All Your Parents | Part 4: Provide Info and Strategies

With generous support from The Annenberg Foundation, NCFL developed All Your Parents = AYP, a parent involvement professional development framework. After a lengthy review of the current literature and successful parent involvement program models, and in consultation with parents and experts in the field, NCFL determined six important areas for successful engagement of parents to support children’s academic achievement.

Many teachers are not prepared to work with parents and need new skills to develop partnerships with families. As schools and districts seek professional development opportunities, parent involvement often tops the list. Teachers want information. In the same respect, parents often are not prepared to work with teachers. Additionally, they sometimes struggle with the best ways to work with their children.

Key Ideas

• Providing new information for teachers about how to work with families happens through ongoing, systematic professional development.
• Professional development for staff includes understanding how to best work with all families.
• Parent education supports parents as they reinforce parenting skills, understand child development, and learn new strategies to support learning.
• Parent education happens through informal conversations, workshops, written communication, one-on-one parent conferences, and a variety of appropriate means.
• Parent education provides the tools parents need to support children’s learning at school and at home.

Thoughts for Teachers

• Do you choose and attend ongoing professional development about working with families?
• Do you embed new strategies into your everyday work with families?
• Do you share your ideas with other teachers and staff and learn new strategies for working with parents from them?
• How do you provide information to parents to help them support their children’s learning?
• Do you make provisions for providing information (flyers, handouts, workshops, voice messages, e-mail, etc.) in ways that all parents can understand?
• Are you involved in your school’s parent involvement plan?

Ideas for Parents

• Look for parent workshops available to you at your child’s school.
• Ask who the parent liaison is in your school, or work with your child’s teacher to understand the parent services available to you.
• Tell teachers and staff about the kinds of supports you need as a parent.
• Seek out new ways to engage your child in learning; share new things you have learned.
• Apply strategies learned in workshops at home with your children.

For more information, visit the other All Your Parent guides: