Parent Education
Note: For most Parent Education events and meetings there will a morning session, which will be held in-person in the gazebo on campus, and an evening session, which will be held virtually on Zoom.
In order to help our parents, students, and teachers work together as a “family unit,” we offer a Parent Education program that spans the Oak Grove experience from 1st grade through 12th grade. Parent Education events are led by teachers as well as outside professionals, covering topics like Growth Mindset, social media wellness, college readiness, inquiry-based dialogue, diversity & equity, teen sexuality, and more. In addition, the program emphasizes building relationships and support networks among parents, teachers, and community members.
Our Current Parent Ed Workshop:
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice – Benjamin Mertz Residency
Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee is excited to co-sponsor with Parent Council an on-campus residency with musician and racial justice activist Benjamin Mertz. He will be meeting with students of all ages, staff, and parents during his time with us on Tuesday–Thursday, February 22–24.
Benjamin Mertz is a human rights and racial justice activist who leads workshops on racism and diversity with a thoughtful, non-dogmatic approach. In our session, he was warm, sensitive, approachable, and open-hearted; he listened deeply and met us where we are. He seems to have a gift for helping participants understand and deconstruct issues of racial and economic justice through knowledge of historical context and deep compassion, as well as empowering, spicy and provocative, open-minded discussion.
Dates and times:
- On-Campus Session – Wednesday, February 23 : 8:30-9:30 am in the Gazebo (Please RSVP if you plan on attending)
- Zoom Session – Thursday, February 24 : 7:00 to 8:00 pm. Open to the Public—REQUEST ACCESS. Invite your friends; Space is Unlimited!
Our Parent Education program takes a two-pronged approach
First, the program is designed to support parents in raising children and adolescents through workshops on subjects such as child development, communication strategies, harm prevention, and academic support. As students advance to the secondary level, we also include sessions on college readiness and the transition into adulthood. The second goal of the program is to build relationships and support networks among parents, teachers, and community members. Oak Grove is a close-knit community, and we seek to create a healthy dialogue between staff and families in order to best serve the needs of our students.
You can refer to the button above to see the current Parent Education schedule.
On February 11, 1974, the day the school was officially announced, Oak Grove School founder J. Krishnamurti said:
And this school here, we have been discussing with the teachers, with the parents, and with the architects for the last two years. This school is entirely different from the other schools in India and England. Here the parents are involved in it, which is a new kind of experiment because if the children are going to be different then parents must also be different, otherwise there is a contradiction between the child and the parents, and there will be conflict between them. So to avoid all that we thought it would be right that the parents as well as the teachers and the students work together as a family unit.”
Friendship in Early Childhood
Blog, Parent Education, Parent UpdateIn early childhood, children are developing skills at school to help build a strong foundation for cooperative social play. During early childhood, kids actively seek ways to assert their own identities and to find ways to be powerful. Unfortunately, because of their developmental level, young children often don’t know how to make themselves feel more […]
Communicating with Children
Blog, Parent Education, Parent UpdateBy Will Hornblower Across the Oak Grove campus, parents and staff have been discussing strategies to improve the way that adults connect and communicate with children. Over the course of three workshops, we brainstormed ways to help students develop resilience, autonomy, and rapport with adults. We started by posing a question to a gathering of […]