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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.
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March 2011 Preparing Teachers to Engage Families Around Student DataMaria Paredes
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The FINE Newsletter shares the newest and best family involvement research and resources from HFRP and other field leaders.
FINE Newsletter, Volume III, Issue 1
Issue Topic: Preparing Teachers for Family Engagement
Voices from the Field
Maria C. Paredes is the Director of Community Education at Creighton School District in Arizona. In our October 2010 FINE Newsletter, “Using Student Data to Engage Families,” Paredes profiled Creighton School District’s work in family engagement. This is a follow-up to that article.
In a recent FINE Newsletter article, we profiled Creighton's use of Academic Parent-Teacher Teams (APTT), in which participating teachers hold 75-minute parent team meetings three times a year and 30-minute individual parent–teacher conferences once a year. The parent team meetings are centered on analyzing achievement data together as a team. In this follow-up article, we look at how the Creighton School District prepares teachers to effectively share student data with families.
TRAINING TEACHERS AND PARENT LIAISONS
In order for APTT to work, teachers and parent liaisons must be well-trained to work with families and data. To accomplish this, Creighton’s District Director of Community Education provides a teacher orientation at the beginning of the school year, where she provides teachers with background knowledge about the importance of giving families grade level information, data, and proper training. Teachers become more familiar with strategies for engaging their classroom families in the learning process and they receive an in-depth description of the optional APTT model. After the initial training, the district holds three follow-up debriefings and planning meetings where teachers have an opportunity to talk about their APTT experiences. The APTT training upholds the following characteristics:
APPT Training VideosVideo #1 (For a larger screen, click here to watch on YouTube instead.) Video #2 (For a larger screen, click here to watch on YouTube instead.) |
Through APTT, the Creighton School District has revamped the traditional parent–teacher conferences, and thus changed how parents and teachers communicate and collaborate toward increased student learning and achievement. This has required stronger investments in teacher training. The district has worked in three main areas to invest in teacher training and professional development in support of family engagement:
For more information and tools about preparing teachers and families to participate in Academic Parent–Teacher Teams, visit http://www.creightonschools.org/departments/communityed/teams.php.
This resource is part of the March 2011 FINE Newsletter. The FINE Newsletter shares the newest and best family involvement research and resources from Harvard Family Research Project and other field leaders. To access the FINE Newsletter Archive, visit www.hfrp.org/FINENewsletter.
© 2016 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College
Published by Harvard Family Research Project