School, Family, and Community Partnerships


Book Description

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.




Promising Practices for Engaging Families in Literacy


Book Description

(sponsored by the Family School Community Partnership Issues SIG) Promising Practices for Engaging Families in Literacy fulfills the need from parents and teachers to improve home/school assistance in every child’s literacy development. Literacy skills are required and valued in all academic areas and at all levels of education from preschool through adulthood. This volume provides suggestions and support to improve parent/child involvement in literacy activities from preschool through teacher education programs. Research is provided to undergird the documented practices that increase student academic achievement through improved literacy skills across academic areas. Practices include connections between home and school across age groups, developmental needs groups, universities, community groups, and technologies.




Family, School, Community Engagement and Partnerships


Book Description

How can colleges and schools support the inclusion of family, school and community engagement curricula in teacher and administrator preparation programs? The contributions in this book try to answer this question, with contributors describing their experiences, their programs, and their support for the goal of enhancing parental involvement and engagement in Schools and Colleges of Education. The authors and researchers, such as Joyce Epstein, who is the foremost researcher on the topic, have the knowledge and expertise in family, school, and community engagement and partnerships from both theory and best practice perspectives. The book is designed to be interactive, and readers are encouraged to engage themselves in the conversation. Readers are invited to e-mail any of the editors to discuss the questions posed. This book was originally published as a special issue of Teaching Education.




Cultures Built to Last


Book Description

Take your professional learning community to the next level! Discover a systemwide approach for re-envisioning your PLC while sustaining growth and continuing momentum on your journey. You’ll move beyond isolated pockets of excellence while allowing every person in your school system—from teachers and administrators to students—the opportunity to be an instrument of lasting cultural change.




Preparing Educators to Engage Families


Book Description

Constant changes in education are creating new and uncertain roles for parents and teachers that must be explored, identified, and negotiated. Preparing Educators to Engage Families: Case Studies Using an Ecological Systems Framework, Third Edition encourages readers to hone their analytic and problem-solving skills for use in real-world situations with students and their families. Organized according to Ecological Systems Theory (of the micro, meso, exo, macro, and chrono systems), this completely updated Third Edition presents research-based teaching cases that reflect critical dilemmas in family-school-community relations, especially among families for whom poverty and cultural differences are daily realities. The text looks at family engagement issues across the full continuum, from the early years through pre-adolescence.




Handbook on Family and Community Engagement


Book Description

Thirty-six of the best thinkers on family and community engagement were assembled to produce this Handbook, and they come to the task with varied backgrounds and lines of endeavor. Each could write volumes on the topics they address in the Handbook, and quite a few have. The authors tell us what they know in plain language, succinctly presented in short chapters with practical suggestions for states, districts, and schools. The vignettes in the Handbook give us vivid pictures of the real life of parents, teachers, and kids. In all, their portrayal is one of optimism and celebration of the goodness that encompasses the diversity of families, schools, and communities across our nation.




Promising Practices in Supporting Success for Indigenous Students


Book Description

Indigenous peoples are diverse, within and across nations. However, the Indigenous peoples have experienced colonisation processes that have undermined Indigenous young people’s access to their identity, language and culture.




Promising Practices for Teachers to Engage with Families of English Language Learners


Book Description

The monograph Promising Practices for Teachers to Engage with Families of English Language Learners provides practical activities, communication skills, events, resources, and policies to work with families who are English language learners. This book is primarily targeted toward preservice and novice teachers who are searching for ways to connect with families from diverse cultures and varying proficiency levels in English. However, the contents contain an array of practices that are useful for teachers at all levels, parents, other educator groups, and administrators.




Promising Practices for Strengthening the Regional STEM Workforce Development Ecosystem


Book Description

U.S. strength in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines has formed the basis of innovations, technologies, and industries that have spurred the nation's economic growth throughout the last 150 years. Universities are essential to the creation and transfer of new knowledge that drives innovation. This knowledge moves out of the university and into broader society in several ways â€" through highly skilled graduates (i.e. human capital); academic publications; and the creation of new products, industries, and companies via the commercialization of scientific breakthroughs. Despite this, our understanding of how universities receive, interpret, and respond to industry signaling demands for STEM-trained workers is far from complete. Promising Practices for Strengthening the Regional STEM Workforce Development Ecosystem reviews the extent to which universities and employers in five metropolitan communities (Phoenix, Arizona; Cleveland, Ohio; Montgomery, Alabama; Los Angeles, California; and Fargo, North Dakota) collaborate successfully to align curricula, labs, and other undergraduate educational experiences with current and prospective regional STEM workforce needs. This report focuses on how to create the kind of university-industry collaboration that promotes higher quality college and university course offerings, lab activities, applied learning experiences, work-based learning programs, and other activities that enable students to acquire knowledge, skills, and attributes they need to be successful in the STEM workforce. The recommendations and findings presented will be most relevant to educators, policy makers, and industry leaders.




A Guide to Promising Practices in Educational Partnerships


Book Description

This guide, which is designed for individuals interested in establishing joint endeavors among schools, social service agencies, cultural institutions, businesses, industries, and/or institutions of higher education, illustrates promising practices supporting and reflecting partnership activities. Part 1 is divided into three sections detailing practices supporting partnership building in the following areas: needs assessments (educational, community, and participant-based needs assessments); project staffing (transition of key personnel and volunteer project managers); and initiating activities (identifying and recruiting partners, recruiting volunteers, and recruiting partners). Part 2 includes four sections in which promising practices representing partnership activities in the following areas are described: staff development (cross-agency training, teacher-tutor training, school-based master's degrees); student support services (peer tutor-mentors and business mentors and coaches); school-to-work transition (articulated curricula, job skills workshops, job shadows, health career internships, and business and instructional internships); and community involvement (parent education, resource directories, and public hearings). Concluding the guide is a profile of one promising partnership that encompasses many of the practices described. Appended are the names/addresses of the members of the Educational Partnership Study Group, which conducted the study out of which this guide grew. (MN)