Selected Resources

National Network of Partnership Schools www.csos.jhu.edu/p2000/default.htm

The National Network of Partnership Schools brings together schools, districts, and states that are committed to developing and maintaining comprehensive programs of school-family-community partnerships. Network members use an Action Team approach to organize partnership program development. Teachers, administrators, parents, community members, and students work together to design and implement partnership activities that meet goals for student success. The Network has many resources for building school-family-community partnerships, including the latest research and guidebooks.

NWREL Resources

School-Family-Community Partnerships Team Resources www.nwrel.org/partnerships/index.html

The School-Family-Community Partnerships team develops and disseminates resources for schools in the region on a variety of related topics, and can provide training on the listed publications or individualized staff development and technical assistance on selected topics tailored to meet the school's identified needs on a fee-for-service basis. These publications are written for various audiences (such as early childhood care providers; elementary, middle, and high school staff; parents; and community members). These products include three major resource and training manuals, as well as supplementary booklets. For more information on how the School-Family-Community Partnerships Team can help, contact 503-275-9487 or partnerships@nwrel.org

Planning for Youth Success (2001) is a manual and guide that provides a positive way for members of a school community (school staff, students, families, and community members) to form or strengthen partnerships that will help to ensure success for their youth. The process outlined in the manual enables school community members to ask themselves, "What do we have to build on?" and then helps them to design a project based on those strengths with support from the community's existing resources and assets. Available at www.nwrel.org/partnerships/pubs/pfys-pdf.html

Partnerships by Design: Cultivating Effective and Meaningful School-Family-Community Partnerships (2002) is a guide to help schools and programs assess their current approaches to involving families and community members, and to assist them in implementing more effective strategies. Available at www.nwrel.org/partnerships/cloak/booklet-one.pdf or by e-mailing products@nwrel.org

Building Relationships for Student Success: School-Family-Community Partnerships and Student Achievement in the Northwest (2002) draws from current research and school experiences to give teachers, parents, and administrators examples of successful partnership strategies. Teachers, parents, and staff at six high-poverty, high-minority schools were interviewed to provide their perspective on what research-based methods look like in practice. Available at www.nwrel.org/partnerships/cloak/booklet2.pdf or by e-mailing products@nwrel.org

Classroom to Community and Back is a practitioner's guide to strategies that draw on the knowledge, skills, experiences, and culture of family and community members to meet academic standards and enhance learning for all students. The guide focuses on how educators can tap into the culture of the students' family and community in ways that enrich teaching and learning, increase their relevance to students, and engage the entire community. This, in turn, will improve partnerships, first, by creating a standards-based curriculum that brings family and community culture into the classroom and the school in meaningful ways and, second, by improving family and community partnerships to support educational experiences outside the school. Classroom to Community and Back is currently undergoing a pilot study and is expected to be published in 2005.

The School-Family-Community Partnerships Team provides training in conjunction with the listed publications, including in-depth institutes as well as workshops. For more information call (503) 275-9487 or partnerships@nwrel.org

Family Involvement and Beyond: School-Based Child and Family Support Programs (1999) is a discussion of research on resiliency, attachment theory, culturally responsive teaching, school reform, and characteristics of school-based child and family support programs, along with descriptions of Northwest schools. The book includes handouts and a self-assessment tool for creating family-friendly schools. Available to order by e-mailing products@nwrel.org

Supporting Parent, Family, and Community Involvement in Your School (2000) provides ideas for schools to create a comprehensive plan involving families and the community. It provides an assessment instrument based on Epstein's six types of involvement to measure how your school is reaching out to parents. Available online at www.nwrel.org/csrdp/family.pdf

Parent Effectiveness Leadership Training (PELT)

Contact information for certified PELT training
NWREL's Equity Center
503-275-9603

PELT is a training program designed to provide families with the leadership skills to successfully access their children's school system. The program is based on concepts of Dr. Tony Clarke of the Washington Urban League, who designed leadership training for African American families in Tacoma, Washington. Sara Vega-Evans, Sunnyside (WA) School District's parent involvement coordinator, modified and updated the concept to meet the needs of all parents regardless of ethnicity. PELT's goal is to increase the overall involvement of parents who have traditionally not been involved. One reason parents may not be involved is because they are uncomfortable with making their needs known and communicating with school staff. The topics in six interactive workshops (conducted in the participants'language) focus on discovering leadership skills, goal setting and decisionmaking, effective communication, parent rights and responsibilities, and celebrating learning.

The workshops impress upon parents that they are the most important leaders in their child's life, more important than teachers. The participants do role plays to practice leadership in certain situations such as this one:

When you visit your child's school, you must check in at the office. As you stand by the office counter waiting to be assisted, you notice two or three adults joking and talking. No one offers to help you. You feel ignored. What should you do?

After the role play, the trainer leads the group in applauding the actors for having the courage to perform in front of everyone. Each session ends with "Thorns and Roses": participants can voice negative statements (thorns) and what they enjoyed or learned (roses).

"PELT is an enriching process that provides parents with an opportunity to evaluate the role they play in their children's education. The training is very engaging, exciting, and challenging at the same time," said Kendra Hughes, a certified PELT trainer and Equity Associate at NWREL.

Last year, 15 Spanish-speaking parents from Beacon Hill Elementary School in Seattle graduated from the school's first PELT session. Masako Davison, an ESL teacher who helped write the grant to fund the training program, explains that the goal was to have more Hispanic families involved in the decisionmaking process at the school. After the training, the participants continued to meet monthly, and worked to encourage other families to get involved.

The PELT training was very successful in empowering the families not only to participate in their children's learning, but also to be involved in decisionmaking. "Before the training, the families were afraid to come to school," says Chilo Granizo, a Spanish-bilingual instructional assistant. "Now they ask—what can we do?" adds Davison.

The families have formed a PTA subcommittee and, for the first time, a Hispanic family member is the PTA co-chair. The group held their first fundraiser, making more than $1,000 selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and recruiting 20 other family members to help. "This was the first time many of these parents spoke in front of people," says Davison. "It was very empowering for them."

The impact of the PELT training on the families and children shouldn't be underestimated. Davison and Granizo see that the parents have the confidence to take active roles in the PTA and in the classroom with their newfound confidence and leadership skills. "We can really see that the children are doing much better than last year with the families involved in a morning reading group, and the families come into their children's classes every day and read with them, holding their hand," says Granizo.

For additional information about Beacon Hill, call Masako Davison or Chilo Granizo, at 206-252-2700.

Southwest Educational Development Laboratory's Resources

SEDL's family-community efforts and resources prompted the U.S. Department of Education to award funding to the Regional Educational Laboratory to operate the National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools. The center creates bridges between research and practice, linking people with research-based information and resources that they can use to effectively connect schools, families, and communities. The center reviews emerging findings and research to develop an online database, annual conferences, and annual reports to help advance procedural knowledge and provides training and networking across the REL system to link research findings to practice.

Connection Collection is an online database of 270 abstracts of journal articles, books, reports, conference papers and proceedings, and literature reviews related to school-family-community connections (www.sedl.org/connections/resources/bibsearch.html)

A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement (2002) examines the growing evidence that family and community connections with schools make a difference in student success. This and other research syntheses are available at www.sedl.org/connections/research-syntheses.html

Creating Collaborative Action Teams: Working Together for Student Success (2003) is a set of concepts, activities, and resources that individuals, school districts and other organizations can use to develop a partnership between home, school, community, and students at the local level. These teams identify pressing issues in the school community and take action to address them. For more information, see www.sedl.org/pubs/fam18/ and www.sedl.org/prep/cats/

Building Support for Better Schools: Seven Steps to Engaging Hard-to-Reach Communities (2000) is a practical guide designed for educators, civic leaders, community organizers, or anyone else interested in involving traditionally hard-to-reach communities. It offers advice on getting to know your community, identifying issues important to the community, and designating and training facilitators. Available online at www.sedl.org/pubs/family27/building_support.pdf

For more information about these and other resources SEDL has to offer, contact info@sedl.org and 800-476-6861.