teachers.

“When schools, families and communities work together to support learning, children tend to do better in school, stay in school longer and like school more,” stated a report from the National Center for Family & Community Connections with Schools at the laboratory.

A meaningful way that parents stay involved in their child’s school is by communicating with teachers. The SEDL study reports that “in schools where teachers reported high levels of outreach to parents, test scores grew at a rate 40 percent higher than in schools where teachers reported low levels of outreach.”

Parent-teacher conferences and back-to-school nights are common occurrences at Columbia schools. At Midway Heights Elementary School, curriculum nights are given for each grade level. On this night, fourth-grade teacher Janet Swope said she and the other fourth-grade teacher at Midway Heights started out talking to parents in their classrooms, which included a room tour and a Power Point presentation about expectations for work and behavior, and wrapped up with a question-and-answer session.

Parent-teacher communication has gone online, too. In a time where Internet access is widely available and everything from booking an airline ticket to ordering groceries can be done online, teachers and parents are taking advantage.

“With the advent of e-mail, (contacting a teacher) is a lot easier,” said Betsy Woodruff, whose daughter Lauren is a junior at Rock Bridge High School. “You don’t feel like you are disturbing them at home. You can fire off an e-mail about a test grade and know that they can answer them at their own convenience.”

Most teachers are willing to work with busy parents, several people said.

“Because of my experiences with helping my own children, I tell all parents that family comes first; soccer games, visiting relatives, etc., takes priority,” said Christopher O’Gorman, a fourth-grade teacher at Benton Elementary School. “If students can’t complete an assignment because they don’t understand it or are too busy with family obligations, then they must call me before it is due.”

Many Columbia elementary school teachers use homework folders to give busy parents some breathing room when it comes to helping with their child’s homework. A homework folder includes an entire week’s worth of homework and allows parents and children to choose between spreading the work out over the week or completing it all in one night.

“It helps a busy parent plan in case one evening is packed with activities,” said Patty Torbet, who teaches first grade at Benton.

Daily dose of reading

One activity that parents and children should strive to complete nightly is a specified amount of reading. The National Education Association reinforces the necessity of parent involvement and states that “reading achievement is more dependent on learning activities in the home than is math or science,” and an American Federation of Teachers study showed that a child who doesn’t learn basic reading skills early in life is unlikely to learn them at all.

Carol Gilles, an associate professor of literacy in MU’s School of Education, thinks the best homework for reading and language arts is simply to read.

“If we want kids to be proficient readers and to love reading, they need lots of practice,” she said, “and that is something that may be done at home.”

Gilles also said that reading practices differ depending on the child’s age.

“Younger kids benefit from having their parents read to them as well as reading with and to their parents or family members,” she said. “Older kids will probably be involved in more silent reading, although they may benefit from reading to younger children, too.”

A constant homework assignment of reading for at least 20 minutes each weeknight and at least 20 minutes over the weekend is what Clint Darr recommends for his fourth-graders. Darr, who teaches at Cedar Ridge Elementary School, said teachers try to foster enjoyment of reading so most students see reading as something they want to do, rather than as homework.

Swope, a fourth-grade teacher at Midway Heights, assigns 15 to 35 minutes of reading each night, encouraging students to read to themselves but also recommending that parents read aloud with their children “to model fluency, rate and expression.” The act of reading together can lead to meaningful discussions and allows parents and children to work on comprehension or to clear up any confusing material, she said.

Rachel Winkelmann — who has two children at Parkade Elementary School, Noah in kindergarten and Austin in third grade — spends 30 minutes doing math and reading homework with each child. Noah practices phonics, while Austin reads aloud for the teacher-recommended 20 minutes a night, five nights a week.

Rachel and her husband, Gary, take turns working with each of their children. “We kind of go back and forth and then sometimes we play a math game where we are all involved,” she said.

Parents can also engage their children in learning outside the classroom — for example, wrapping education into a family vacation or suggesting reading relevant to whatever the child is studying. A National Center for Education Statistics study found these activities positively affect students and are signs of highly involved parents. According to the study, highly involved parents are more likely to “visit museums and libraries, participate in cultural activities with their children and have high educational expectations for them.”

Hannah Pingelton, a 15-year-old sophomore at Hickman, is enrolled in all honors classes and is in advanced placement world history and English, but she has only a maximum of 30 minutes of homework each night. She gets some of her homework done in class and quickly finishes the rest at home. If she studies for a test, she said it only involves reading her notes once or twice.

Hannah’s mother, Susan, said that in the past she has contacted a teacher who suggested extra reading material to challenge Hannah more. The Pingelton family also travels.

“Outside of school, we cram her with as much knowledge and books to keep her stimulated,” Susan Pingelton said.

Betsy and Terry Woodruff, , whose daughter Lauren goes to Rock Bridge, engage her in a different way: “Last summer and last year, she complained about sitting on her bed to do homework,” Betsy Woodruff said. “We completely redid her bedroom.” Lauren’s bedroom now includes a big L-shaped desk that wraps around two walls and holds her own laptop and printer. New shelves on the wall keep Lauren’s desk free of clutter. The new atmosphere has helped Lauren concentrate on her homework.

“(Before redoing my room) it was easy to be distracted,” she said, “but now I kind of have my own study area.”

Supporting your student

Even the brightest or most independent student can use a cheerleader. Encouragement is particularly important for the development of students in middle and high school, and studies show that high-achieving students of all backgrounds have parents who encourage them, discuss school with them and keep them focused on their work.

“There is definitely room for encouragement,” said Rachel Tinsley, a biology teacher at Hickman. “Just parents asking what (their children) are working on and implying that education is important is essential.”

Hickman social studies teacher Keith Lindaman agreed, saying that teachers alone can’t provide enough encouragement.

“If parents and guardians are not concerned with the kid’s work, there isn’t enough pushing we can do from this end to ensure their success,” Hickman teacher Lindaman said.

Hickman mom Carla Helmreich said she encourages Andrew daily and checks the Columbia Public School’s eSchool Web site — on which teachers post attendance and grades, to be accessed by parents — to make sure Andrew is turning in his homework.

“If I see something that he didn’t turn in, I get on him. I stay involved and ask questions,” she said. “I think he appreciates it, unless I nag him too much.”