I’ve written a lot about Elisa Gonzalez, our school’s extraordinary parent coordinator. Her work is invaluable to our school’s overall success. As part of New York City Chancellor Carmen Fariña’s often-stated goal to increase parent engagement there, a New York City parent coordinator has some suggestions for her: As part of her pledge to boost […]
As regular readers know, I’m a big fan of the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project. They’ve just put out a short description of an effort recently begun at our school — college readiness home visits. You can read it all here, and here’s an excerpt (I’m adding this to The Best Resources For Learning About […]
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 […]
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 — […]
Power of home visits and caring stressed to teachers is an article about the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project and a training they are doing in Montana right now. In fact, the parent engagement coordinator at our school, Elisa Gonzalez, is helping to lead the training and is quoted in the article.
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 […]
Readers of this blog and my book know how highly I think of the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project. With the support of the PTHVP, staff at our school have made about 400 home visits to students each year for the past few years. This summer, though, under the leadership of Elisa Gonzalez, our extraordinary […]
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 […]
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has finished their ambitious series of articles on parent/school connections. I thought it was pretty good, though I was surprised its article on home visits didn’t highlight the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project more. The paper’s editorial today on the topic, though, left a lot to be desired. In discussing what […]
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 […]
“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 […]
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 […]