Category Archives: book

Good Parent Engagement Advice For Teachers

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Heidi Hass Gable has written a useful blog post containing advice to teachers about parent engagement. Here are two of her recommendations:

4) Listen to parents and listen to what they DON’T say. They may not articulate their concerns very well because fears and insecurities cloud their words/thinking. But whenever a parent is sharing something with you, look for the underlying concern or question. Look for the unspoken. Read between the lines. But don’t assume – revert to asking questions again, if needed!

5) Be curious and open to new ways of thinking. Parents have a different experience and different point of view from the other teachers you spend most of your time with. They will see things differently, and that may be beneficial! Even when you think they “don’t understand” so would have nothing to add…

I’m adding her post to The Best Sources Of Parent Engagement Advice For Teachers.

“Let’s Read Them a Story! The Parent Factor In Education”

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“Let’s Read Them a Story! The Parent Factor In Education” is a new book from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The link will take you to a free PDF version of it.

The book is pretty impressive — good statistics, great cartoons from The New Yorker, and excellent advice for how parents can help their students succeed academically. It’s a bit weak on advice for teachers, but I guess you can’t have everything.

Nevertheless, I’m adding it to The Best Overviews Of Parent Engagement.

Now You Can “Search Inside” My Book On Engaging Parents In School

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I just noticed today that the publisher has enabled the “Search Inside This Book” feature on Amazon for my book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools.

So, now, in addition to all the previews and excerpts I’ve posted from the book, you can now access at least a few pages on the web (table of contents, a few pages of the introduction and from the body of the book, and the index).

My Most Popular Posts On Parent Engagement (Over The Past Six Months)

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I began this blog seven months ago — it was timed with the publication of my book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools.

I thought it might be useful to share — in order of popularity — which posts have been “clicked-on” most over the past six months.

Here are My Most Popular Posts On Parent Engagement (Over The Past Six Months):

1) Worst Idea To Promote Parent Involvement Ever: If You’re Poor, You Get Government Benefits Cut-Off Unless You Go To PTA Meetings

2) School Secretary Fired For Translating For Parents

3) Boy, Did Ruben Navarrete Get Up On The Wrong Side Of The Bed This Morning!

4) My Best Posts & Articles About Building Parent Engagement In Schools — 2009

5) How NOT To Communicate With Parents

6) October Is “Parent Involvement Month”

7) “Harlem Program Singled Out as Model”

8. Will Somebody Tell Secretary Duncan’s Staff That There Are “Regular” Public Schools Engaging Parents, Too?

9) Some Of These “Parent Academies” Just Don’t Get It….

10) Conditional Cash Transfers, Parents, And Schools

I hope you find the list helpful.

My Best Posts & Articles About Building Parent Engagement In Schools — 2009

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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 both of my blogs might find it useful for me to develop a “The Best…” list of resources on this topic.

Here are my choices for My Best Posts About Building Parent Engagement In Schools — 2009 (not in any order of preference):

Parent Involvement or Parent Engagement? is a piece I wrote for Public School Insights, and gives a nice preview of our book.

Family Literacy, English Language Learners, and Parent Engagement is an article I wrote for Library Media Connection.

Press Conference On Parent Engagement shares a video of a press conference called by our district’s Superintendent that includes both Elisa Gonzalez, our school’s staffperson for parent engagement, and me speaking about our home computer project and our parent university.

Parents, Students & College includes links to what we’re doing at our school to promote college discussion and planning with parents, and a new book highlighting research around that issue.

What Americans Believe Is “The Number One Factor In Keeping Schools Moving On The Right Track” — Read it and find-out!

What Might Aesop’s Fables Say About Glitzy Media Parent Involvement Campaigns? is the title of a critical post I recently wrote.

More On Parent’s Unemployment Effect On Children and “The Critical Connection Between Student Health and Academic Achievement”
 both share major studies highlighting the affect that poverty has on students. The results emphasize the importance of schools engaging parents to combat these problems.

Education World published a short article by me titled A Parent Engagement Model That Works.

Info From Anne Henderson includes a link that this well-known research into the parent connection with schools gave to Congress.

Engaging With Your Child’s School: Q&A with Larry Ferlazzo is an interview I did with “Smart Bean,” a parent portal on the Internet.

Parents & Schools In Los Angeles is my “take” on what the District there might be doing with parents and charter schools.

Some Of These “Parent Academies” Just Don’t Get It…. shares my perspective on the recent media infatuation with “parent academies.”

In September, Joyce Epstein and I were guests at Education Week’s “edchat” on engaging parents. If you’re interested, you can read the chat transcript.

I was interviewed on the Parents as Partners webcast a few weeks ago, and you can read about about the conversation at Irritate or agitate – what’s your parent engagement like? You can also listen to the webcast at the EdTechTalk site.

Conditional Cash Transfers, Parents, And Schools offers my critical perspective on a growing way on how schools and cities are trying to connect with parents.

Home Computer Project Expansion & Assessment Results provides an update to our internationally-recognized Family Literacy Project.

Teacher Magazine published an article I wroteabout teachers making home visits to parents. You have to register (for free) to read the entire article, but it’s a quick process.

“Harlem Program Singled Out as Model” is a post I wrote about Harlem Children’s Zone, including some questions I have about it.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists — there are over 350 of them!

Public School Insights

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Public School Insights is a blog about schools that I have praised a lot on my other blog. It’s sponsored by The Learning First Alliance, which is made-up of many national education organizations, including national associations of teachers, administrators, and school boards.

I was honored yesterday when Claus von Zastrow, LFA’s Director, praised our book on parent engagement.

Thanks, Claus!

“Wordle” Of Our Book

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Wordle is a free and easy web application that lets you paste text into it and then produces a “word cloud” illustrating the words that are used most with their size showing their frequency of use.

It’s pretty neat.

Here is the link to the Wordle for our book, “Building Parent Engagement In Schools.” I was having some difficulty resizing it to fit in this blog, which is why I’m just posting the link to it.

It certainly gives an accurate representation of what the book is all about.

Interview About Parent Engagement Book

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Smart Bean has just published an interview with me about our book Building Parent Engagement In Schools. They’ve titled the piece Engaging With Your Child’s School: Q&A with Larry Ferlazzo.

Here’s how Smart Bean describes itself:

SmartBean is a site for parents that aims to help parents make day to day decisions on practical aspects of parenting largely related to K-12 education and formal/informal learning. It aggregates and presents current education news, research and commentary relevant to parents and in a digestable form. It provides links to educational websites and other resources, and also highlights educational products, books, software and other products aimed at holistic development of children in a changing world. Although its primary focus is on empowering parents, several teachers and educators have found articles and links that are relevant to their work.