School, Community, and Family Partnership
Epstein describes six types of parental involvement:
- Parenting: families develop home environments which supports student growth.
- Communicating: developing effective home to school communication about programs and student progress.
- Volunteering: Providing opportunities for parents to volunteer in their own student's learning.
- Learning at home: involving families to support student growth by being involved in their learning.
- Decision making: include parents in school discussion.
- Collaborating with the Community: coordinating and providing services to the community.
With that in mind, I believe there are many effective ways to work with parents and the community:
- Parents should be in the loop when it comes to their children's progress. There are different applications that can help with keeping teachers and parents connected. For example ClassDojo, Remind, Google Classroom and there is also Email.
- Coordinating meetings in which parents are invited. These meeting should explain the different programs offered to the students.
- Inviting parents to come into the classroom and read to the students, this is a great way to have parents involved in their child's learning.
- Inviting parents to see their child in a play or an exhibit to show all the students work.
These are just some ways in getting parents involved in their child's progress. Parent involvement is important to student success. These examples do not have to stop at elementary school, they can be used in middle school as well.
Rasmir,
ReplyDeleteI use ClassDojo in my classroom as a way to keep my parents informed. I like sending them pictures of students doing activities in class so that they can see their child hard at work. :)
You mentioned another great way for parental involvement by having them come in a read to the class. I like to do this for birthdays and during Read Across America week.