Nieuws

At the Caleidoscoop primary school in Almere, all of the classes are now working with a new Fysio Educatief family calendar. This calendar was jointly created after a meeting between director David Kranenburg and Elise Sijthoff. The calendar thus fits in perfectly with the approach of the Caleidoscoop school, which in addition to being a comprehensive school is also the Netherlands’s sportiest. Below is a conversation with its contagiously enthusiastic head teacher.

Children do better in school when their parents are also involved with that school. That is the firm conviction of David Kranenburg. And he is the chairman of the Stichting Actief Ouderschap (“Foundation for Active Parenting”) for good reason. The foundation aims to remove, in a practical way, the “dividing wall” between schools and parents.

Elise Sijthoff and David Kranenburg: happy with the new calendar

It’s Tuesday September 27th, and in various classes, teachers are informing parents about the upcoming school year and the calendar. In his office, Kranenburg sorts out these personalized class calendars. The calendars, with multiple components, will be distributed to the classes beginning on this evening.

What do you think about the calendar’s look?
David Kranenburg: “It looks great! With good information about the school. And with information that is written just a little bit differently than I normally would write it. My normal writing style actually does use a lot of education jargon. When I first read it, I thought: that’s not my language at all. But when I read it again, and also had other people read it, I thought: right, that’s how you reach parents. Put it simply, in language that normal people use, without all kinds of crazy abbreviations.”

“I really like the section with the weekly planner, because it goes beyond just the school day. We used to only include information about the school day, but we are a comprehensive school, with after-school activities, sometimes evening activities, sometimes activities for parents, and so on. And the children also have a lot of planning to do themselves. So now we’ve made it into a calendar where the whole family can add anything they want, and we as a school can also add things. Of course, this is what we intended, because children learn better when their parents are involved, and it appears that we, as teachers, can make the difference by guiding that process.”

The Caleidoscoop calendar

The Caleidoscoop calendar

“This calendar comes with worksheets like My Wish Week, that we fill in with the whole classroom full of children, so that the children also come to know about the many things that they can do. For example: “after school: gym practice with Mr. Frits, or a nice evening for parents”, but it might also be the sports club on weekends.

In our school, we want as many children  as possible go to a sports club. We’re already up to 87% of the 500 children going to a sports club. And of course it’s great that you can mention that on the calendar, too. I really think it’s an added benefit.”

Stichting Actief Ouderschap / Foundation for Active Parenting

Kranenburg speaks enthusiastically about parental involvement.

Is that why he is involved with Stichting Actief Ouderschap?
“Yes, the foundation was started when I noticed that children do better when their parents are involved. I also saw that we, as schools, were rather passive in that regard, in that we would notice that one parent is involved but another one isn’t, and we would be fine with that. But what turns out to be the case? By taking just the right steps, you can almost always involve the parents. In fact, I’m in favour of a 100% educational partnership! And that doesn’t mean that the parents need to be at the school all the time, but it does mean that I can reach them when it comes to their child’s education.

By taking just the right steps, you can almost always involve the parents. In fact, I’m in favour of a 100% educational partnership!

So you don’t believe all those gloomy reports about low parent participation?
“I do actually believe them; parental participation is decreasing. But I’m not interested in pampering the parents; my goal is for the parents to be involved. And I think that this feeling is only getting stronger. I think that the involvement of Dutch parents is already quite substantial. And we have to do everything we can to encourage that. And anyway, participation … it’s just a word. Of course it’s nice when parents participate in the school, but I can also imagine that some parents simply have to be at work. I’m also not at my son’s school right now, when there is something going on, but I’m nonetheless very involved in what happens there.”

After parent’s night, the parents receive the calendars

So it’s about the form in which parents can show that they’re involved?
“Well, they don’t actually have to show it. Involvement is just a feeling in your heart. What matters is that you understand that if your child is learning to read, this can make him or her tired, and you should give your child space for that and give positive encouragement.”

“For example, if you walk through the supermarket and have your child read out a word, and then praise him or her for that: that’s what it’s about! That as a parent, you help support your child, so that your child will read better. And that’s something that we can certainly help parents with. The meetings that we have here at the school often open up the parents’ eyes. And the children’s class results go up enormously, so it must have something to do with that.”

Involvement is just a feeling in your heart

Are there really noticeable results?
“That’s hard to really determine. We are, as a comprehensive school, always developing all kinds of projects. If this were the only thing that I worked on, then I wouldn’t be doing my job properly. What I do see is that parental involvement contributes to a number of things. First, you have more satisfied parents, there are fewer conflicts, and there is more understanding. And also, you see that the parents do not walk away; that’s the last thing you want as a school, that’s a nightmare.”

“The second point is that kids just do better when their parents are involved. We can see that, we know that. Whether it’s because I have good teachers, or because we do in fact sometimes ask parents to get involved, or a combination of those things? If a child is 12, I’ve been able to give him or her 7,520 hours of teaching.

When my son was 12, he typed in his age on his technical calculator. And then he said: ‘Look Dad, I’m 105,120 hours old ‘. That’s exactly right, but it also means that those 7,520 hours only form a small part of that child’s life. And then you can understand that we can’t change that child’s entire world, but we can get an idea about how the parents can do more. Because the parent still has the most influence.”

“We can teach them all kinds of things, but we go further with something that starts with the parents. And that’s the funny thing about this calendar, which expands on that idea. We work on some things at school, and then we continue at home with something else. We don’t do this in a   pushy or intrusive way, but we can still facilitate and organize all kinds of things.”