The Parent Project

Book excerpt: Involving parents in their children's schooling is a matter of intense concern in North America. Teachers and administrators want to construct a program that creates positive involvement. This is especially critical for Chapter I schools that are mandated to use a portion of their funds for home-and-school programs. Jim Vopat believes that parental involvement should strengthen the link between home and school, and to achieve this goal parents need to be introduced to the revitalized school classroom. The Parent Project calls on the most powerful aspects of school reform--workshops, journals, cooperative groups, shared reading, agenda building, interviewing, goal setting, and critical thinking-classroom learning strategies experienced by children every day. When parents work with these strategies, they understand them and discover how to support them. Using a workshop/process model, parents become involved with their children's classroom activities and are thus empowered to support their children's education. These workshops ensure participant ownership of a program's overall agenda while providing long-term structures for support and continued development. The Parent Project: Provides a framework for implementing ways to get parents involved and informed. Was developed in urban bilingual school settings and includes workshop formats in Spanish and English. Is a complete source-book for teaches and principals that provides materials for conducting workshops with parents in areas of writing, reading, self-esteem, and community-building. Supports your efforts with a detailed description of what the workshop approach is and how it functions.