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25 Parent Involvement Ideas That Really
Work
1. Set
up a parent center in your school stocked with resources to help (and lend to) parents.
2. Offer parenting classes--with videos and lots of handouts.
3. Know the facts about the changing structure of the family--and consider
how schools can cope to best help children.
4. Consider an in-service program for staff on facts about single-parent
families--it can be a real eye-opener.
5. Breakfast sessions at school draw busy parents like crazy.
6. Be very careful to monitor how your school telephone is answered.
Phone impressions are lasting ones!
7. Provide "Go to the Office" slips for teachers to give students
who do something good. Student takes slip to principal who
compliments child, writes note to parents on the slip (or calls
parents), sends it home.
8. Be aware that parents are looking for a school where their children are
likely to succeed--more than a school with the
highest test scores. Show parents that you care.
9. Send a school bus filled with staff around the school neighborhood to meet
and welcome students and parents just before
school starts.
10. Solicit parent volunteers at the Kindergarten Registration Day program. Make it
easy to sign up when parents are most
enthusiastic.
11. Don't make judgments about parents' lack of interest in their children's
education. You'll probably be wrong. "Walk a mile
in their shoes" and understand that what looks like
apathy may be exhaustion.
12. Try day-long parent academies with short repeated workshops on topics such as
building self-esteem, language
development, motivating children, encouraging reading,
discipline, talking with kids about sex, dealing with divorce, etc.
Test weekdays vs. weekends.
13. Provide training and lots of school information for parent volunteers. They are
powerful goodwill ambassadors.
14. Invite parents to fill out interview forms detailing child's special
qualities--interests, abilities, accomplishments. Teachers
can use information to write a story about their child to read
at school program, post on bulletin board.
15. Investigate "voice mail" systems to keep parents up-to-date on
homework, school activities.
16. Find ways to provide positive reinforcement to parents. Everyone responds well
to recognition.
17. Involve parents in goal-setting for their children. It promotes working as a
team.
18. Use research findings that one of the best ways to get parents involved is to
simply ask them, and also tell them what
you'd like them to do.
19. Give parents specific suggestions about how they can help their children. Many
just need to know things like: "Read aloud
every day." "Turn the TV off during homework
time."
20. Try a short student-written newsletter for parents about what students have been
learning. (You still need your own parent
newsletter. You cannot fulfill your obligation to communicate
by delegating the job to students.)
21. Help parents understand why excessive TV hurts children--TV robs them of needed
play, exercise, reading practice, study
time, dulls critical thinking, encourages obesity through
snacking.
22. Understand the diversity of single parent families. Living with one parent can
be wonderful for some children, destructive
for others.
23. Offer school sponsored sessions on single parenting.
24. Help parents understand that student effort is the most important key to
school success, not just ability.
25. Encouraging (and assisting) parents to network among themselves to solve common
problems builds parent support.
g
--These ideas from a presentation by John H. Wherry, Ed.D., President, The Parent
Institute, P.O. Box 7474, Fairfax Station, VA 22039-7474. The Parent Institute publishes
the What's Working in Parent Involvement newsletter for school staff (from
which all ideas for this handout have been taken), the Parents Make the Difference!
newsletter for schools to distribute to parents of elementary grade children, the Parents
STILL Make the Difference! newsletter for parents of secondary school children, as
well as booklets and videos for parents. For information about publications and services
call toll-free: 1-800-756-5525. Copyright © 1996, The Parent Institute.
Copyright-1996 The Parent Institute
To be continued in our Spring 2000 edition
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