by Renée Cockrell, MAT, NBCT
This
post outlines the beginning framework of our high school's parental involvement plan in seven key areas.
Area 1: Parent Support for Classroom Instruction
At our school, every full time teacher teaches an advisory period during second period. The advisory period is 26 minutes long, while all other periods are 91 minute blocks. During this time, students develop executive skill building, organization, social emotional learning, and they track their progress toward graduation. The advisory teacher is responsible for conferencing individually about a student's attendance, behavior, and course performance (ABCs), once every week and for contacting the student's guardian(s) regarding progress on the ABCs at least once a month. If a student is not passing all of his or her classes, the advisor is expected to contact guardians every two weeks at a minimum.
If a parent or guardian has questions for a classroom teacher or a meeting is required to problem solve issues or make an action plan to help the student be more successful, the advisor makes the necessary phone calls and involves the school counselor, administration, and the front office for scheduling and communication. By keeping guardians informed and by regularly communicating progress for both problems as well as positive progress updates, our school's staff all play an integral part in securing guardian support for classroom instruction. Moreover, according to Aguilar (2012), "Calling students’ parents or guardians with good news encourages more good
behavior and creates strong teacher-student bonds” (n. p.). Beyond increasing
guardian support for instructional practices, the expectation of regular
positive phone calls and progress updates can lead to improved behavior and
relationships in the classroom as well.
Area 2: Parent Meetings, Conferences, and Activities
Currently, our staff tend to reserve parent meetings and conferences as a tier III
intervention for students who do not otherwise succeed – a sort of last ditch
effort to get effective interventions in place for a student. This is not
effective external development leadership and it does not result in meaningful
collaboration of all stakeholders to achieve the best possible student outcomes
for all. Unfortunately, the beginning of year open house and requisite
conferences have historically been poorly attended, or even barely attended. This has been due, in part, to a lack of unified and aligned effort to meaningfully engage and welcome parents. The first step to remedying this is to cultivate a welcoming atmosphere in our school. CSU-Global (2019) argues the importance of addressing
the comfort of all of those being served by the school, stating that when
school staff “greet all parents and visitors as if they were members of the
school board, this goes a long way in making sure that all feel comfortable
being served by your school” (p. 2). Beyond establishing a welcoming
environment, meaningfully engaging guardians and other stakeholders in
collaborative work while cultivating relationships that help students succeed
will be an ongoing process.
Area 3: Parent Volunteer Opportunities
There are not currently parent volunteer opportunities in our school. However, that is about to change as follows. We plan to send home a brief weekly newsletter with opportunities for volunteering, including chaperoning
for field trips and activity days, helping out in the Library Media Center,
helping students one-on-one in the GradPoint lab, helping with setup and
cleanup for events, and classroom help with basic tasks like making copies, and
helping support teachers as needed. Furthermore, our hope of establishing a
monthly open house skill-share, wherein community members visit the campus to
learn and take part in activities would be a perfect time to collaboratively
develop and share opportunities for volunteering on campus.
Area 4: School-Parent Compact
We do not yet have a school-parent compact in place, though we do have a parent and student handbook that is in need of an update. The process of updating that handbook is a perfect time to introduce and include the school-parent compact. In developing our school-parent compact, our leadership team must facilitate collaboration with community stakeholders, guardians, staff,
and students. It is advisable for administration to play the role of
facilitator of collaborative development of a parent-school compact because,
according to Hord, Roussin, and Hall (2013), “change is a process of
cultivating relationships” (p. 9). The process of collaboration itself can help
feed the cultivation of meaningful relationships between guardians, other
stakeholders, and staff and students. Furthermore, Bambrick-Santoyo and Peiser
(2012) argue that when people are involved in the development of expectations,
they are more willing to be held accountable for meeting those expectations in
the future.
Area 5: Parental Involvement in Decision-Making
By developing a guardian advisory committee comprised of engaged and
interested guardians, staff, administration, and community members, our school can collaboratively engage guardians and other stakeholders in the
ongoing development, implementation, and evaluation of our school-wide
implementation of positive behavior supports and interventions as well as our
action plan for the revised Unified Improvement Plan (UIP) as it reflects
Colorado Springs School District 11’s newly adopted mission: “We dare to
empower the whole child to profoundly impact our world” (CSSD 11, 2019, n.p.). By
cultivating a robust and collaborative guardian advisory committee and
communicating effectively about the progress and decisions made by the
committee, we can ensure an ongoing process of guardian involvement in
decision-making.
Area 6: Parent Resources
As mentioned above, guardians should have an up-to-date, relevant,
and helpful handbook that directs them to all available resources and explains
helpful policies and procedures in a concise manner. Furthermore, guardians
should be equipped with information as to how to contact teachers and staff with questions or concerns. Guardians should also know how to log into the
online gradebook and school website to monitor their child’s progress, grades,
and attendance. However, beyond the resources guardians should have to be able
to play an active, informed, and supportive role in their child’s education, our school can take steps to reinvent itself as a partnership school as
identified by Henderson, Mapp, Johnson, and Davies (2007), a school with the
viewpoint that families and communities have worth and are able to positively
impact the education of students in our school while also themselves being
positively impacted by the school and the opportunities for learning and
collaboration it presents.
Area 7: Parent Interest Survey
When parents, guardians, family members, and other stakeholders visit the
Library Media Center to meet and mingle with their student’s teachers on Open House night, they
will see a large display with visuals and brief descriptions of possible on
campus activities out school is considering hosting this year for community and family stakeholders,
students, and staff to attend. Guardians and family members will receive small
stickers with which to vote on the items that interest them most. The purpose
of voting is to get parent feedback about interests for future events,
activities, volunteering, and opportunities. This is the beginning of the
process of shifting from being an alternative school in the community to being
the community’s alternative school.
There will also be a poster for visitors to add
their own suggestions, and these suggestions are fair game for the voting of
others as well. Some of the options included will be as follows:
- Automotive shop clinic – learn to change your
tire and perform basic automotive maintenance with automotive students and
teachers.
- Career readiness workshop – resume fine tuning,
cover letter writing, and interview practice/coaching with school
counselors and English teachers.
- Conversational Spanish practice session with
world languages teachers and students.
- Conversational English practice session with
world languages and English teachers and students.
- Introduction to the climbing wall with PE
teachers and students, including harnesses, belaying, safety, and
introduction to bouldering and ropes.
- Saving and spending workshop – consumer
mathematics students and teachers present budget basics and strategies for
saving.
- Introduction to restorative practices – student
leaders and staff share an introduction to our school's approach to the
connection circle and the restorative justice circle, including role play,
teambuilding activities, and opportunities for future volunteering in real
restorative justice circles on campus.
In addition to this initial
survey, the new guardian advisory committee will work together
to collaboratively advise the principal on suggestions for a parent
interest survey to build future and ongoing engagement. Future events will also
present opportunities for further surveying and engagement of this kind.
References
Aguilar,
E. (2012, August 20). The power of the positive phone call home: Calling
students’ parents or guardians with good news encourages more good behavior and
creates strong teacher-student bonds.” Edutopia.
Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/power-positive-phone-call-home-elena-aguilar
Bambrick-Santoyo,
P., & Peiser, B. (2012). Leverage
leadership: A practical guide to building exceptional schools. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Colorado
Springs School District 11. (2019). Strategic plan. Retrieved from https://www.d11.org/cms/lib/CO02201641/Centricity/Domain/67/StrategicPlan.pdf
Colorado
State University-Global. (2019). Module I: Engaging parents/communities part I,
welcoming practices. EDL 560.
Henderson,
A., Mapp, K., Johnson, V., & Davies, D. (2007). Beyond the bake sale: The essential guide to family-school
partnerships. New York, NY: The New Press.
Hord,
S., Roussin, J., & Hall, G. (2013). Implementing
change through learning: Concerns-based concepts, tolls, and strategies for
guiding change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
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