Kindergartners study with parents

Lauren Vane

School isn’t just for children. At Oak View School in Huntington

Beach, parents regularly receive an education of their own. Several

days a week, the parents of children in Margaret Friedmann’s

kindergarten class come in and learn with their youngsters.

After the students proudly sang a song to their parents, Friedmann

started Thursday morning with a lesson on how to do book reports, a

lesson that was as much for the parents as it was for the children.

According to Friedmann, 100% of her students are English language

learners and many of their parents do not speak English. Along with

teaching kindergarten curriculum, Friedmann is also teaching English

vocabulary and language development, she said.

“Any parent who wants to come, or feels the need to come, can

come,” Friedmann said.

With the help of a parent translator, Friedmann showed the parents

how to help when their children bring home book reports later in the

week. Friedmann speaks some Spanish, but not a lot, she said.

“I need the parents to help educate their children, and they can

do it,” Friedmann said.

After the lesson was completed, Friedmann gave the students a

chance to work on the book reports with their parents during class.

Emma Bravo sat at a table with other mothers and helped her

six-year-old son, Brian Flores, with his book report.

“It helps him in a lot of ways,” Bravo said. “It’s just great

because they learn more.”

The class material that parents are involved with varies from

reading and writing to math and art, Friedmann said. Students in her

class are responsible for four book reports a month, and educating

the parents how to help their children with those kind of projects is

critical to the students’ learning, Friedmann said.

“The parents really need to reinforce with the reading, the math

and especially the handwriting,” Friedman said.

Parent involvement in education is a schoolwide focus, Friedmann

said. In her own classroom, Friedmann said she holds a parent

education night several times each month.

“Every teacher here participates in parent education in some way,”

Friedmann said.