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Parent Involvement

The following activities are part of our regular school program and are planned to help the parent develop confidence, establish rapport, set up attitudes of home-school cooperation to discover common needs and goals. The goal for the teacher is to get to know the child and his parents. The goal for the parent is to get to know the teacher, the school and their expectations.

1. PARENT ORIENTATION NIGHT—The first group meeting planned for mothers and fathers sometime early in September. The purpose of this meeting will be to discuss school philosophy, policies and goals and to further facilitate the school staff and parents getting better acquainted.

NEW STUDENT ORIENTATION—All Kindergarten, first graders and students new to Valley Presbyterian School are invited to meet their teacher on an announced day in September.

2. FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL—The preschool child and parent come to school together to explore the environment and get acquainted. This will give the parent and child the opportunity to meet the teachers, see the equipment, activities and materials in use and experiment with them.

3. PARENT VOLUNTEERS—Parents may actually become involved in the program by volunteering to help in a variety of ways . (i.e. Office help, making classroom teaching aids, helping in the classroom, working in the Reading Lab, etc.) Please contact the School Office for details.

4. PARENT-TEACHER FELLOWSHIP—The purpose of the Valley Presbyterian School P.T.F. is to be an auxiliary organization to the school, aiding, supporting, and promoting the school administration under the supervision of the Church Session and Church Executive Board. Our goal is to contribute our time, effort, and monies to further achieve and procure materials, equipment and programs to benefit all of the children enrolled in the school. All parents are welcome to join.

Parent Teacher Fellowship (PTF)

The Parent-Teacher (PTF) is an organization of parents and teachers working to promote child welfare in the home, school, church, and community. It is the desire of this organization to bring into closer relationship the home and the school, that parents and teachers may cooperate intelligently in the training of each child. It is also the desire of this fellowship to seek divine guidance in securing for our children the highest advantages in physical, mental, moral and spiritual education.

The objectives of the Parent-Teacher Fellowship are these:

1.To acquaint the parent with the philosophy of Christian education and the curriculum of the school.
2.To acquaint both parent and teacher with the importance of recognizing and adequately coping with the emotional, spiritual and disciplinary needs of the child.
3.To provide an opportunity for parents and teacher to know and have fellowship with each other.
4.To enable our parents to become acquainted with one another.
5.To provide parents and teachers with the opportunity to jointly sponsor projects which will benefit the overall school program.

The dates of these PTF meetings are listed on the school calendar. It is expected that parents will attend these meetings.

Helping Your Child Succeed in School

Helping Your Child Succeed in School : The OERI provides a series of electronic documents for parents interested in helping their children learn to read, take tests, write well, use the library, and succeed in math, history, science, geography and other subjects. Additional information for parents is available through ERIC.

Family Involvment in Education: The Federal government provides a variety of web-based brochures intended to help families improve education at home.

Explaining the Childhood Brain-Drain: An essay by Jane Healy, PhD. Is a brain that has watched a lot of TV or played countless hours of video games different from one that has not – and would it be harder to educate in a traditional classroom?  The answer to both questions appears to be “yes.”  Growing brains are shaped physically by experiences.  Neurons in the brain, responding to sensory stimuli, build new physical connections, called synapses, to neighboring cells.  The synapses form networks that are the neurological foundations for reading comprehension, analytical thinking, sustained attention and problem-solving.  Active interest and mental effort by the child are crucial to the formation of these networks.  Every response to sights, sounds, feelings, smells, and tastes makes more connections. The more work the brain does, the more it becomes capable of doing. Yet by ages three to five – the brain’s critical period for cognitive and language development – the average child is watching television approximately twenty-eight hours per week.

Research indicates that intensive viewing has the potential for at least three effects on the growing brain, any of which could interfere with a child’s natural potential for intelligence and creativity.  First, excessive television watching may reduce stimulation to left-hemisphere systems critical for development of language, reading and analytic thinking.  In addition, it may affect mental ability and attention by diminishing mental traffic between the hemispheres.  Finally, it may discourage development of “executive” systems that regulate attention, organization and motivation.   

Children who never learn to understand and remember language without pictures attached have difficulty in school when they must listen to a teacher or to the author of a textbook.  They look around for meaning instead of creating it inside their own heads.  They may also have difficulty patterning information; that is, organizing and associating new information with previously developed mental connections.    

According to Dr. Jerre Levy, biopsychologist at the University of Chicago and an internationally known authority on hemispheric development, “When children commit time looking at TV, they’re not spending time reading.  When a child reads a novel, he has to self-create whole scenarios, he has to create images of who these people are, what their emotions are, what their tones of voice are, what the environment looks like, what the feeling of this environment is.  These self-created scenarios are important, and television leaves no room for that creative process. . . .  Brains are designed to meet cognitive challenges.  It’s just like muscles; if you don’t exercise them they wither.  If you don’t exercise brains, they wither.”    

The Influence of Television on Your Child

"For decades, research and studies have demonstrated that heavy television-viewing may lead to serious health consequences. Now the American medical community, which has long-voiced its concerns about the nation's epidemic of violence, TV addiction and the passive, sedentary nature of TV-watching, is taking a more activist stance, demonstrated by its endorsement of National TV-Turnoff Week.

The average child will watch 8,000 murders on TV before finishing elementary school. By age eighteen, the average American has seen 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 40,000 murders. At a meeting in Nashville, TN last July, Dr. John Nelson of the American Medical Association (an endorser of National TV-Turnoff Week) said that if 2,888 out of 3,000 studies show that TV violence is a casual factor in real-life mayhem, "it's a public health problem." The American Psychiatric Association addressed this problem in its endorsement of National TV-Turnoff Week, stating, "We have had a long-standing concern with the impact of television on behavior, especially among children."

Millions of Americans are so hooked on television that they fit the criteria for substance abuse as defined in the official psychiatric manual, according to Rutgers University psychologist and TV-Free America board member Robert Kubey. Heavy TV viewers exhibit five dependency symptoms--two more than necessary to arrive at a clinical diagnosis of substance abuse. These include: 1) using TV as a sedative; 2) indiscriminate viewing; 3) feeling loss of control while viewing; 4) feeling angry with oneself for watching too much; 5) inability to stop watching; and 6) feeling miserable when kept from watching.

Violence and addiction are not the only TV-related health problems. A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey released in October 1995 found 4.7 million children between the ages of 6-17 (11% of this age group) to be severely overweight, more than twice the rate during the 1960's. The main culprits: inactivity (these same children average more than 22 hours of television-viewing a week) and a high-calorie diet. A 1991 study showed that there were an average of 200 junk food ads in four hours of children's Saturday morning cartoons." "TV-Free America is a national, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that encourages Americans to reduce, voluntarily and dramatically, the amount of television they watch in order to promote richer, healthier and more connected lives, families and communities."

We are called to Love God with our Mind: Matthew 22:36-29: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" *Jesus replied: "`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: `Love your neighbour as yourself.'

We are called to think godly thoughts: Philippians 4:8 : Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.

We are commanded to test the thinking of our culture: 1 Thess 5: 21-22 Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.

We are taught to renew our minds Romans 12:2: Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.

 

Parenting Resources

Resources at Valley Presbyterian Church

Childrens Ministries : At Valley Presbyterian Church we are deeply committed to the spiritual health of our families. Our understanding of the family grows out of the Bible's teaching that God is the Architect of the home. He brings the husband and wife together. He is the Giver of the children; He has special regard for the widow and fatherless. In trying to make God's priorities our priorities, we emphasize the importance of a healthy, spiritually growing home life. We desire that all of our family life ministries reflect this commitment. Our children are a very high priority with us. They are blessings given to us directly from God (Psalm 127:3). Because of our convictions we strongly encourage parents to develop the very best skills possible for raising their children with hearts of integrity. We also accept the responsibility as a church to assist parents in the nurturing, training, and caring for their children. This is a monumental task both for the home and church. We are members one of another and we are to share our lives with one another in God's family. It is a continuous adventure filled with great joys, challenges, and opportunities. May we all continue to persevere with our hearts fixed on Jesus who faithfully sustains us until the end. To assist one another in our parenting, Valley Presbyterian Church offers Sunday School, Children's Church, Mid-Week programs, Vacation Bible School and camping opportunities for children and youth as well as Fellowship Groups and Bible Studies for adults.

Other Organizations

  • Focus on the Family: Perhaps you have noticed the Focus on the Family inserts in the church bulletin from time to time. If you would like more information on strengthening the family, you may wish to look at the resources available at this Christian family ministry.

  • Family Life Today: Family Life Today is a Christian organization that strives to provide practical, biblical tools to strengthen and build your marriage and family relationships.

Using the Internet Wisely

Safe Use of the Internet

  • The Internet has tremendous potentials for use and abuse. It is the duty of the parent to see that it is put to use for good and not for evil. A variety of filtering solutions are available and should be used to protect your family from the offensive material on the Internet. Although filters are extremely valuable, they are not 100% effective in blocking offensive material.. We urge you to review tips for safe Internet use from the US Department of Education, and a Parents' Guide to the Internet. There is no substitute for parental supervision, and we recommend that you keep the computer in the living room or family room where you will be able to monitor its use. In addition, we suggest that you use the Internet to answer specific questions and solve particular problems. Aimless "surfing" can be a tremendous waste of time.

Commercial Filters: Protecting your Children

To avoid problems we strongly recommend the use of filtering services such as the following. A comparison of the effectiveness of these is available from a www.familyguidebook.com.

  • X-Stop: X-Stop uses Direct Access Blocking (DAB) to protect you and your children from offensive sites on the internet.
  • Surf-Watch: "SurfWatch Software, a division of Spyglass, invented the Internet content filtering market in May 1995. Since then, more than eight million copies of SurfWatch have been shipped or downloaded, making it the most popular, trusted product for harnessing the positive potential of the Internet."
  • Cyber Patrol: "Cyber Patrol (by the Learning Company) is the Internet filtering software rated the best by industry and leading magazines. Cyber Patrol is used to manage Internet access, limit the total time spent online and restrict access to Internet sites that you deem inappropriate."
  • SmartParent : "SmartParent.com is a resource dedicated to educating parents on the best ways to safeguard their children from the dangers presented by cyberspace. Our goal is to help keep the online experience safe, educational and entertaining for children."

Search Engine Filters

  • Please note that most of the major search engines (Yahoo, America Online, Altavista, etc.) have "Family Filters". These services block offensive material so that it will not appear when performing searches. We strongly encourage you to turn on these filters in addition to using the commercial software listed under Commercial Filters above.

Children's Health

  • Immunization Schedule: "By making sure that your child gets immunized on time, you can provide the best available defense against many dangerous childhood diseases. Immunizations protect children against: hepatitis B, polio, measles, mumps, rubella (German measles), pertussis (whooping cough), diphtheria, tetanus (lockjaw), Haemophilus influenzae type b, chickenpox, and rotavirus. All of these immunizations need to be given before children are 2 years old in order for them to be protected during their most vulnerable period. Are your child's immunizations up-to-date?" Am message from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

  • KidsDoctor: "KidsDoctor as a 24 hr-a-day source for "What every parent needs to know" when it comes to keeping our kids healthy.

  • Kids Health: A service from the medical experts of the Nemours Foundation.

  • TV and Mental Health: Dr. John Nelson of the American Medical Association said that if 2,888 out of 3,000 studies show that TV violence is a casual factor in real-life mayhem, "it's a public health problem." The American Psychiatric Association addressed this problem in its endorsement of National TV-Turnoff Week, stating, "We have had a long-standing concern with the impact of television on behavior, especially among children."

Christian Middle Schools and High Schools in the Area

Many of our students matriculate to these schools upon graudation from Valley Presbyterian School.

Los Angeles Baptist Junior/Senior HS
9825 Woodley Ave., North Hills, CA 91343-1905; 894-5742

Los Angeles Lutheran Junior/High School
13570 Eldridge Ave., Sylmar, CA 91342-2343; 818-362-5861 ; 768-5540

Village Christian Junior/Senior High School
8930 Village Avenue. Sun Valley, CA 91352

Oaks Christian High School
31749 La Tienda Drvive, Westlake Village, CA; 818 575-2292

Hillcrest Christian Jr/Sr High School
17531 Rinaldi St., Granada Hills; 368-7071
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