To encourage parent engagement in school health, schools can:
- Connect with parents.
- Engage parents by providing a variety of activities and frequent opportunities to fully involve parents.
- Sustain parent engagement by addressing the common challenges to getting and keeping parents engaged.
How to get parents meaningfully involved in your school?
- Encourage active parent participation in student learning.
- Establish regular, meaningful communication between home and school.
- Collaborate with parents to ensure that children have a supportive learning environment at school and at home.
- Welcome parents as advocates for their children as well as the school's other students.
How to increase parent involvement at your school?
Try these parent engagement strategies to transform involvement into parent partnerships:
- Give parents your contact information and get to know them early in the school year. ...
- Provide opportunities for parents to connect with the school. ...
- Share your classroom goals or expectations openly with parents, and ask them to do the same
- Connect with parents in-person as much as possible. ...
How can parents help make their children successful in school?
Twenty Ways You Can Help Your Children Succeed At School
- Develop a partnership with your child's teachers and school staff. Meet your child's teacher. ...
- Support your child academically. Find out how your child is doing. ...
- Get involved with your child's school. Learn what the school offers. ...
- Get informed and be an advocate for your child. Ask questions. ...
- Support your child's learning at home. ...
Why should parents be involved in education?
Why a Parent’s Role Is Essential to Student Success
- Providing Necessary Guidance. It is important for parents to be the steering wheel on the vehicle of learning, providing guidance and information along the entire journey, so that their children ...
- Benefits of Parental Involvement. ...
- A Parent’s Role in Education. ...
How to encourage parent engagement in school?
Why is it important to engage parents in school?
What is parent engagement in schools?
Why is the sexual health resource shared with school staff, parents, and other stakeholders?
Why should schools evaluate their efforts to increase parent engagement in school health?
What are some health risk behaviors that children and adolescents have typically addressed?
See 3 more
About this website
How can parents be engaged in schools?
Parents can demonstrate involvement at home-by reading with their children, helping with homework, and discussing school events-or at school, by attending functions or volunteering in classrooms.
How can parents get involved in school activities?
How to increase parent involvementOnline advice videos.A dedicated blog and online calendar.Use social media at your school to connect to parents.Home visits and parent/teacher conferences.Family nights.Volunteer Opportunities.
What are the some ways to engage parents?
10 Ideas for Engaging ParentsFocus on the Positive. Middle school teacher Maxine Taylor says that a great way to build a successful parent-teacher relationship is to contact parents before there's a problem. ... Share School Experiences. ... Find Common Ground. ... Entice Parents into School. ... Visit Parents Directly.
How do you promote family engagement in the classroom?
Promoting Family InvolvementRecognize the disconnection. ... Train teachers to work with parents. ... Reduce distrust and cultural barriers. ... Address language barriers. ... Evaluate parents' needs. ... Accommodate families' work schedule. ... Use technology to link parents to the classroom. ... Make school visits easier.More items...
What are some parent involvement activities?
Build Relationships for Family Involvement Host an Open House before school begins for students and parents to talk to their teachers in person. Send fliers home with dates of field trips with spots to volunteer to chaperone. Communicate event times and dates like classroom parties where parents can choose to volunteer.
How do you increase participation in school activities?
How do I encourage participation?Foster an ethos of participation. ... Teach students skills needed to participate. ... Devise activities that elicit participation. ... Consider your position in the room. ... Ask students to assess their own participation. ... Ensure that everyone's contributions are audible.More items...
How do parents get involved in PTA?
Want more volunteers? 10 easy ways to get parents involved with the PTAKeep it personal. Every time a new child starts at your school put a letter into his/ her bags welcoming the family and asking the parents to a coffee morning/ evening. ... Share the feedback. ... Encourage “nominations” ... Show your appreciation.
Why do you get involved in the school activities?
Extracurricular activities provide a channel for reinforcing the lessons learned in the classroom, offering students the opportunity to apply academic skills in a real-world context, and are thus considered part of a well-rounded education.
PARENT ENGAGEMENT Strategies for Involving Parents in School Health
6. PARENT ENGAGEMENT: STRATEGIES FOR INVOLVING PARENTS IN SCHOOL HEALTH . Introduction . Children and adolescents are establishing patterns of behavior that afect both their current and future health.
PARENT ENGAGEMENT Strategies for Involving Parents in School Health
6. PARENT ENGAGEMENT: STRATEGIES FOR INVOLVING PARENTS IN SCHOOL HEALTH . Introduction . Children and adolescents are establishing patterns of behavior that afect both their current and future health.
Parental Involvement as a Important Factor for Successful Education
140 parental involvement as a important factor for successful education family situations, family time, work schedules, and other responsibilities, al-lowing minimal time to provide support in any one given area (Swap, 1993).
What is parent engagement in school?
Parent engagement in schools is defined as parents and school staff working together to support and improve the learning, development, and health of children and adolescents. (For this discussion of parent engagement, “parent” refers to the adult primary caregiver (s) of a child’s basic needs [e.g., feeding, safety].
Why do parents work together in school?
Research shows that when parents and school staff work together, students are healthier and more successful in school. As a parent, you want your child to do well in school. You also want your child to be healthy and avoid behaviors that are risky or harmful. Through your guidance and support, you can have great influence on your child’s health ...
What are the benefits of having parents in school?
Studies have shown that students who have parents engaged in their school lives are more likely to have. Higher grades and test scores. Better student behavior. Enhanced social skills. In addition, students who have parents engaged in their school lives are less likely to. Smoke cigarettes.
What is the key to positive parent engagement?
The key to productive and positive parent engagement is a good flow of communication between school and home, and that communication should encompass every stakeholder, including parents, teachers, administrators, specialists, club leaders and coaches, and the parent-teacher organization. The strategies here can help you increase parent engagement at your school.
What percentage of parents feel they can make a difference in their child's education?
Studies of successful schools indicate that a high rate of parent involvement is a major factor in their success and can even help close the achievement gap between groups of students. Yet while 85 percent of parents feel they could personally make “a lot” or “a fair amount” of difference in their child’s learning and academic progress, 46 percent of parents wish they could do more to support their child’s education.
Why is communication important in school?
Therefore, a school-wide focus on communication is key to creating equitable opportunity for all parents and students. A whole-school communications plan ensures that all faculty members are conveying important information in an accessible way, and making sure all parents have access to school-based opportunities. With these strategies in mind, you can transform school communications and experience a new level of parent engagement.
How can parents be effective in school?
Trained parents may initially volunteer in their child’s classroom. Through parent mentors and added teacher support, parents can be trained to become effective school leaders and serve on the school’s site council, the English learner advisory committee, the school’s safety committee, the P.T.A. board, or as a district leader to support state and federally funded programs and school board advisory committees. Resources on how teachers and administrators can support parents in schools can be found in two Corwin Press publications:
Why do parents need to meet with teachers?
The anticipated meeting outcome for teachers and parents is to create a healthy family-school connection. This outcome ensures that both parents and teachers can openly discuss a child’s successes and challenges in the classroom and at school. When meeting parents informally, effective teachers provide parents with daily feedback about their child’s performance. Ongoing formal and informal dialogue with parents can validate the parents’ efforts to support their child’s growth at school and in the home. Informal conversations with parents can also provide teachers with insight about changes in the family that may impact a child’s performance at school.
How to provide culturally sensitive parent observation forms?
Culturally sensitive parent observation forms can be provided by teachers when parents visit the classroom. These forms can include having the parents write what their child is doing in a small group learning activity. Parents can capture the dialogue between students, record their child’s reaction to others, reflect on their child’s classroom behaviors, and note what learning strategies are being used in an activity (i.e. discussion, listening, reading, working on a group form, completing an individual worksheet, playing a game, helping construct a project, or observing changes in the environment, etc.). After parents complete their observation, they can meet with the teacher and other parents to discuss and reflect on what they learned about their child and grade level learning strategies.
What can teachers do to support parents?
Teachers can partner with grade level teachers to create parent education workshops on age appropriate child development, healthy social-emotional growth, games and activities to support student learning at home, and how parents can incorporate play as a learning activity (e.g. building containers for a garden and planting vegetables, writing a family history, shopping weekly with a fixed budget for the family). Free culturally relevant parent education handouts can be downloaded for workshops at genparenting.com. This multi-generational resource blog was created by credentialed educators to support parents, grandparents, and families in using effective parenting strategies when serving as their children’s first teachers in their social-emotional growth, literacy readiness, and in academic play activities. Teachers and professionals in education and health can use the blog’s resources to support their school’s families.
Why do principals do parent coffees?
As parents increase their leadership at the school site, principals can initiate parent coffees to encourage added dialogue with families and increased partnerships in their school community. At the end of the school year, the school’s leadership team with teacher support can host a parent volunteer recognition event.
How to volunteer as a parent in a classroom?
Effective parent classroom volunteer programs include a sign-up schedule, policies, and procedures on how parents can participate in specific classroom activities in small group observations, instruction, or by leading a project that incorporates art and academics (e.g. performance productions, writing and illustrating grade level books, creating science experiments, or researching historical events with artistic and culturally sensitive products). Parents can initially be invited into the classroom to observe other parents working with students in small group activities. As parents feel more confident about their ability to assist students, the teacher can assign parents to parent mentors who will help them feel successful in their classroom assignments. If a parent does not speak English, a bilingual mentor or student can provide the parent with translation and interpretation services. Trained and mentored classroom parent volunteers should keep discussions about individual students confidential, abide by the school rules at all times, and consider the needs of the students first.
Why do parents feel validated for their efforts in supporting their child's learning?
When teachers provide parents with examples of healthy growth and an overall portfolio of the student’s work, parents feel validated for their efforts in supporting their child’s learning. If there are areas of concern, parents will be more receptive to hearing a teacher’s suggestions for their added support in the home.
1. Know your audience and their needs
As educators and professionals, we sometimes overlook reaching out to the very people we’re trying to engage, and, in doing so, end up creating afterschool activities or programming that parents don’t want, don’t need or simply can’t attend due to other priorities.
2. Set expectations early
What do parents see as their role in their child’s education? Do parents know the benefits of supporting their child by helping out with homework and being present at the school for activities? While expectations may vary slightly by culture, parents who see themselves as their child’s first teacher will likely be more collaborative with you, the teacher, and will then be more involved in educational programming..
3. Know the barriers to participation, and how to get around them
Providing parents with a platform to discuss the barriers that may prevent them from engaging in your school programming is a critical early step. Depending on your resources, providing both ideas and the means for overcoming such barriers is the natural follow-through.
4. Make relationships the priority
The quality of relationships is often overlooked as an important factor in parent engagement programming.
5. Create a culture of self-efficacy
Self-efficacy, or the belief in one’s capacity to achieve something, is linked to higher levels of parent engagement. Does the parent programming at your school build parent self-efficacy, self-confidence, and self-esteem? Do parents feel comfortable attending events or speaking up about planning events?
6. Focus on fathers, too
While both parents play a crucial role in child development, recent attention has been placed on the integral role of fathers, and the need for fathers to be involved in parent programming. A recent study focused on what successful programs have done to not only recruit fathers but also keep fathers engaged in family programming.
7. Make it a matter of pedagogical design
One way to make it a matter of ‘pedagogy’? Use place-based education or project-based learning. Design lessons or units full of learning experiences that can work without parents, but that are way, way better with their presence and support.
Why is parent involvement important in education?
When parents are involved in children’s schools and education, children have higher grades and standardized test scores, improved behavior at home and school, and better social skills and adaptation to school.
How do parent groups help schools?
Choose an activity or event that works for you and do your part to support the goals of the group. Parent groups give parents a voice in their local schools. They support schools in a variety of ways such as volunteer activities, Teacher Appreciation events, and fundraising for needed educational enhancements.
How to enrich your child's lifelong learning?
Experiential learning through museum trips, music, dance, and art lessons, sports programs, libraries, and colleges' community outreach education will enrich your child’s store of knowledge and stimulate a lifelong learning habit.
What are some activities that parents can do to help their children?
Other parent involvement activities that benefit children’s educational development are to communicate with the teacher and school; discuss school activities with your child; and, monitor and supervise his out of school activities.
How to improve your child's academic achievement?
Make your home a rich environment for learning. Dinner conversations, trips, games, reading time, family sports, appropriate supervision, home organization, and daily routines all contribute to your child’s academic achievement at school.
What to do if your school doesn't have a Meet the Teacher Day?
If your school doesn't have a "Meet the Teacher Day," get in touch with the school administrator to see if there's a way you can make contact with your child's teacher before term starts.
How can parents level the playing field?
Parents at all socioeconomic levels can “level the playing field” in their child’s education by taking the time to get involved. Teachers give kids more attention when they know their parents from school visits.
How to get families to come to school?
Find out the churches or community centers where groups of families congregate. See if that location can host a meet-and-greet with admin and parent leaders. Meet families where they are rather than expecting them to always come to the school. For many of our families, the school environment can be a scary place. Help them get to know the players in the school, and the school site itself might become more comfortable in the future.
Why is there a tapering off of family engagement between elementary and secondary levels?
It's as if once we don't have holiday parties to organize, we don't seem to reach out as often to our students' families.
How to transition between middle school and elementary school?
Seed the transition between elementary and middle school by having administration visit the elementary sites with PTA parents in tow. A multilingual PTA parent can help translate during an informal meeting or be available for breakouts after a larger gathering.
Why are minority students intimidating?
Maybe they themselves don't have a high level of schooling, and are not totally comfortable in a school environment. They might also be experimenting with backing away from their student. However, there's a fine line between encouraging independence and disengaging from the school all together.
How to help parents who speak different languages?
Identify parents who speak particular languages and help train them in facts about the school. Perhaps those parents are given a badge of sorts to identify them as go-to parent leaders. See if any of these willing parents would host an informal Coffee with the Principal event in their home. Ensure that there are some parent leaders that share the demographic of those who are least engaged.
Why do we reach out to families?
So many times we reach out to families because of discipline issues, but a little proactive positivity can go a long way in building trust and comfort between a parent and school.
How can schools help families?
Schools can help ensure that families know how to access information online. Host a night where the school website is introduced. Demonstrate Google Translate to model how a web page can be easily translated. Embed student-hosted videos on the school website that are in different languages. These can be clicked on for reminders of where to find staff contact numbers, event information, and homework pages.
How do parents help their children in school?
When parents are involved in their children’s education, children succeed at higher rates. Analysis from the National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools concluded that when schools and parents work together, students earn higher grades, perform better on tests, enroll in more advanced courses and more often graduate and continue onto post-secondary education.
What can a parent volunteer do?
A parent volunteer can play a vital role in ensuring these activities are available — whether it’s running the program, being an extra helper or acting as a chaperone. 4. Participate in a reading partners program: Read-alouds help budding readers develop fluency and decoding skills.
What does Dillon suggest for elementary students?
While you may wish to work with your child’s teacher, Dillon suggests you offer to help in other areas of the school as well, from the main office to the art room. It will give you more insight into the school’s programs, and it will give your child the space he or she needs to develop a sense of independence.
How to get your neighbors together?
If you live in a neighborhood with many school-aged children, get your neighbors together for a barbecue or block party, and discuss issues affecting your kids and schools. You may find your neighbors have concerns similar to your own. Brainstorm ideas and present them to your school administrators. This is also an opportunity to organize carpools, walking school buses or neighborhood homework clubs.
Why is it important to have a positive school culture?
A positive and supportive school culture will bolster academic achievement and minimize behavioral problems. Parental involvement is crucial to building this culture. Kids need to know they’re not making their life journey alone.
Do schools need you to work from home?
If you have writing, publishing or social media skills, your school may need you. Because you can do this work from home, this may be the perfect way for parents who aren’t available during school hours to contribute.
Is it easy to get parents to sign up for school?
It’s easier than you think for hard-working parents to pitch in. There are free school and volunteer scheduling apps and tools (like SignUp.com) that make it simple to ask for help and get parents to sign up for things like reading to the class, bringing snacks or helping with a party.
How to increase family involvement in school?
No matter which level your school is at, there are many things you can do to increase family involvement at your school. Creating a committee to oversee family engagement is a great way to tap into your staff’s creativity and passions.
What happens if a school's effort in family engagement is generic?
If a school’s effort in family engagement is generic, they will get surface level involvement in return. Schools can work harder to understand the wants and needs of the community they serve and tailor the involvement opportunities to meet their time, interests and demands.
What happens if parents don't feel welcome in school?
If parents do not feel welcomed in their school, involvement will be low. Schools must first take the time to build authentic relationships with families as a foundation before requesting their attendance at different programs or asking for activities to be completed. Schools must be cognizant that parents’ schedules are busy and try to plan functions during different times of the day to allow for more involvement. Below are ideas that build from beginning, intermediate, and advanced level activities for schools to build relationships and get families truly involved.
Why do we conduct home visits during the summer?
Conduct home visits during the summer to start building relationships and understand student’s homes and communities
How to encourage parent engagement in school?
To encourage parent engagement in school health, schools can: Connect with parents. Engage parents by providing a variety of activities and frequent opportunities to fully involve parents. Sustain parent engagement by addressing the common challenges to getting and keeping parents engaged. Individual schools and school districts should determine ...
Why is it important to engage parents in school?
Research shows that parent engagement in schools is closely linked to better student behavior, higher academic achievement, and enhanced social skills.
What is parent engagement in schools?
Parent engagement in schools is a shared responsibility in which schools and other community agencies and organizations are committed to reaching out to engage parents in meaningful ways, and parents are committed to actively supporting their children’s and adolescents’ learning and development.
Why is the sexual health resource shared with school staff, parents, and other stakeholders?
This resource can be shared directly with school staff, parents, and other stakeholders so they better understand how engaging parents in schools may improve teens’ sexual health behaviors and outcomes.
Why should schools evaluate their efforts to increase parent engagement in school health?
Schools should also evaluate their efforts to increase parent engagement in school health to learn which actions have the greatest impact.
What are some health risk behaviors that children and adolescents have typically addressed?
Efforts to improve child and adolescent health have typically addressed specific health risk behaviors, such as tobacco use or violence.
Understanding The Common Challenges
- Ensuring good communication between school and home has become more challenging in recent years due to a number of key trends impacting parent engagement. First, the diversity of family living arrangements continues to increase, so educators cannot assume students are living at home with two parents. Second, families move a lot; in fact, the U.S. has one of the most mobile …
Strategies to Improve School-Home Communications
- Schools have made great strides in increasing the frequency of communication with families, taking advantage of digital tools to give parents more visibility into their child’s day. However, as the challenges listed above indicate, the proliferation of tools has now fragmented communications to the point of leaving parents overwhelmed and unsure what to dowith the inf…
School Communications as The Glue
- A strong school culture leads to a thriving school community where every teacher, parent, and student has the opportunity to connect and be actively engaged, and that culture starts with communication. Therefore, a school-wide focus on communication is key to creating equitable opportunity for all parents and students. A whole-school communications...