My Fatherhood and Principalship Symbiosis

I really enjoy being both a dad and a Principal. I often learn things (mostly from my incredible wife) by experience at home as a dad that I can apply at school and the reverse is true as well. My wife and I have four children, three of them in elementary school. Children at Emerson, as well as my own kids, have their own agendas about how they want to fill their time, with whom they want to associate and with what type of attitude they want to approach the world on any given day.
As a parent and an educator I must be relentless about shaping children's interest in learning and developing their character. They need constant reinforcement about how they respond to their teacher (or to their mom), how they spend their time (when a child takes 30 minutes to get started on a 2 minute task!), how they respond to others (As a dad, I don't know what I would do without the Super 8 rules!!!), how and when to take responsibility for daily routines (my 4 kids love to point at each other when it is time to clean up toys), and about the importance of their classwork.

As a dad, I feel the daily effect that children can't just be told to clean their room. They need a parent to sit with them and learn to clean together. I call this "hand-over-hand" assistance because of something that I have learned at Emerson in the severely handicapped class. The teachers in this class often hold and move the kids' hands to show them how to do something. While parents don't want to have to use this method for room cleaning, independent reading, and sorting dirty clothes for very long, we as parents may need to employ a strategy of heavy support when children are not successful completing the task independently. When I want to make sure my 3 year old has really clean hands, we wash our hands together. When I want to make sure that my 8 year old son is reading, we sit together so he can read out loud to me.

Engagement strategies also rise to the top on my home/school symbiosis list. Engagement strategies at home often sound like this: "Please put your socks in the laundry. Where are you going to put them?" In the classroom, a typical engagement strategy occurs after a teacher asks a question. For example, "What do you predict will happen....?" and then the teacher asks the students to do a Think, Pair, Share activity in which they think about their prediction, they pair up with another child and then a few students are called to share out their responses. These strategies are not optional, they are required if we want to make sure students understand what we want them to do. For my younger kids, I like to have them repeat after me when I give them multi-step directions. "I want you to do three things, repeat after me: 1)wash my hands..."

Enforcing rules at school has helped me to be a better dad at home. It takes constant reminders to keep kids from running in the hallways at school. Even better than a reminder is when we send the child back, and make them return back walking. At home, constant reminders seem necessary for picking up toys, so we'll often use the same strategy- put the toys in a "time-out" if they have been left out.

Sometimes when a child is in trouble, he/she needs a "lifeline." I see this in class when teachers move their students up on the behavior chart. They notice that the child is working hard to get out of trouble, and they reward their efforts by moving their clip back up. My own kids have been known to get all of their privileges taken away (their favorite toy, video game, or television for example) and then they feel like their world is crumbling down. We will sometimes offer to return a privilege early if they make efforts to change their behavior.

I've learned some of my best parenting strategies from watching teachers (including my wife), and I've learned some of my best Principal strategies from being a dad. I hope that you'll share some of your parenting strategies by clicking on the Comment tab below.