Richardson is one of dozens of elementary, middle, and high school teachers in Boston and Springfield who are making house calls this year to visit their students’ families, a practice gaining popularity nationwide. The goal is to build stronger relationships between teachers and families in a quest to bolster parent volunteerism in school and involvement in their child’s education at home, as well as break down any misconceptions that parents and teachers might have about one another.
As long as the teachers go no further that what is written above, I'm OK with this practice. The moment this is used to "evaluate" a student's home life, or to justify lower expectations because of the teacher's perception of the home life, my support will vanish.
There are students in my district who are the scions of some of the most violent gangs in the nation-La Familia, Zetas, you name it. I would not visit that home without an armed guard. While it has the warm and cozy feeling of the Left, home visits can be a danger to a teacher, especially a young female teacher, traveling alone. I know the effort is toward trying to get the families involved by making them think the schools care about them, but wouldn't this be better accomplished by having the teachers in a central location, paying them to stay at school and scheduling individual conferences with parents to pick up grades?
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