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.







Where There's a Will, There's a Way


Book Description

Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way Ma was a crafty lady who had been taught well by her father and mother, Elias Samuel Totten and Nancy Jane Bradford Totten. She learned to cook, sew, plow, hoe, pick cotton, do housework, and dry apples and peaches for fried pies. She worked like a man. She could plow behind a mule as well as most men. She could also pull her weight in using a crosscut saw for cutting logs and firewood for the fireplace, kitchen cook stove, and the big iron potbelly heating stove that heated our house. In Carl J. Barger’s latest book, Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way, he writes of growing up in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in Cleburne County, Arkansas. He relates his struggles and triumphs as the ninth child in a family of eleven children born during the Great Depression to Edward and Mamie Ann Totten Barger of Higden, Arkansas. Growing up in the small community of Higden, population 122, he experienced poverty as well as a thirst for knowledge and understanding, always dreaming of a better life. He remembers lying awake at night listening to his mother crying, while she wondered where the family’s next meal was coming from. His Pa would say, “Mamie, I’m going to take care of that. Don’t you worry!” Barger includes the people who made a difference in his life; people who challenged him, motivated him, and influenced the man he became. He gives credit where credit is due. Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way was written to inspire others who are struggling, not knowing what the future holds for them.