The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.

Terms of Use ▼

• Permission to Use Materials: In consideration for your agreement to the terms and conditions contained here, the President and Fellows of Harvard College, c/o the Harvard Graduate School of Education, grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access and use Harvard Family Research Project publications hosted on the Global Family Research Project Site.
• User may download material from the Site only for User's own personal, non-commercial use. User may not otherwise copy, reproduce, retransmit, distribute, publish, commercially exploit or otherwise transfer any material. The burden of determining that use of any information, software or any other content on the Site is permissible rests with User.
• User will seek permission or licensing for any commercial use requests from the Harvard Graduate School of Education Office of Sponsored Projects.

• Home
• Research Areas
  • Complementary Learning
  • Family Involvement
  • Out-of-School Time
  • Early Childhood Education
  • Evaluation
  • Other Research Areas
• Publications & Resources
  • Search Publications
  • Browse Our Publications
  • Publications Series
  • Copyright and Reprint Permissions
• HFRP News
  • News & Announcements
  • Blog: New Directions in Family Engagement
  • In the Media

• Complementary Learning
• Family Involvement
  • Overview
  • Professional Development
  • Informing Family Engagement Policy
  • FINE: Family Involvement Network of Educators
  • Projects
  • Publications & Resources
• Out-of-School Time
• Early Childhood Education
• Evaluation
• Other Research Areas

• Large text size
• Normal text size
• Small text size
• Print this page

Dear FINE Member,

Here are this month's FINE member updates. Please feel free to forward this information to your friends and other education colleagues.

New From FINE

This month’s FINE announcement showcases three new resources to help educators build and strengthen family engagement processes connected to students' academic learning over the school year, as well as during the summer months ahead.

• New Resources in the Family Involvement Storybook Corner

  New educator resources for building family-school-community connections to support children's literacy are now available on the Storybook Corner. These resources -- which include a classroom lesson plan, commentary from a teacher who used lesson ideas with her class, and a Spanish/English family literacy handout -- focus on connecting schools and families with public libraries, engaging Latino families, and preventing the summer literacy slide. The Storybook Corner uses children’s books with family involvement themes to engage families in supporting children’s learning and development.

• Tomasito's Mother Comes to School

  Stay tuned later this spring, when HFRP releases its very own bilingual family involvement storybook, Tomasito's Mother Comes to School/La Mamá de Tomasito Visita la Escuela. This research-based story contains information for families and illustrations by children’s book illustrator Joe Cepeda. It will be available to read, download, and print out for free at the Family Involvement Storybook Corner.

• Member Insight: Linking Family Engagement to Learning

  Dr. Karen Mapp , former Deputy Superintendent for Family and Community Engagement in the Boston Public Schools and co-author of Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family–School Partnerships, shares her insights about how teachers, principals, and school district staff can connect their family engagement work to improving students’ academic achievement. Drawing on the book’s chapter “Linking to Learning,” Mapp shares her thoughts on encouraging schools to focus on building trusting relationships with families, and to use their family engagement work as a key instructional strategy.

• Related Resource: Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family–School Partnerships

  This book by Anne Henderson, Karen Mapp, Vivian Johnson, and Don Davies provides practical advice and useful tools to help build and maintain strong partnerships among schools, families, and communities. You can purchase it at the link above.

Related Resource From HFRP

• Summer Success: Challenges and Strategies in Creating Quality Academically Focused Summer Programs

  This brief, first released in November 2006, examines the common challenges and successful strategies for creating high quality academically focused summer programs. One of the seven main challenges identified in the brief involves building strong connections with youth's families, and several promising strategies for overcoming this challenge are discussed.

Policy

• Commission on the Whole Child

  The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development’s (ACSD) new report, The Learning Compact Redefined: A Call to Action, makes the case for a “whole-child” and “whole-community” approach to education. The report also provides real-world examples of collaborative efforts to support the holistic growth of children and youth.

• Para Nuestros Niños

  Created by The Center for the Education and Study of Diverse Populations (CESDP) at New Mexico Highlands University, this tool kit is based on the National PTA’s standards for parent and community involvement programs and is designed to support the development of school, family and community partnerships. The tool kit is divided into three sections: teacher, family, and professional development tools.

Articles & Reports

• Our Children

  The newest edition of the National PTA's magazine Our Children focuses on community schools. Four articles describe the history of community schools, the approach and practices that make them unique, and the leadership that it takes to run them successfully.

• The Costs and Benefits of an Excellent Education for All of America’s Children

  This study by Henry Levin, Clive Belfield, Peter Muennig, and Cecilia Rouse investigates the public costs and benefits of five interventions that raise high school graduation rates, three of which include programs and strategies to strengthen family involvement.

Upcoming Events

• Family Support Conference

  The 14th Annual Family Support Conference will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennyslvania, on May 17, 2007. The conference will focus on the four “R’s” of school readiness: ready families, ready communities, ready schools, and ready services.

• National Center for Education Statistics Training and Technical Assistance

  The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is offering a series of workshops on using national data sets for education research. A number of family involvement studies have drawn conclusions based on the NCES data sets.

• Children’s Day/Book Day

  April 30 is El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children’s Day/Book Day), an annual celebration of children, families, and reading that emphasizes the importance of advocating literacy for children of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds. To learn more about Día and to find out about its community family literacy events around the country go to the link above.

• Writing Individualized Education

  The Center for Innovations in Education (CISE) at the University of Missouri is offering a 5-week online interactive course for educators, families, and university faculty and students who want to develop skills in writing measurable goals for Individualized Education Programs as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1997 & 2004. The course begins June 11, 2007. Enrollment is limited.

Contact Us

If you experience a problem reading this newsletter or have questions and comments concerning our work, we would love to hear from you. Please send an email to fine@gse.harvard.edu.

Enjoy!

The FINE Team at Harvard Family Research Project