Role of the ES Throughout a Student’s Educational Career

Kindergarten to 4th (or so) grade

In the early grades (K to 4th), ESs should be mostly the 'ears' and 'eyes'. ESs should be encouraging the parents/students, seeing what they are doing and what standards they are covering (the parents/students need not know), adding our resources and knowledge to encourage growth towards more standards (again, without necessarily stating them as "standards"), making suggestions of where to go next in each core area, hearing their concerns and questions and offering guidance and an attitude of fostering the joy of learning while exposing the child to the world around them and some basic skills to work at their pace .

This is not the time to come into the home and state that they have NOT met...standard or covered a certain topic the parent is not ready to teach. Instead encourage any educational interests and help parents to understand the learning style of their students so that they can maximize their love of learning.

5th (or so) grade to 8th grade

As the students hit the middle grades, ESs should be preparing them to be able to work towards mastering the skills necessary to meet the standards in high school. ESs attitude should be one of encourage the students to stretch themselves, while fostering the attitude of becoming a lifelong learner. Most parents wish to stay very involved in the decision of what to teach when, and this should be encouraged. ESs should also give guidance on where to find answers, not just expect to hear the answers given back to us or their parents.  Parents will typically have more questions about whether or not what they are doing is "right"--ESs can take this opportunity to carefully guide them towards the areas where the student has "gaps". Scantron becomes very useful during this stage of identifying the gaps the parents can fill.

This also is not the time to come into the home and state that they have NOT met...standard or covered a certain topic the parent is not ready to teach. Instead, come with Scantron results to show the parents where the students' gaps are in critical skills, and provide suggestions geared to the students' learning style for activities to fill those gaps.

High School

Standards in high school can be equated to the 'gold standard'; all high schools have to be on the same page as far as what core courses are taken prior to graduation, what each core course covers (standards) so that it is 'marketable' between high schools and is understandable for college admission.

At this level, many HS students wish to work directly with their teacher instead of their parents, or parents no longer feel confident to take a lead role in high school level core courses.  ESs should be ready to help parents feel confidence, or take over the lead role in an AESS contract. This may involve doing some parent training as well as working directly with your students.

At this level, the ESs must continually remind both parents and students of these state given standards they MUST meet in order to earn their course grades and credits, so that they will be able to graduate from high school and go on to college should they choose to do so.This may feel to some parents as if their “choice” is being violated. The parents are still fairly free to be creative with non-core courses (which is why we have very generic life skills course names for usage in this), but the core courses at the high school level are standardized statewide. The ESs role is to be sure that the parents clearly understand this distinction and keep tabs on what needs to be met to accomplish their educational goals.