Just as populations change, ideas about how to encourage and work with parents also need to evolve. This practical resource by bestselling author Patricia Edwards provides school leaders and classroom teachers with new and creative ways in which to welcome, encourage, and involve parents. Enacting these types of practices requires a special kind of commitment from teachers and school leaders, which often coincides with a particular kind of mindset about families and one’s responsibility to engage them. Educators often develop this mindset as they deepen their understanding of families, literacy/language, culture/race/class, and themselves. Edwards pulls these understandings together and presents them in a straightforward, concise, and easy-to-use guide that is perfect for professional learning communities and teacher preparation courses. New Ways to Engage Parents is essential reading for all educators who care deeply about engaging a wide range of parents in today’s schools. “It is my hope that this book inspires teachers to seek ways to make schools more equitable and caring spaces for all children.” —From the Foreword by Catherine Compton-Lilly, University of Wisconsin–Madison “Long a leader in the field, Professor Patricia Edwards reinforces the fact that education is a shared responsibility of home, school, and community. She presents scores of practical ideas and resources to enable educators to involve all parents in their children’s education.” —Joyce L. Epstein, Johns Hopkins University “Finally, a book that brings partnering with parents into the 21st century! This is a book teachers will want to keep at their fingertips.” —Jeanne R. Paratore, Boston University

Reach beyond theory and engage every family in student success Family engagement increases student achievement but how do schools connect with families who don’t participate yet? Educators can easily become frustrated trying to reach the disconnected and often fall back to engaging the already engaged. Is it possible to win over everyone? Discover how to move beyond theory to change your culture for better family engagement and student achievement. Through practical steps, reflections, and case studies, you will discover and address: How and where family engagement breaks down, and How to create a truly inviting culture for successful community and family partnerships

How can low-income, non-English-speaking parents become advocates, leaders, and role models in their children’s schools?A Cord of Three Strands offers a close study of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, a grassroots organization on the northwest side of Chicago, whose work on parent engagement has drawn national attention. The author identifies three elements—induction, integration, and investment—that together capture the dynamic and developmental nature of successful parent engagement. Writing with both optimism and urgency, author Soo Hong offers richly detailed portraits of parents’ experiences and addresses the complex and sometime conflicting relationships among school, family, and community.

The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions. Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching. This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the applications to classroom practice that can result from teachers knowing the communities in which they work. In a time when national educational discourses focus on system reform and wholesale replicability across school sites, this book offers a counter-perspective stating that instruction must be linked to students' lives, and that details of effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts. This approach should not be confused with parent participation programs, although that is often a fortuitous consequence of the work described. It is also not an attempt to teach parents "how to do school" although that could certainly be an outcome if the parents so desired. Instead, the funds of knowledge approach attempts to accomplish something that may be even more challenging: to alter the perceptions of working-class or poor communities by viewing their households primarily in terms of their strengths and resources, their defining pedagogical characteristics. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms is a critically important volume for all teachers and teachers-to-be, and for researchers and graduate students of language, culture, and education.

Proactively Develop Parental Involvement for Students’ Growth and Achievement Years of research and practice show that connecting with families positively impacts student achievement. This book is packed with ready-to-use ideas to actively engage parents as educational partners. This new edition includes current research on the impact of parent involvement, offers new strategies, and provides expanded coverage of ways to build bridges between the school and diverse families including: Innovative ways to sustain ongoing communication Ideas for welcoming parents as members of the school community Strategies for including parents in school governance Techniques for developing parent volunteer programs, and more

Learn how to work with and relate to the family of each child in an early childhood education program. Includes ideas about transforming the way schools and programs relate to families - each one according to their unique assets and needs with the goal of enriching and enlivening the school community and ensuring better outcomes for each child and the entire program. It will emphasize strategies for getting to know each family the way you get to know an individual person, and learn about their interests, their strengths, their style of interacting and their needs/challenges to encourage programs to move away from one-size-fits-all approaches to family engagement.

Countless studies demonstrate that students with parents actively involved in their education at home and school are more likely to earn higher grades and test scores, enroll in higher-level programs, graduate from high school, and go on to post-secondary education. Beyond the Bake Sale shows how to form these essential partnerships and how to make them work. Packed with tips from principals and teachers, checklists, and an invaluable resource section, Beyond the Bake Sale reveals how to build strong collaborative relationships and offers practical advice for improving interactions between parents and teachers, from insuring that PTA groups are constructive and inclusive to navigating the complex issues surrounding diversity in the classroom. Written with candor, clarity, and humor, Beyond the Bake Sale is essential reading for teachers, parents on the front lines in public schools, and administrators and policy makers at all levels.