Engaging Parents In School…

I’ve posted in the past about how some schools use student-led parent/teacher conferences as a way to connect better with parents.

This coming Monday, Parents As Partners will be hosting a webcast to help people learn more about this practice. It’s worth a listen…..

AT & T has just announced a partnership with United Way designed to support parent “engagement” in high schools.  They’re contributing $2 million.

Their press release says:

In November 2009, 20 awards to local or state United Ways will be granted through this initiative to identify best practices for family engagement to boost high school graduation. The 20 sites will use funds to increase family-community-school partnerships to build successful learning in high school, and will explore texting tools as part of that work.

Just a reminder that I’ll be a guest on Ed Week’s September 15th “Chat” on parent engagement at 2:00 PM Eastern time.

You can get more information at their site. This is how they describe it:

Engaging Schools, Engaging Parents: The School-Community Partnership

About This Chat:

At President Barack Obama’s urging, and in response to research showing a connection between parental involvement and student achievement, districts nationwide have launched initiatives to increase community engagement with schools. Yet many schools find it difficult to sustain parent involvement beyond the parent-teacher conference. Join two experts, Joyce L. Epstein and Larry Ferlazzo, for an in-depth discussion on the subject. Ms. Epstein is the main author of “School, Family, and Community Partnerships.” Mr. Ferlazzo co-authored the forthcoming book “Building Parent Engagement In Schools.”

Guests:
Joyce L. Epstein, director, Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships and the National Network of Partnership Schools at Johns Hopkins University
Larry Ferlazzo, English and social studies teacher, Luther Burbank High School, Sacramento, Calif.
Mary-Ellen Deily, editorial director, Education Week Press

I hope readers of this blog will share resources related to parent engagement that you have found helpful, or stories about what’s happening in your community now.

You can leave a comment in any blog post, or contact me directly here.

Even though the book Building Parent Engagement In Schools won’t be published until this fall, I thought I’d take advantage of the summer months to get this blog started.  One of my goals over the next month is to add quite a few useful links in the sidebar of this blog.

I plan on writing about one post each week.  Often, though not always, it will be a “round-up” of new (or, at least, new to me) articles and resources that I think will be useful to educators and parents grappling with parent engagement issues.

If you’d like to get in touch with me, you can leave a comment on one of the posts or use the “Contact Me” form at the top of the screen.