The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Admiral King to pilot Parent Project
Admiral King Elementary aims to offer parent support with a pilot program that could grow across the Lorain City Schools district during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The Parent Project is a 10-week online course for parents, grandparents and other caregivers for the 248 students in grades pre-K to five at the school, 720 Washington Ave.
It will begin March 1 for the Admiral King parents and will expand to all elementary schools in April, then to the middle schools and Lorain High School for the 2021-22 school year.
“Parents are the key to securing our future,” said Amy Graves, principal of Admiral King Elementary. “And right now, parents need help.
“Increased technology, remote and virtual learning, social distancing and COVID-19 have put parents in a difficult spot of trying to juggle home, work and school during a pandemic. Our hope is to provide added supports so that we can all be successful in serving the needs surfacing at this time.”
The Parent Project is a nationally known program that has developed over 30 years to address defiant or destructive behaviors, said Karen Knerem, social worker at Admiral King Elementary.
It focuses on prevention and intervention strategies for difficult, strongwilled and out-of-control kids, Knerem said.
“We feel by helping parents and giving them tools of how to manage some of this stuff, that we’re going to have stronger families at home, we’re going to have better attendance with kids, we’re going to have better grades and we hope that will filter through and allow us to have better graduation rates and more successful young adults that leave the school district,” she said.
Logistics
Parent Project workshops begin March 1.
The online meetings will run from 7:30 to 9 p.m. using the platform Zoom.
Interested Admiral King families should contact Graves at agraves@loraincsd.org for the link.
The program sessions are meant for the school staff and parents to build relationships, not one-time discussions.
Participants are asked to commit to the meetings, and those who can, will qualify to win various gift cards by raffle.
The school leaders said they hope the program can meet in-person in the future once the pandemic subsides.
Additional help
This is the first school year that Lorain Schools has hired social workers to join faculty and support staff in the buildings, Graves said.
She credited Knerem for helping “get underneath the surface, if you will, and not just ask kids how their days are.”
“We’re able to help families with many of the difficulties they’re facing in their everyday life, as well as some of the difficulties they are facing due to the pandemic,” Graves said.
She said Knerem connected families with resources to help situations.
In schools, there is a push to move beyond just academics and to address the social and emotional learning of children, Knerem said.
“It’s a holistic approach because you can’t just shove information into kids and think that they’re going to grasp and take that in when you have all these other issues going on, whether they’re economic issues or they’re emotional issues or just the stress, the lack of being able to be in school with their friends, the quarantines, the isolation, all those things,” she said.
Not just student care
The Parent Project is not a response to bad behavior in school.
Admiral King has had good discipline, largely because the students are excited to learn and see their teachers and classmates, Graves said.
Lorain Schools’ use of the program also is not a direct response to the pandemic.
But the stresses of COVID-19 have pushed to the forefront the concerns about students’ social and emotional health, Knerem said.
Parents and caregivers also need support, she said, because they are juggling work, teaching children at home and managing their families’ households.
The Parent Project is designed to help parents deal with obstacles such as addiction to social media or gaming systems, bullying, sexual predators and defiant behaviors, Knerem said.