WJ is lucky to have so many parents actively participating in its community, but there’s a fine line between welcomed contribution and micromanaging.

It’s important to note that not every parent is overly involved. Many are invested in their child’s high school experience without sacrificing their independence. Parents can contribute to the school atmosphere in several ways, such as helping out at the annual used book sale, volunteering to manage the merchandise booth by the cafeteria, attending sporting events and sending the occasional email to their child’s counselor.

However, some parents can go too far. While parents have the right to be aware of their child’s academic situation, they should allow the student some room to breathe and figure things out for themselves instead of immediately taking control. Sending excessive emails to counselors or teachers shouldn’t be necessary unless there is a serious problem, which there often isn’t.

Heather Dodge, a counselor at WJ for students in all grades, has firsthand experience with student-parent dynamics.

“There are a lot of benefits to parent involvement,” Dodge said. “Having a parent who checks on work and ensures students understand what they are learning helps students learn how to be responsible adults one day. The only time I would say that parent involvement is too much is when the student is unable to speak up for themselves or is not learning how to advocate independently.”

Because counselors work with students of all grade and academic levels, they deal with a wide variety of parents. On the other hand, teachers, who typically only work with students in one or a couple of courses, have very different experiences with parents depending on the subject that they teach.

Katharina Matro, a social studies teacher at WJ, feels that parent involvement benefits her relationships with students.

“It’s absolutely essential that parents are involved. As a teacher, it helps me get to know students better,” Matro said. “I also think it’s important that parents get to know me as a person, a human, not just a figure in the way of their student’s graduation.”

Matro has been at WJ for over three years, and her previous six years of work experience came from teaching at a private school. She said that parent involvement differs greatly between public and private schools, with the latter parents being significantly more controlling.

“Parent involvement at WJ is far lower than it is at private school,” Matro said. “Obviously, parents spending 40k+ on their students’ education have more incentive to be involved. Private school communities are also much smaller and less diverse, so it’s probably easier and more comfortable to be more involved in the parent community.”

Senior Maria Burrus considers herself to be relatively independent, having completed the majority of her college applications herself.

“My parents read over my essays and took college tours with me but I would say I did most of it myself,” Burrus said. “I would say parents should be involved in academics to an extent so people don’t fail, because then it’d be really hard to get accepted to universities, but they shouldn’t be more obsessed with your grades than you are.”

Colleen McAdory is an English teacher at WJ and has had frustrating experiences with parents taking too much control.

“To me, the biggest problem is when a parent starts trying to find loopholes to get their student out of doing things,” McAdory said. “It’s really frustrating when the student hasn’t been coming to school or doing the work and the parents do whatever they can to prevent them from experiencing the consequences. They’re trying to get their kids out the easy way without allowing them to learn to handle responsibility.”

Benjamin O’Hara, another counselor across all grades at WJ, has observed varying levels of parental involvement and feels that it is important for students to find independence as high schoolers.

“A lot of the staff and parents have great relationships here and we appreciate them being involved with their student’s education,” O’Hara said. “In terms of sports and extracurriculars, some parents try to coach their children from the sidelines. I know that it’s well-intentioned, but parents should also remember that the coaches here are experienced, and they’re here to coach.”

Ultimately, it’s important to recognize that while some parents are heavily involved in WJ’s community, others don’t even know how to contact their students’ teachers or counselors. So, while overinvolvement may seem like a pressing issue, there really aren’t that many parents who are overstepping boundaries – the few that are may simply be a loud, visible minority.

“When it’s us against them, it’s not productive,” McAdory said.