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Ideas to Build Parent Involvement and Support
From the pages of Educators' Notebook on Family Involvement newsletter
Hold your first parent meeting at a fast-food restaurant.
Hold a "Parent University" program right at your school.
Provide "Fact Cards" for parents with school name, address, phone number, name of principal, school secretary, school nurse, PTA president--perhaps a refrigerator magnet.
Establish "Take Home Tuesday" as day to send school papers home.
Send home tape recorded messages in parents' own language.
Write for parents at 4th to 6th grade level.
Try Brown Bag Seminars-- parenting program at work site during lunch hour.
Use videotape to show busy parents their children in action.
Use refrigerator notes.
Encourage "Sunshine Calls," "Thinking of You" Calls to parents on their child's progress.
Understand the fact that teachers are more reluctant to contact parents than parents are to contact teachers. Work to over come the problem.
Put up parent-friendly signs at school--directing them to the office.
Greet visiting parents as quickly as possible--perhaps use volunteers.
Have some place in the building that parents can call their own.
Know the four keys research tells us about making parent education programs work:
1. Empower parents- encourage parents, work with them to set and carry out goals. Especially, don't assume you know what is best for parents. They know themselves best.
2. Focus on the needs of both parents and the child. Parents can't help their children if they desperately need help them selves-a job, housing simple support from other adults.
3. Adjust to the needs of the specific parents in the program. There is no one-size-fits-all program.
4. Allow plenty of time for parent discussion.
PLEASE NOTE THIS IS 19 OF 75 IDEAS-MORE NEXT ISSUE
This handout is from a presentation by John H. Wherry, Ed.D., President, The Parent Institute, P.O. Box 7474, Fairfax Station, VA 22039-7474. For information about publications and services (U.S. and Canada) call toll-free: 800/756-5525. The Parent Institute publishes the Educators' Notebook on Family Involvement newsletter for school staff (from which all ideas for this presentation have been taken), the Parents make the Difference! and Parents STILL make the difference! newsletters for schools to distribute to parents, as well as booklets and videotapes for parents. Copyright Ó 1996, The Parent Institute. Permission to reproduce, including this source information was granted.
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