How to Strengthen Parent Involvement and Communication
Getting parents engaged in their children's education can be beneficial for everyone. We've compiled some tips to help improve the connection from home to school and expand parent involvement.
Getting parents engaged in their children's education can be beneficial for everyone. We've compiled some tips to help improve the connection from home to school and expand parent involvement.
1. Make the case for increased parental involvement.
Studies have shown that parents can be incredibly important partners in a child's education. Here are some articles that explain why.
- Getting Parents Involved Is the Foundation of Student Success: When Mom and Dad come to class, kids do better.
- Parents are a Secret Weapon Just Waiting to be Discovered: Scientists say parents partnering with teachers can change the future of education.
- The Home-School Team: Students thrive when their parents become part of the classroom.
2. Reach out to parents who want to make a connection.
The next step is making the contact. How do you stay in touch with parents? Whether in person or with the help of a software solution, staying in communication is key.
- Technology Provides Parents a Window on the Classroom by Linking Home to School
At Forest Lake Elementary, parents stay informed and participate in their child’s education with assignment trackers, student blogs, and other online learning tools. - Engaging Parents: An Elementary Teacher's Field Guide: Third-grade teacher and blogger Gaetan Pappalardo makes the case that teachers can make a real difference by engaging with parents more deeply.
- Twenty Tips for Developing Positive Relationships with Parents: Blogger Elena Aguilar shares 20 tips to help teachers better connect with parents.
- How to Boost Parental Involvement: Five ways to improve communication with parents.
- Home Visits: Engaging the Family in Their Children's Learning How a struggling school improved student achievement and developed lasting partnerships with parents by establishing a home-visit program.
- Free Internet Access Connects Families and Schools: A Tennessee school district gives low-income students computers and home Web connections.
- How to Create a Program That Gets Parents Involved: At this school, parents help their children get off to college regardless of their educational background.
- YES Prep Cultivates Parent Engagement Houston's YES Prep has found a variety of ways to involve parents -- from student exhibitions to family contracts and more.
- Edutopia's Home-to-School Connections Resource Guide Whether you're a teacher, parent, or district administrator, this guide provides you with relevant and valuable tools and resources for how best to strengthen the bonds between schools, families, and communities for student learning and success.
3. Find ways to involve families in school culture.
Once the connection is made, here are a few steps that can ensure families stay involved in productive ways.
4. Make a commitment to join the conversation with other teachers and parents
Have ideas to share? Want to discuss specific tools and resources? Whether you're a parent or a teacher, Edutopia's Groups are your go-to place to make connections.
This article originally published on 7/14/2010
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Additional Resources for Communicating with Parents
With the release of Google Voice integrated into Gmail, I created a post of some of the major ways to communicate with parents with today's technololgy. Nothing can replace the face-to-face conference, but sometimes schedules or time can make this difficult. Hopefully these resources help you to stay in contact with you parents no matter what.
Communicating With Parents - BrokenAirplane.com
Dr Dheeraj Mehrotra
Excellent Content. Very very informative. Innovator in Education: sixsigmaineducationDOTcom