4: Family and Community Involvement in School Health

The focus of this chapter is involving family members and the community in a Coordinated School Health Program. When children feel valued they are more likely to develop skills, avoid risky behaviors, and stay in school. Both the family and community play an important role in helping children feel valued. Each has its own uniqueness, and can help students in some ways that the other may not. It is important to involve parents with in school so that they can trust and feel comfortable about the district. They are also more likely to support school health programs. A way to get families involved is to keep them updated, encourage them to help out in planning, create grade level activities that they can participate/help in, share facilities, support health systems for families, and get to know them. The community plays an important part of the development of students. Involving them is almost as important as family involvement. It is important that the school make time for the community partnerships to get involved, as well as encourage students to be active within the community and its organizations. The school and community should plan together, so that consistent messages will be sent to the students. A school health program can only be successful when all members of the school community participate. This creates a bond and understanding of what is expected and what needs to be done to best benefit the student’s needs.
I thought this chapter gave some good examples of how to get the community and families involved. I typically think it is a success if you can just get parents to attend parent teacher meetings at the high school, but this chapter helped me recognize there is a lot more that can be done to get families involved. I now believe that by making sure the parents know who you are and what your plans are only help the situation that much more, even if they come off as not caring. Trying to get families involved with most of the activities may start off slow, but if you continue to try to get to know them, they will hopefully build a trust and comfort level with them and give you and health programs their support.
The community is always involved with the school, but I believe it is often overlooked, or not involved as much as it could be. It seems that the school involves the community only for traditional or yearly events, or when they are desperate for help. After reading this chapter I think it is more important to involve the community much more and before the school actually needs them. The community is always something you can rely on or fall back on to. I like the idea of students being more involved in it, and actually having classrooms use the community for lessons. This only makes the bond that much stronger. Not to mention the most important part, but the community is where students spend all their time. To send the right messages, it is important that the community and school are at the same level. The community deserves just as much say as anyone else, they are the people, and organizations that help mold our students.