Phil Hatlen Listen to Phil Hatlen’s advice on the benefits of a parent/professional collaboration related to the expanded core curriculum.

Transcript

My name is Phil Hatlen. I’m currently the superintendent of the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Austin, Texas.

What do you believe are the benefits of a parent/professional collaboration related to the expanded core curriculum?

A collaboration between parents and teachers should result in parents helping teachers understand their child to begin with. Teachers will help parents understand the importance of the ECC, but parents, who know their children better than any teacher would know, need to help teachers understand the particular characteristics of their child. This collaboration between parent and teacher should result in expanded core curriculum skills becoming embedded within the child and becoming a natural part of that child’s growth and development.

The history of the national agenda, which really gave birth to the expanded core curriculum, has as its foundation the partnership that we so desperately need between parents and teachers. To ignore what parents have to teach us about their children, to ignore their responsibility and their privilege in terms of working with us, would be to lose our greatest asset as teachers. So we need to work together with parents. We need to assume dual responsibility for growth in the expanded core curriculum and in academics, and we need to respect and honor parents very much.