Blogs on Parental Involvement

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With all the media chatter about test scores, merit pay, failing schools, and teacher quality, it's sometimes easy for those outside the school system to forget that it's people -- just everyday people with a calling for education -- who make up that system. Enter the Go Public Project, a labor of love by filmmakers and public school parents Jim and Dawn O'Keeffe. Jim and Dawn sent fifty film crews, both pro and student, into the twenty-eight schools in Pasadena, California to paint an intimate, and very human, portrait of a day in the life of an American public school district.

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Elena AguilarAugust 20, 2012

When I first started teaching and was overwhelmed by the demands and complexity of the job, my survival strategy was simply to take all the advice that came my way and implement it. So when my wise mentor suggested that after the first day of school I call all of my second grader's parents, I did so.

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Dr. Joe MazzaAugust 9, 2012

I recently had an opportunity to attend the first Digital Family Summit (DFS) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Presenters and summit attendees were both parents and students. The "summit" included families from as far away as Canada, Utah, California, and of course those from local states and cities that could make the trip.

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Dr. Joe MazzaJuly 20, 2012

We exist in a world where almost everything in real time is streaming online -- from concerts and sporting events to breaking world news eight time zones away. Technology has truly made the world a smaller place. Yet schools are slow to catch the technologies available for streaming, due to shrinking budgets, personnel cutbacks and training voids.

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Heather Wolpert-GawronJune 13, 2012

Earlier in the year, I had our middle school Parent/Teacher conferences, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that 99 percent of my students (most of whom are Title I) have a computer in the home. However, there was absolutely no oversight of what was going on with the computer, because the only person who even knew how to turn the computer on, many parents claimed through their translators, was their student. The parents knew nothing of the box in the kid's bedroom.

An online colleague of mine, Patrick Ledesma, recently reminded me of the "door to door" law that states it is the school's responsibility to keep students safe the minute they leave their front door until they return home at the end of the day. However, this law now seems to extend to cyber safety and netiquette, making our responsibility to monitor children greater than ever because their world is now ever wider.

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Matt LevinsonJune 7, 2012

In her Wall Street Journal editorial, What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind?, University of California at Berkeley psychology professor Alison Gopnik highlights two key areas of the brain that dictate adolescent and human development: (1) emotion and motivation and (2) control.

She cites Berkeley pediatrician and developmental psychologist Ronald Dahl who uses the perfect metaphor to describe adolescence: "Today's adolescents develop an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake."

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Mary Beth HertzJune 4, 2012

Back in October, I wrote a post about Teaching Digital Citizenship in the Elementary Classroom. As it is Internet Safety Month, I want to share a sample lesson for teaching Internet Safety to students as young as kindergarten. Yes, you read correctly . . . kindergarten.

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Matt LevinsonMay 31, 2012

"Your clicks have consequences," says Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet. Johnson writes about the impact of consuming a poor information diet, "unhealthful information deep-fried in our own preconceptions."

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Teachers who love hands-on learning and the DIY movement are a match made in heaven -- and nowhere is this better represented than the Maker Faire. I'm lucky enough to have participated in this event three times, as both a visitor and a maker, and it's still challenging to describe this celebration of people-powered technology, art, science and ingenuity, where you are as likely to encounter fire-breathing robots as you are fluffy electric cupcake cars. Since 2006, Maker Faires have been held annually in the San Francisco Bay Area, and there have been Maker Faires in Austin, Detroit and New York, with community-organized Mini Maker Faires sprouting up around the country. And the 7th annual Bay Area Maker Faire is this weekend, May 19th and 20th -- get tickets now!

Whether you can experience a Maker Faire in person or not, you can certainly take inspiration from the boundless enthusiasm and creative risk-taking of everyone who participates -- and don't forget to be a maker yourself. Here are some videos to inspire you.

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Danielle Moss LeeMay 17, 2012

As we glide through the month of May, I know that many teachers and students are steadily dreaming of how to spend their summer vacations. Some will be off to sleep-away camp, some will travel to faraway places, and many others are still trying to figure it out. But for many families, the summer will also bring a level of anxiety. In the age of budget cuts, the opportunities for quality programs and government subsidized summer jobs will be few and far between. According to the National Summer Learning Association, many low-income and underserved students will face two to three months' summer learning loss in reading and math, while affluent and better resourced students may show slight gains in reading over the summer because of their access to summer enrichment.

What does this mean?

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