Parent “universities” or “academies” seem to be all the rage these days, with school districts organizing these trainings typically to help parents understand how the school works. I’ve written plenty of posts about these types of programs, and have been critical of many of them. They tend to fall on the parent “involvement” side of [...]
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I’ve posted a number of videos related to parent engagement over the years, and I thought that it would be useful to collect the best ones in one post. You can find links to all my parent engagement “Best” lists here. Here are my choices for The Best Videos On Parent Engagement: The Annenberg Institute [...]
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It’s that time of year again, so here’s a listing of what I believe to be my best posts during the second half of the year on building parent engagement in schools. You can see Part One here. You might also be interested in a listing of all my parent engagement-related “The Best…” lists. Here [...]
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I’ve previously posted positively about New Haven’s Parent University. Parent University 101: Launching a Successful Event is a new Education Week piece that describes it more extensively. It’s worth a look…
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I’ve posted a lot about “parent academies” or “parent universities” around the country — and my critique of them for not being parent-driven by emphasizing issues that parents want to learn about. I’ve often contrasted it with the Parent University program at our school. I read an article in The New Haven Register today about [...]
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I’ve written a lot about school’s work with the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project and our parent-driven “parent university” program. Here’s a video Mai Xi Lee, one of our school’s Vice-Principals, made for last weekend’s national Parent Teacher Home Visit Project conference. For what it’s worth, that’s me speaking after the text introduction….
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Last month, Joe Mazza wrote a guest post about Parent Teacher Chat on Twitter. Joe has accepted my invitation to write a short post on this blog regularly to announce future topics for these chats: Special guest Karren Dunkley joins #ptchat this Wednesday, 1/25 at 9PM EST. Ms. Dunkley, Deputy Chief of the School District of [...]
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The San Francisco Chronicle recently published an article about a series of “PTA School Smarts Parent Academies” that are being held at a local school and others around the state. The President of the California PTA also has written a column about this effort. I’m sure it’s a good experience for the parents involved, but [...]
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I’ve posted a lot about good parent engagement/involvement ideas, but sometimes you can learn just as much from looking at bad examples. You can see lots of good ideas at all my parent engagement-related “The Best” lists here. Here are my choices for The Worst Parent Engagement Ideas: Putting Parents in Charge is a condescending [...]
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I’m a big proponent of teachers making home visits, and I wrote a chapter about it in my book on parent engagement. I work closely with the Parent-Teacher Home Visit Project, which happens to be based in Sacramento. I thought it might be useful if I brought together some of the related resources I’ve posted [...]
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A very major effort is getting underway in Birmingham, Alabama, to create a series of “Parent Universities” throughout the school district. I’ve written quite a bit about “Parent Universities” in the past. Elisa Gonzalez, our school’s Parent Engagement Coordinator, has done an extraordinary job working with parents to create an extremely popular Parent University — [...]
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“She pulls in parents with Starr power: In Brooklyn Center, one woman is on a personal mission to get parents involved in their children’s education” is a nice article about a good “parent university”-type program in Minnesota. I’m sure it’s a good program. However, I wonder if schools miss out on the possibilities of making [...]
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CNN produced this video story on “Parent University” in Philadelphia. It seems like an okay program, but it could be so much more. Elisa Gonzalez, the Parent Coordinator at our school, has, I think, developed a national model of what a “Parent University” can really become — by first asking parents what they want to [...]
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“The Notebook” describes itself as “an independent voice for parents, educators, students and friends of Philadelphia Public Schools.” It just published an article headlined Pedro Noguera at Parent University. The article is okay, but the real treasures are the multiple links within that article to previous pieces they’ve published about parent involvement/engagement. It’s definitely worth [...]
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One Delaware School District wants to use a portion of their Race To The Top monies to pay parents to come to certain school events. Bad idea. Very bad idea. New York City Mayor Bloomberg recently closed down an effort that including paying parents to do the same thing. New York City had started a [...]
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According to a recent article in the Madison, Wisconsin newspaper titled In Madison, an effort to get minority parents involved in their kids’ schools, one school has increased parent involvement by starting separate Hmong, Latino, and African-American groups. I applaud the school for recognizing the problem, and for putting time, energy, and resources into trying [...]
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I’ve been doing a lot of work this year on building parent engagement in schools, including having a book published (Building Parent Engagement In Schools) and starting a new blog called Engaging Parents In School. Plus, I continuing to do the usual work at our school of actually engaging parents, too! I thought readers of [...]
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Last week, the new Superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District, Jonathan Raymond, led a press conference highlighting examples of parent engagement in our district. He was kind enough to invite me and mention my book, and also to highlight the home computer project we do at our school, as well as our highly [...]
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“Parent Academies” appear to be “in” this week… TIME Magazine has just published an article titled Parent Academies: Helping Mom and Dad Face School Too. This follows on the heels of several other recent media articles on this topic (you can see the last few posts on this blog). Unfortunately, at least as far as [...]
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In Philadelphia, Reaching Kids by Teaching Parents is the title of an article in this week’s Education Week. It highlights efforts Philadelphia schools are making to connect with parents. It particularly talks about their “Parent University.” It’s unclear, though, how much parents participating in developing its content. One of the main things, I think, that [...]
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