Essay - Schools and Parents Effective Staff Development on Cultivating and Maintaining...

Schools and Parents

Effective Staff Development on Cultivating ***** Maintaining Positive Relationships With Parents

In order to offer children the best possible educational experience, school staff members - counselors, teachers, paraprofessionals, administrators - face enormous responsibilities and take on constant challenges. Those school staff members - especially administrators - have many jobs to do and many hats to wear. One important task they face is establishing and maintaining positive relationships with parents.

In the June, 2006 issue of District Administration, the writer (Vogel, 2006) uses recommendations from Johns Hopkins University Sociology professor Joyce Epstein (founder, National Network of Partnership Schools) ***** promote the potential power inherent in a solid School / P*****rent (family) / community partnership. According to Epstein, quoted in Vogel's article, "There's nothing new under the sun..." with reference ***** creative ways schools can involve ***** in *****ir children's education.

The difference between the best strategies ***** ***** 1970s and 1980s - which was a period of the "comprehensive school movement" - is that in 2006, "this is very structured. We provide a lot of support to build the programs in a way that says this is a w*****y to organize the schools," Epstein explains. According ***** Vogel's article, ***** "bedrock of the Epstein parent-community-school ***** is a focus on student **********." Once the goals are established, "anything from raising math comprehensi***** to bettering attendance rates," every program, project ***** activity at school (including fund***** for the football team and p*****nt newsletters) should zero in on student achievement.

And the substance of that goal-*****ing process is to first "...move beyond the ad hoc nature ***** most parent involvement ef*****ts"; secondly, to "create an official body" to handle the work that ***** combined efforts of school and parents will set up; thirdly, ***** write a specific pl*****n "***** clear objectives, roles ***** deadlines"; and fourth, to "***** admin*****trative support to staff the project at the district level." key to success, ***** article points out, is ***** "stay organized." An example of a well-organized school-family-community partnership group ***** found in the Naperville Community School District ***** Illinois; the team in ***** is 23-members strong, meets monthly and "keeps its meet*****gs focused and productive," Vogel writes. On the team are parents, school *****, school board members, principals, the superintendent ***** the d*****trict, and business representatives from the community; when you ***** a situation where district leaders sit and have face-to-face talks with ***** and members of the school's community, "that means a *****," according to Nina Menis, the director of the *****'s community relations department.

This kind of organization and cooperation, ultimately, is not just in ***** hands of the parents or school teaching staff; rather, the energy for th***** ***** ***** involvement has to be generated initially within the ********** administration structure. After all, ***** in-house planning proposals and activities must eventually run through the front office anyway, so it makes good power-structure sense that big ideas about creative, productive coal*****ions with ***** involved should ***** their genesis and momentum