Check out today’s Los Angeles Times article, Popular principal’s dismissal leaves a South L.A. school divided, to learn about some of the harmful consequences of a parent trigger petition.
You can find out about lots of other negative consequences at The Best Resources For Learning Why The Parent Trigger Isn’t Good For Parents, Kids Or Schools.
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Teaching Secrets: Learning From Parents is a nice little refresher at Education Week Teacher on the basics of what teachers can do to develop better connections with parents.
It’s definitely worth a read….
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Head Start has a series of downloadable flyers in their Importance of Home Language Series that are in English and Spanish. They’re useful for educators and for parents.
I’m adding it to:
The Best Multilingual Resources For Parents
The Best Ideas On How Parents Can Help Their Kids Succeed Academically
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Refining ‘parent trigger’ is the headline of a Los Angeles Times editorial that highlights a problem in California’s parent trigger law that has long been an issue for many of us:
If enough parents sign a petition to initiate the trigger, only the parents who actually signed the petition get to vote on what happens next to the school — everyone who didn’t sign it is froze out of the process.
It’s not democracy at it’s best, to say the list.
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Pernille Ripp just published a parent end of year survey she does with parents of her students every year.
It’s a good idea. She does it online, but it can also be done with pen-and-paper. Of course, even though I think the vast majority of parents are equally committed to the well-being and success of their children, many may not have the time, literacy level, language fluency (of course, it could be translated) or technological ability (in the case of an online survey) to complete such a survey.
However, in situations where those are not obstacles, it seems like a good practice to try.
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Attendance Works, an organization emphasizing school attendance, has just published a “new toolkit” called Bringing Attendance Home: Engaging Parents in Preventing Chronic Absence.
It’s a good piece of work, though most of the ideas in it aren’t anything new. However, one thing did stick out, and that was some recent research done with parents of chronically absent children. It’s in the report, and you can also read about it in a blog post of theirs titled What Parents Really Think About School Attendance.
I’m adding it to “The Best Research Available On Parent Engagement.”
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I’ve published a number of posts about Head Start’s efforts to engage parents.
A new article about its home visiting program has just been published, Head Start casts parents in educator’s role, and it’s worth a read….
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From a newspaper article about a New Jersey school:
Allen Frear Elementary School in Camden is winning acclaim for finding a new way of getting parents involved that might be familiar to anyone who’s ever kept a customer appreciation card in their purse or wallet.
This year the school has been handing out “Frear Frequent Flyer Cards” to parents, giving them stamps every time a parent gets involved at the school.
Parents can earn a stamp for everything from volunteering as an assistant to eating lunch with their kid to coming to parent-teacher conferences.
“We’ve got a whole laundry list of things that can get you a stamp,” said Principal Tara Faircloth. “If you’re coming to school for an event or if you’re just getting in touch with a teacher to make sure your student is on track, we want parents to know they’re appreciated.”
….[Lt. Gov.] Denn said his office wants to see the Frequent Flyer program and its fellow award-winners implemented in schools throughout the state.
As I wrote in a cover story I did for ASCD Educational Leadership:
Unfortunately, some of the most well-publicized family involvement efforts right now—tempting as they might be—are likely to have negative consequences.
For example, some school districts in Texas and Delaware are planning to pay parents to participate in more school events, despite the fact that New York City ended a similar program because it did not achieve the desired results (Bosman, 2010). In a similar initiative, Detroit schools are working with businesses to offer store discounts to parents who visit school parent centers. As Daniel Pink (2009) has shown in his book Drive, financial incentives may work in the short term to motivate people to do mechanical tasks (such as showing up for a meeting), but they will do little to stimulate more cognitively challenging work (such as making it a priority to ask children about their school day or assist them with their homework). In fact, paying parents for participation can actually reduce motivation for doing these more challenging tasks. And when the incentives are gone, everyone is worse off than before.
You might also be interested in a related post I wrote for The Washington Post, Why paying parents to attend school events is wrong.
I’m adding this info to The Worst Parent Engagement Ideas.
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Parents ‘failing to get children ready for school’, say heads is an article from the British newspaper The Telegraph. The national principals association and government are cooperating to produce and distribute leaflets to parents giving advice on how they can get their children better ready to learn.
As I’ve said before, written materials like this are only useful if they are used by school staff as excuses to initiate genuine two-way conversations with parents. If they are just passed-out, then they become examples of one-way communications that just end up in the trash.
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Parents, More Than Teachers, Are the ‘Silver Bullet’ for Students in Poverty is a useful post by Pérsida Himmele.
It just appeared in Education Week, and is worth a read….
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Online and hard-copy resources can be useful aids in helping to engage parents, though I’d suggest that they be used by educators as openings to initiate genuine conversations — not as ends in themselves.
I thought readers might find a collection of what I think are decent multilingual resources that could be used in this context.
This post is a supplement to two other “The Best…” lists:
The Best Sources Of Parent Engagement Advice For Teachers
The Best Ideas On How Parents Can Help Their Kids Succeed Academically
You can also find all my parent engagement-related “The Best” lists here.
Here are my choices for The Best Multilingual Resources For Parents:
The National Council of La Raza has just published Padres Comprometidos: Support Your Child’s Success in English and Spanish. I wouldn’t say it’s all that great, and it, unfortunately, is being used to also promote General Mills’ products. But it is in Spanish, and there really aren’t that many decent Spanish-language parent involvement materials around.
Parent–Teacher Conference Tip Sheets (Hojas de Consejos Para Las Reuniones de Padres y Maestros) are two hand-outs — one in English and one in Spanish — that “are designed to support educators and families in conducting productive, successful parent-teacher conferences.” They’re from the Harvard Family Research Project.
“But What If I Don’t Know English?” is another great resource from Colorin Colorado, and it’s available in Spanish and and in English. It shares ideas on how parents who don’t speak English can still help their children develop literacy skills.
En Camino: Educational Toolkit For Families is a series of free online “modules,” available in both English and Spanish, designed to help answer parent and student questions about college. It’s from the National Center For Family Literacy.
Ed Week’s Learning The Language blog posted information and links to a number of resources in English, Spanish, Hmong and Somali for parents with children who might have learning disabilities.
People For Education publishes multilingual materials useful for parents. Though some of them are unique to Ontario, others can be used elsewhere. Here’s a sample in English.
College Bound is a series of videos — both in English and Spanish — designed to help parents get ideas on how they can support their children academically. Parent have to register at the site in order to watch them, but it only takes a few seconds to do so. The videos are very accessible, and a few of them seem useful enough for teachers to use them in the classroom with students.
Head Start has a series of downloadable flyers in their Importance of Home Language Series that are in English and Spanish. They’re useful for educators and for parents.
Let me know if you have other suggestions…..
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Some educators are organizing a “Beyond The Bake Sale” Book Club over the summer to discuss that well-known and well-written book on parent involvement and engagement.
You can learn more about it and sign-up here.
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There are two ways you can subscribe to this blog for free so you automatically receive new posts. This way you don’t have to keep on coming back here to check for new content.
One way is by receiving each new post by email (actually, if there are multiple posts in one day you will still only receive one email containing all of them).
You can see the subscribe by email at the top of the left sidebar of this blog. It had been there for a long time, but I just noticed that it had disappeared and put it back.
The other way you can subscribe is by using an RSS feed. This is easy to do. Here’s a guide to using Feedly. Note that Google Reader is closing on July 1st, so if you’re using that as your RSS Reader you will need to find an alternative. You might want to check out The Best Alternatives To Google Reader Now That It’s Being Shut Down.
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Third California ‘Parent Trigger’ Petition Submitted is a post worth reading over at Education Week.
It gives an update and overview of what’s happening in California around the parent trigger.
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How Federal Policy Can Encourage Authentic Community Engagement is from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
It’s a short article that suggests a new draft family engagement framework developed by Karen Mapp for the U.S. Department of Education should be integrated in the “turnaround” school strategies (see The Best Resources For Learning About The Four School Improvement Grant Models) presently pushed by the Department.
I’m personally a bit hesitant on that — it seems to me a little like putting lipstick on a pig — which is the same way I felt about the Department adding community engagement to one of the recent rounds of Race To The Top funding. But, nevertheless, the framework looks interesting.
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If you looked into today’s classroom, what skills would you see being taught through the doors of a Kindergarten class? 4thgrade class? AP Science class? When preparing students to be college and career ready, schools normally focus on the skills students will be in order to be successful in a competitive 21st Century world. “Schools do a good job of teaching reading, writing, science, math and other “hard” skills that are both essential and valuable to performing well on the job” (Aricia E. LaFrance,Parenting and Career Coach). In order to prepare students both at home and at school, soft skills are also important traits to be included in daily interactions. La France (2013) defines “soft skills” as a complex system of traits and habits including: confidence, flexibility, honestly, integrity, the ability to see things from different perspectives, optimism, and common sense. These soft skills are habits that have been cultivated over time; starting in the home, then developed throughout time in school.
This week’s #PTchat will focus on how parents and educators can join together to help students cultivate soft skills both at home and in school. Join us this Wednesday, May 15th at 9pm EDT/6pm PDT, to discuss specific strategies families and educators can use to help students develop soft skills.
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This is an excerpt from a statement by The National Center For Family Literacy:
Today the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) announced a new six-year initiative, Toyota Family Learning. One major component of the initiative also kicks off today: NCFL is now accepting grant applications to further family learning beyond the classroom and into homes and communities. Applications are being accepted now through June 24 at Toyota Family Learning.
This year, five organizations will be awarded a three-year, $175,000 grant, in addition to a wide range of NCFL training and communication support, learning items, and materials. Grantees will engage vulnerable families in learning together and participating in family mentor and service learning activities. Schools, libraries, and community-based organizations that provide services to families are eligible to apply.
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Check out the article, Is tiger parenting effective?
Here’s how it begins:
Study finds children of intense, hands-on parents have lower academic achievement, more often maladjusted, alienated from kin
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The United States Department of Education and the National Center For Family Literacy just announced a new “Family Engagement Partnership.”
It’s not clear — to me, at least — what it actually means.
I certainly have little faith in the USDE, though the National Center does have a better track record.
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One Size Does Not Fit All: Engaging Families Next Year by Soliciting Feedback Now is an excellent post by Joe Mazza over at Edutopia.
It’s a “must-read.”
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