Increasing Parent Involvement in the Music Program

Hello Victoria,
Thank you so much for responding and considering my question on your podcast. I work at a low income title 1 school and I noticed that there is a lack of parent involvement with the Arts programs. I’ve spoken to other music teachers and it seems to be an issue at their schools as well. I was wondering if you have any advice on how to encourage parent involvement and develop positive parent teacher relationships as a music teacher.

 
Increasing Parent Involvement in the Music Program
 

  1. Space between community support, professional success, and human value

Your level of parent involvement doesn’t impact your quality as a teacher. Your success as a professional doesn’t impact your quality as a person.

Let’s separate other people’s actions from our professional success. Let’s separate our professional success from our human value.

Having a huge amount of community support where every concert is packed and your classroom wish list is always gets filled and you get daily emails from parents about how much their child loves music….

  • If you’re experiencing a deficit in encouragement and support and validation, where else could you get those things besides the outside school community?

2. Define Our Terms

  • How much family support? In what ways? What do you actually need from families? What is realistic for your community?

3. Music as a part of the School Community

  • What does parent support look like at your school? How can we partner with the school culture?

4. What are parents coming to?

  • Events / informances

5. Informances

  • Kids do the marketing

  • Seesaw - not everything needs to be location and time dependent

    • “We’re taking this video, so be sure to watch it at home with your family”

6. How can we partner with families?

  • Have we ever asked families what would help them show up?

  • Are there times that could be more convenient? (Do concerts always need to be in the evening?)

I believe you are a fabulous music teacher. The work you do is valuable. Regardless of the amount of parent support you observe in the music program… your community, your school, and your students are better off because you are their elementary general music teacher.