The Vital Importance of Empowering “Parent Voice”

In the school setting we strive to engage students and teachers in the collaborative learning process. Teacher voice is imperative as they play an integral role in the overall educational experience. Students, as the primary learners in our schools, need “voice” and “choice” as part of the comprehensive learning environment. So parents, who are just as important to the educational formula, are sometimes out of the equation. Sitting on the sidelines, parents can, at times feel isolated and ostracized from the very experience that should serve as an all-inclusive organizational structure. You can guarantee parent engagement and build capacity by sharing the decision making process with your parents. Engage, encourage, and entrust your parents and the rest will become history.

In Beyond the Bake Sale, Henderson and Mapp explain the importance of “Sharing Power” in Chapter 8. They identified three practices that will help schools further engage and involve parents in the educational process:

1.      Provide workable mechanisms for teachers, parents, and students to voice their ideas and concerns, and to take part in decision making.

2.       Build a broad base of involvement by increasing families’ political knowledge and skills, and their connections to other parents and people in the community.

3.       Strengthen families’ links with community organizations and resources.

In reflecting on the practices in my own school, I can share some of the things we are doing to include parents in the voice, sharing, decision making process.

All-School Leadership Team: Working to include parents on this team will offer greater “voice” to your parent community. This team or committee is the group that makes the “BIG” decisions for the building. We call this our BIG Committee (Building Improvement Group).  We meet monthly. Parents share their insight, perspectives, and knowledge on the multiple topics that we discuss. Building-wide decisions are affirmed with this BIG Committee. We set building policy, so it is vital that we have parent voice. In preparing for the upcoming school year this committee set building policy for dress code, BYOD, and back packs. This committee is also responsible for finalizing our School Improvement Plan.

School Improvement Plan: Engage parents as part of this team. Allow parents to help you shape your school’s improvement plan. Their voice is important and they can share another necessary perspective as you discuss and develop the school’s plan.

Celebrations: Parents want to be included in this facet of the school day too. Enlist parent leaders to plan, organize, and facilitate school-wide student celebrations in academics, achievement, and behavior.

Parent Panels: This forum is an excellent way for your parents to share their perspective, roles, and involvement with school visitors. When you have visiting groups, work to host a Parent Panel. This way your parents can provide the parent perspective. We use this format when schools come to visit and during our Summer Survival Series.

PTO/PTA: Use this important parent committee to offer and empower parent voice in a variety of decision making opportunities. Our PTO is responsible for all fund raising and teacher grants. They also focus on technology support. They play a major role in improving, implementing, and meeting the technology needs of both students and staff. Do not take this facet of parent leadership lightly. This is an instrumental need within each school setting.

Parent Development: Engage your parent leaders in providing parent professional development throughout the school year. Every parent has potential to serve the school in one facet or another. Seek out parents to serve in this capacity. Our Parent Involvement Team coordinates our Parenting 101, Summer Survival Series, Round-Table Discussions, Book Discussions, and parent volunteerism.

Within the above identified structures, parents can serve as leaders, learners, and liaisons.  This is important as this allows for greater parent participation and involvement in our schools. The examples I noted are merely the tip of the proverbial “iceberg”. There are so many more ways in which parents can become part of the shared leadership in our schools today. I look forward to learning how you are increasing parent engagement in your school.

As I continue this journey, I want to thank Joe Mazza and my Beyond the Bake Sale Voxer book study cohort for their support, encouragement, and teaching me new ways to engage my parents at Francis Howell Middle!

If you are interested in empowering your parents or looking for ways to improve school to home relationships, I strongly urge you to read Henderson and Mapp’s Beyond the Bake Sale then you can empower your school to move “beyond” where you are today!

Building Relationships: The Non-Negotiable

Before anything else you must build relationships. We often here these words spoken during a key-note speech, conference breakout sessions, and even during: our own presentations with staff, parents, and the community. I am a firm believer in “relationships first” as a belief system. We presently focus on this

Practice with our students and staff. It is now time to take this practice one step further and “completely” include our parents in this business we call Relationship Building.

In their book Beyond the Bake Sale, Anne Henderson and Karen Mapp have identified four Core Beliefs that serve as the “foundations” to build strong relationships in engaging parents within your school community.

1.     All parents have dreams for their children and want the best for them.

2.     All parents have the capacity to support their children’s learning.

3.     Parents and school staff should be equal partners.

4.     The responsibility for building partnerships between school and home rest primarily with school staff, especially school leaders.

In reflecting on these core beliefs:

Core Belief #1: As a school community it is imperative that we honor the “dream” that parents have for their children. We need to nurture this process and help the parents help their children. We must also remember that our parents also want what is best for third children – and they rely upon the school for this support. Our support can help parents expand fine tune and enhance those dreams!

Core Value #2: We must be cognizant of this capacity within the parents. More importantly, we must support the parents who have the desire, but cannot fully support their child’s learning. This is when we provide additional resources for the student and parent. This includes after school support, off-site tutoring, and off-site parent education meetings.

Core Belief #3: At all times we must be aware of the equal partnership our parents play in the school setting. We must utilize those resources that our parents bring to the school.  Once our parents realize and understand that we want to be equal partners in this role and journey, the possibilities will become limitless as to the resources, ideas, support, and understanding of our joint roles in education.

Core Belief #4: As the primary source for our students and parents, the school needs to take this responsibility seriously. The school must first reach out to the parents. Not just once, but on a continual basis. Always available our school leaders (teachers, support staff, and administration) must demonstrate, through communication, our desire to have a positive relationship with the parents.  When parents see the Administrators and teachers acting on this Core Belief, they will truly see the relationships beginning to form. Get to know your parents by name. Once I know the parents - I am a firm believer in calling them by their first names (if they are comfortable with this).  I truly enjoy all of our school functions because I get to visit with my “old’ friends and get to meet my ‘new” friends.

Henderson and Mapp, further explain via the Element of Trust table that there are four key elements: Respect, Competence, Integrity, and Personal Regard. They also note that there is a three-part joining process.

This is my vision for this process for Francis Howell Middle School:

1.     Welcome Parents into the School:

Overtly invite parents to join is in all facets of the school community. This will include membership in and leadership roles in our PTO, Parent Involvement Team (PIT), and Building Improvement Group (BIG). Our PIT team will work to revise our Parent Talent Pool inventory and then we can use this to generate a volunteer lists for school projects, activities, and class events. Use all available resources to communicate with parents (traditional, electronic, and Social Media). Invite parent groups to “tour the school”. We presently do this for outside groups and other schools. We need to provide this opportunity for our parents – letting them see the school “in action”. We cannot assume that the “Flyer, eNews, Newsletter or Tweet will guarantee parent involvement or participation. We must take the appropriate steps to make sure they know they are invited and welcome.

2.     Honor their participation

This means taking time to recognize the work of our parents (Going beyond the end of the year “Volunteer Reception”). Instead I will include the names of our volunteers in our monthly newsletter, make personal calls to give “thanks”, and personally thank them when I see them at school events and functions. Even a written thank you note will show how much we appreciate their involvement.

3.     Connect with parents through a focus on the children and their learning:

In using this as our primary focus, parents will be included in our committee structure and process. We presently have parents on our BIG Committee (which is the building leadership team, but we need to have parents on our: School Improvement Plan (SIP) writing team, curriculum team. This also includes educating our parents on the curriculum process, the core curriculum sequencing, and the inclusion of high school credits at the middle school. From the onset parents need to know what to expect at the middle level and what they need to do to prepare for high school and beyond.

As you consider your next moves in furthering the development of parent and family engagement in your schools, let me know the progress with your. I would love to celebrate with you as you continue this journey to greater parent involvement in your school.

 

"Reflecting" in order to move forward with Parent Engagement

In order to move any initiative, program, or practice forward you must always begin with the “reflection” piece. As a reflective practitioner I am using part of the summer to learn more about and reflect upon the parent engagement piece of the total school community here at Francis Howell Middle School. To help me with this reflection, I’ve joined 99 other educators from around the world. We are participating in a six week intensified book study. We are gleaning our understanding from Anne Henderson and Karen Mapp, authors of Beyond the Bake Sale.

Joe Mazza is leading out and facilitating our study via #PTcamp, Voxer, GoogleDocs, and ApprenNet.  We’ve learned that there are four types of schools: Partnership School, Open-Door School, Come If-We-Call School, and the Fortress School. The chart below, from Beyond the Bake Sale, provides a clear explanation of each type of school.

In moving our school forward to become a full-fledged Partnership School, we must do the following:

·         Review the current role of our parents within the school setting in the areas of: Volunteering, Student-Led Conferences, Parent Development, Building-wide leadership (Building Improvement Group), Celebrations, Fund Raising, and Community Service.

·         Assess, review, and evaluate PTO and its role within the school

o   How can we take PTO to the next level?

·         Assess, review, and evaluate the Parent Involvement Team (PIT). Our PIT team is part of the National Network of Partnership Schools with Johns Hopkins University.

o   How can we take PIT to the next level?

·         Develop and implement a long-range plan

o   Set it into motion utilizing the skills, talents, and knowledge of each school community group.

This reflection, a growing and changing process, will  take time. In looking at the next three to five years, we can begin now by reflecting on our current practices so that we can move towards becoming a Partnership School.  I am looking forward in engaging as many parents, staff, students, and community members in this process. After all, shouldn’t we include our parents in the “complete” educational experience of their children?

"To Vox or Not to Vox?" that is the Question

Lately I’ve been reading quite a bit on the flutter of tweets, blog posts and chats that are focused on the prospects of “Voxer”. As always we are all over the place in regards to our thoughts, ideas, and opinions. I just want to put it “out there” that when I first heard of Voxer (last fall) I was very apprehensive and skeptical. Now after using it for my professional PLN collaboration, I now see its value and worth through a completely different lens.

Voxer is an application that uses the traditional “Walkie Talkie” format of communication. Voxer has transformed this communication style to blend in with today’s communication needs. Both audio and text features are readily available. So you can send an audio message, a text message, or send a little of both. All audio and text messages are archived within your individual or group list. You can access your Vox reports (as I like to call it) at any time. You can also set up push notification so that you are notified when you receive a Vox.

Here are a few ways to incorporate Voxer into your communication plan:

Book Study: Right Now #PTcamp (under the leadership of @Joe_Mazza) is studying “Beyond the Bake Sale”. We have 100 adult learners participating. This is just one of many tools that we will be utilizing for the book study.

Chat Moderator Team: This is an effective and efficient way to share information with your moderator team. Thanks to @LauraGilchrist4, our #MOedchat team is now using Voxer. It allows us the time to Vox with each other, reflect, and continue our work.

Leadership Team: create a group (for your Admin team, Department Chairs, Grade Level Chairs) so that you can share out information.

Personal Use: Your family can all communicate together. It’s also great to simple “hear” the other person’s voice! This increases the personal contact.

I am just asking that you try it out. You may enjoy using Voxer and again you may not. I think it’s important to at least investigate the possibilities of Voxing. You never know who you may be able to reach or connect with by using Voxer as another 21^st century communication tool. Take time to answer William Shakespeare’s timeless question (modified for us today): To Vox or Not to Vox?

I Love being an educator because...

I get the opportunity each day to open windows of opportunities …listen to students tell their story …to learn something “new” in the classroom from my teachers …to lead out change …and to see the proverbial light bulb turn on!

I also owe my educational career to the exemplary teachers in my life: Mrs. Steinhoff (3^rd), Mrs. Sanz-Agero (5^th) Mr. Davis (6^th Science) Mr. Oliver (6-12 band), and Mr. Mauer (History). They all set the bar high, they were beyond reproach. Their expectations, love, and passion for teaching were real, sincere, and genuine. They were my “champions”. They instilled in me the belief that I could set challenging goals, overcome obstacles, and become the Leader that was within Me!

 

Today, and every day I learn something new from my students, staff, and administrative team. This is great because I love learning. I am an administrator because I was “called to teach”. I firmly believe being an educator is my true purpose in life. I get to cheer on the learners in my school. I get go celebrate the successes and I get to implement innovation and change.

 

Each August I get to begin the journey again! It is fresh, new, innovative, and exciting. Where else would I get the chance to positively impact so many of tomorrow’s leaders? I get to share in “dream building”, character development, and the cultivation of the “Leader in Me” within all of my students.

 

I love being an educator because each day, week, month, and year I get to experience the “magic" known as education! I love being an educator because I have the best professional mentors in the world – my students and teachers!

Blaze a new trail...

Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of my favorite authors. His writing is truly timeless. He tells us, “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” I firmly believe what he is telling us. It is our duty and responsibility as educators to blaze a new trail for our students and adult learners.

Captain Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise told us, “…to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Albert Einstein notes, “The only source of knowledge is experience.”

Alan Key explains, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

So as you plan your summer for rest, relaxation and renewal (learning from your PLN) take the time to figure out what you can to take your “game” to the next level this fall.  Here are a few ideas…

Book Discussion: Join a book study/discussion. Learn alongside your colleagues this summer. I am fortunate enough to be working alongside @DJrschug, @JoyWright91, and @AnthonyDeblasio as we plan a July Book Study for Danah Boyd’s It’s Complicated. The summer is the perfect time to sit back and enjoy a good book, and take some time to discuss it with your PLN.

Coordinate/Participate: in a combo chat. Join up with another chat this summer. Several states, groups, and organizations have already started this trend in PLN collaboration. Check it out. Several chats are being set up as you are reading this blog post. One example: #Moedchat and #Txed are working to host a July combo chat!

Learn a new social media skill: Take a look at Augmented Reality. Try your hand at LiveBinders or Evernote. Or simply see what you can do with flipagram and Tellagami. They are all powerful tools that can enhance the work you do with students and colleagues.

Write a Blog Post: This is the best way to share out what you are doing, learning, and accomplishing. We learn from each other and a blog post is the best way for us to learn from each other. I know I enjoy seeing what my PLN is doing in the way of blogging!

Become the Lewis and Clark of the 21^st century as you blaze a new trail this summer. I look forward to “reading” all about your journey!

Communication: Keeping Parents in the Loop

One important stakeholder group includes our parents. They are vital to the success of our schools. We send out multiple types and kinds of communication each school day / school week. However, they may be missing out on important information because they are unaware of the different communication channels in our schools. How can this be? Three pieces of the puzzle include: 1) keeping information in front of our parents, 2) Using multiple channels of communication, and 3) Educating parents on the different ways we communicate.

During our recent 5^th Grade Parent Preview Night (where we welcome 5^th grade parents and their 5^th grade children) I began the process of informing parents using these three key tools. I received an email from one parent who offered additional ways to keep parents “in the loop”. This parent helped me realize that we can get caught up on communicating to a degree that we forget the number of ways to reach out to our parents.

Here are a few helpful hints when communication with parents:

Use your electronic news media: We call it eNews. Here daily emails are sent out to parents (who’ve signed up for this service). So now it’s important to let all parents know how to sign up for our school’s eNews service.

Blog Posts: This is a relatively new format that parents may want to learn about. I will now begin to let parents know each time I post to my blog (www.TheodoreHuff@blogspot.com ). They want to know what’s going on in the blog world.

Traditional Newsletter: We all have a newsletter and our parents enjoy reading it to learn what it taking place in the school. Now the question is, “Do they know how to access your newsletter? Especially if you only send it out electronically? We post our monthly newsletter via our school website.

Twitter: This, as you know, is a relatively new communication tool to use in conjunction with sharing information with our parents. Make sure you share out your school’s Twitter Account (regularly) with your parents. If they don’t know that it exists, then cannot access this information. School Twitter Account: @News4FHMS and Dr. Huff's Twitter Account: @TedHiff

Twitter Chats:  Moving your Round Table Discussions, Book Talks, and other venues for sharing information to a Twitter Chat is just one more way to reach out to parents via Social Media. We host a Parent (and teacher) Chat twice a month. You can find us @ #FHMchat at 7pm CDT on the first and third Monday of each month.

School Marquee: This is another important communication tool. My advice is to make sure it is regularly updated.

I look forward to learning about the different ways you communicate with your parent community!