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Mind Map: Partnering with Parents in Elementary Schools

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Mind Map: Partnering with Parents in Elementary Schools

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Partnering with Parents in Elementary Schools

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Partnering with Parents in Elementary Schools : A Coggle Diagram about Benefits of parent partnership, Challenges of getting parents involved and Ways to get parents involved

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Ways to connect with parents and families

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Ways to connect with parents and families

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1. Interactive phone system
2. Newsletters with important information highlighted
3. Email/phone communication with individual parents
4. Send home learning projects for parents and students to complete together
5. Move after school events to locations that benefit families
6. Offer child care for after school events
7. Create a space for families to come in your school to connect and interact with one another
8. Seek classroom volunteers in areas of their strengths
9. Complete home visits
10. Create a parent/family mentor program
11. Send home definitions of the terms used throughout the school/in the curriculum
12. Multiple parent-teacher conferences throughout the year
13. State parent expectations at the beginning of the year
14. Connect parents to resources in the community
15. Keep parents informed of their students progress and showcase what they are learning
16. Provide workshops for parents on different parenting strategies

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This article does a great job of highlighting the many challenges that a teacher and a school are faced with when trying to create ways to increase their family involvement. While you may read about the different programs different schools have, it is important to remember that what works for one school may not work for yours. It is important to think about the needs of your families and how you best can accommodate those needs to make your families comfortable working with you. You need to think about how you can reach them through language barriers and how you can make different events accessible to all families. If a large number of your families don’t have access to the internet, then you must think of ways to make phone calls interactive. While it is beneficial to send notes, newsletters, and projects for parents and their students to do, it is also important to send home instructions on what is most important, and what parts should be highlighted and mostly paid attention to by the parents. Some parents don’t have a positive educational experience themselves, and so they don’t see a school as a positive or welcoming place. It is important to think about ways that you can overcome this challenge to communicate with them that everyone here cares about their student and how together they can make their student love to learn and love coming to school. By thinking about the barriers you have to overcome and then seeking creative solutions to these challenges, a school can have active participation from the families of their students. This article also has resource links at the end of each section for those interested in more information on that specific topic.

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Parent involvement continues to challenge practitioners engaged in school reform despite being a required component of many school improvement initiatives-from Title I Schoolwide Programs to federally mandated school improvement plans. The benefits of parent involvement are clear: A growing body of research shows that successful parent involvement improves not only student behavior and attendance but also positively affects student achievement. Yet many schools continue to struggle with defining and measuring meaningful parental involvement, and many don't feel that their efforts are successful. A recent survey of American teachers revealed that 20 percent of new teachers and nearly one fourth of principals identify their relationships with parents as a cause of significant stress in their jobs (MetLife, 2005).

In this article, we offer research-based advice and resources designed to help schools and districts foster successful parent involvement.

What is successful parent involvement?

Successful parent involvement can be defined as the active, ongoing participation of a parent or primary caregiver in the education of his or her child. Parents can demonstrate involvement at home-by reading with their children, helping with homework, and discussing school events-or at school, by attending functions or volunteering in classrooms. Schools with involved parents engage those parents, communicate with them regularly, and incorporate them into the learning process.

What are the barriers to successful parent involvement?

Schools often don't engage parents because they don't think they can. "A lot of it is perception. Teachers perceive that families don't want to be involved when, in fact, families don't know how to be involved," says Karen Salinas, communications director for the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University.

For their part, parents are sometimes hesitant to become involved in school because they don't have extra time or because they don't speak fluent English. But "the biggest problem is the disconnect between the school and the families," says Salinas. "Parents believe that they are not welcome. It comes in part from their own education history. They often have had a less-than-satisfactory experience with their own schooling, and so they don't feel like [being involved] is guaranteed to be a good experience."

Despite these communication barriers, both schools and parents want the relationship to improve, if only for the benefit of students. A 2003 analysis of more than 25 public opinion surveys by Public Agenda, a nonpartisan public opinion research organization, found that 65 percent of teachers say their students would do better in school if their parents were more involved, and 72 percent of parents feel that children whose parents are not involved sometimes "fall through the cracks" in school (Johnson & Duffett, 2003).

How do schools foster successful parent involvement?

Schools successful in engaging parents start by going beyond narrow definitions of involvement. They don't just count the number of parents who attend the spaghetti dinner or volunteer at the book fair. They don't focus on requirements such as having parents sign reports cards. Instead, they start with a belief that student success is a shared interest of both school and family, envision parents as partners in the learning process, and then identify concrete ways that partnership can be activated.

Improve Communication

Effective communication requires a two-way flow of information. While most schools develop efficient structures for getting information out-such as newsletters, Web sites, and press releases-far fewer develop similar structures to ensure that feedback from parents is actively solicited.

For some schools, improving communication involves technology such as e-mail messages and interactive phone systems. When Stonewall Jackson High School in Manassas, Virginia, implemented an interactive voicemail, for instance, the school saw parental attendance at freshmen orientation jump from 50 to 1,000 (Viadero, 1997). Parents can use the system, called ParentLink, to hear messages from teachers about what is happening in their children's classes and access their children's grades and attendance records.

Other schools try to view parent involvement through the parents' eyes. B.F. Day Elementary in Seattle, for example, holds parent meetings and workshops not at the school but in a Family Center that operates in the neighborhood where many of their bilingual families live.

Of course, the use of any strategy must be tailored to the school's population. If families don't have reliable access to the Internet, e-mail won't work. A phone message in English won't communicate much to parents who speak only Spanish. The bottom line for schools is to communicate using strategies that convey what is important in a way that can be heard by parents and families and invites them to respond.

Teach both parents and teachers

We know that one thing that keeps parents from being involved is their discomfort with schools. And that discomfort often stems from parents not knowing how to be involved. Schools with a commitment to parent involvement take an active role in helping parents learn a variety of ways to be involved. The benefits for students are proven: A recent review of parent involvement research found that parent-child reading activities produce a significant improvement in children's language and reading skills from preschool through high school (Sheldon & Epstein, 2005); another study finds a strong positive effect on student achievement when parents work with students on homework (Van Voorhis, 2003).

Many schools use workshops and other school-based programs to help parents learn about what goes on in classrooms. For example, Clara E. Westropp School in Cleveland, Ohio, held monthly family reading nights. Parents go to the elementary school and read with their children as well as speak with teachers about reading and reading strategies (Epstein & Salinas, 2004). Even traditional involvement strategies present teaching opportunities. Sending home a "weekly work folder" is one positive step, but providing parents with specific information about what to look for in the student work goes one step further in communicating what's important.

The National Network of Partnership Schools at Johns Hopkins University has designed a useful teacher-parent partnership process called Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork (TIPS). TIPS aims to forge a three-way relationship between teachers, parents, and their children through a creative approach to homework. Among its goals are encouraging parents and children to talk regularly about schoolwork, sharing ideas, gathering reactions, interviewing, or otherwise encouraging interaction between student and family members. TIPS also aims to keep assignments linked to real-life situations and "enable parents and teachers to frequently communicate about children's work, progress, and problems" (National Network of Partnership Schools, 2005). Some studies show secondary school homework assignments that require parent-student interaction predict higher levels of reading achievement (Sheldon & Epstein, 2005).

Many teachers report feeling unprepared to effectively involve parents. As a means of breaking down these barriers, teachers in the Sacramento, California, area have been trained since 1998 to participate in structured visits to their students' homes. The first visit focuses on establishing trust, while later trips give teachers and parents a chance to discuss ways in which parents can support students with the material they are learning in school. The schools involved in the program have seen a reduction in discipline problems and increases in attendance rates, and also are starting to see achievement gains.

Personalize

Successful parent-involvement programs typically develop in response to a specific need in the school or its community and are both focused and flexible in addressing that need. A strategy that works in one school might not be the best choice for another. For instance, while Sacajawea Elementary School in Seattle has established a Parent Mentor program in which parents are designated to contact other families to tell them about school activities, another school in the same city, High Point Elementary, began a program that allows parent volunteers to earn points toward rewards such as computers and other educational materials. Both programs have been recognized for dramatically increasing parent involvement.

Successful parent-school partnerships are not stand-alone, add-on programs. Instead, they are well integrated with the school's overall mission. Typically, quality programs are developed in collaboration with parents and reflect their needs and interests. Offering child care, translators, and multiple opportunities to hear information go a long way toward expressing a school's genuine interest in parent input.

Conclusion

Parents are the most important partner in a child's education and schools can reap large dividends by capitalizing on their support. To be sure, such relationships require a lot of work by both educators and parents. Although success will not come easy, the rewards are too great for a school not to try.

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Parent involvement continues to challenge practitioners engaged in school reform despite being a required component of many school improvement initiatives-from Title I Schoolwide Programs to federally mandated school improvement plans. The benefits of parent involvement are clear: A growing body of research shows that successful parent involvement improves not only student behavior and attendance but also positively affects student achievement.

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Back to School: How Parent Involvement Affects Student Achievement

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Back to School: How Parent Involvement Affects Student Achievement

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This article opens up by stating that “it is one of the least controversial statements in American education; Parental involvement can make a difference in a child’s education”. It gives percentages that support this statement, and while it can be proven statistically, this is still something that teachers, parents, and schools continuously struggle maintaining. Experts have broken up parent involvement into 6 categories; parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and community collaboration. What I really enjoyed about this article is that it highlighted the fact that regardless of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, parents want to be involved in their student’s education, they just might not know where to start. Out of the 6 different categories, this study found that learning at home had the biggest effect on a student’s learning. If teachers are able to send home work that encourages parents to get involved, the positive effects can be endless. Interactive homework can help students improve their skills and even move up from below grade level to grade level, or grade level to above grade level in a matter of a school year or two. While this study found that the benefits aren’t as high statistically in secondary education, it is important to capitalize on these opportunities at the elementary level. There are numerous ways that schools and individual teachers can work on increasing the parent involvement of their students. By implementing ways to do this, students are more likely to attend school regularly, earn higher grades, have higher test scores, and graduate high school.

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Building Relationships Between Parents and Teachers

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Building Relationships Between Parents and Teachers

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This Ted Talk by Megan Olivia Hall is through the lens of working with secondary families, but can easily be translated into the elementary setting as well. Hall talks about her experience as a teacher and how that changed when she became a mother. She realized how important a child is to a family and how the family wants their child to succeed, the teacher wants the child to succeed, and with the same goal if they can work together they can achieve great things. She talks about how she spent time communicating and reaching out to connect with families to make sure she understood her students and their needs. By doing this, not only did she connect with the parents but her relationships with her students were stronger as well. She acknowledges that students can face achievement gaps depending on their home situation, the school they attend, and the resources that they may or may not have. Hall talks about how as a teacher, connecting with the parents and getting them on board with their child’s education, this can help close the achievement gap a considerable amount. Children will always face challenges in their education careers, and if we educators can help close that gap by having those relationships with students’ families, then that is just a small price to pay for such large results. She ends with the idea of reaching out to one new family each day, and to imagine the positive impact that could have on a classroom and school community.

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Building relationships between parents and teachers: Megan Olivia Hall at TEDxBurnsvilleED

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Megan Olivia Hall, Science Teacher (2013 Minnesota Teacher of the Year) Megan Olivia Hall teaches science and service at Open World Learning Community, an intentionally small Expeditionary Learning school in Saint Paul Public Schools. She founded Open's first Advanced Placement program, recruiting students from all walks of life to college prep classes.

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Parents as Partners: Engaging Families in Schools

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Parents as Partners: Engaging Families in Schools

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This video highlights two elementary schools that have actively been implementing new programs to increase family engagement in their buildings and district. They have been working with the Children’s Institute through the Early Works initiative to create a welcoming environment for their families with resources that are able to help families in need. One school has created a “Family Room” where parents are able to bring their young children to interact with other children, but also allows families to connect with one another for support and friendships. This video is a great source for school-wide initiative ideas that could be implemented into a school district, to not only bring more family engagement to your district but also to bring families together to connect with one another. With many families struggling, this video highlights the importance of these families not feeling alone and by giving them an opportunity to connect with other families going through similar challenges you could create a school family that cares and encourages each other through hardships.

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Parents as Partners: Engaging Families in Schools

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Through the Early Works initiative, the Children's Institute has partnered with two Oregon elementary schools - Earl Boyles in Southeast Portland and Yoncalla in Southern Oregon. Family engagement is a core Early Works strategy. This video details the experiences of two families who have been impacted, and was revealed at the Children's Institute's 7th annual Make It Your Business luncheon.

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The Impact of Family Engagement on Student Achievement

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The Impact of Family Engagement on Student Achievement

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This video was created by the Flamboyan Foundation about the importance of family involvement in schools. We hear three teachers each give an example about a student or class who was successful because of the teacher’s extra effort to communicate and work with the families. Each of these teachers faced challenges while working with their student or class, but because of that extra communication with families, the families were willing to put in an extra amount of effort into their child’s education that year. Hearing different challenges that teachers face and then how they were able to make a success come out of them is inspiring to hear as a future educator and gives me the motivation to always want to make that additional effort with my students’ families so that they are able to reach their maximum potential in my classroom.

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The Impact of Family Engagement on Student Achievement

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This video is episode 1 of a 26 part series on how teachers can partner with families to raise student achievement.