for educators and health professionals
Parents As Partners In The School Community
Most parents and teachers want the best educational outcomes for all children, but schools cannot achieve this aim alone. Schools, parents and communities must work together.
What are the needs of your parents or primary caregivers? Child care services, transportation, translation, information dissemination in appropriate languages, a chance to stimulate interaction between parents and educators, convenient time for meetings, training programmes, refreshments? Parents, like pupils, often have complex needs, wants and desires.
In an ideal world parents and caregivers should be seen as partners in the children’s education. For the partnership to work, both parties need to understand the important everyone plays in a pupil’s development. Regular and consistent communication is vital and Parents Evenings are a popular communication tool.
Objectives
At the conclusion of the seminar, participants should be able to:
- Demonstrate ways in which educators can encourage more active participation in the life of the school, especially with parents from ethnic communities and those traditionally ‘hard to reach’ parents
- Explain the role of boundaries between home and school
- Describe methods of improving parents nights
- Understand the importance of parental involvement as an essential component of the organisation of the school
- Identify classic profiles of difficult parents and identify some positive strategies for dealing with challenging personalities
Outline of Syllabus
Participants are introduced to a variety of issues including
- Moving beyond lip service: partnerships with parents in the home, school and in the neighbouring community
- Same train carriage; different windows - parents and teacher expectations
- If parents are partners then pupils are the bridge between home and school
- Family practices and beliefs
- Teachers in the lives of parents
- Parents as volunteers - just how much involvement?
- Rights and responsibilities
- How teachers can support parents
- Class, power, gender, diversity
- Pupils and parents with limited English
- Choice, boundaries, empowerment
- Some parents bring joy when they come into my classroom; others bring joy when they leave: working with difficult parents
- Parents evenings: how teachers and parents can learn from each other
- Decision making, advocacy and collaborations
