I’ll be facilitating a workshop on “What do parents want,” at an upcoming  BCTF conference (Public Education: Protecting our children’s future).  I did something similar a few years ago (click here) and will draw upon some of the same resources.  However, several years later I have a few different ideas.

For one thing, as parents themselves mature along with their children’s progress through school, one’s ideas of what is possible shifts.  Along with such life cycle changes our expectations take on different forms and, one hopes, matures.  The frantic hopes and desires of the kindergarten parent becomes replaced by a more sanguine attitude as our children move through the intermediate grades.  A new bout of anxiety emerges with adolescence and the transition to high school.  And then, if we’ve made it through to grade 12 a healthy sigh of relief as they make the transition into adulthood and hopefully get a chance to live the ups and downs of their own choices in life -fore better or worse.

I look forward to seeing this workshop develop and to meet the different people who will become participants as we explore what it is that parents want for their children in our public schools.