Discussions

Community Involvement

Epstein writes, "The way schools care about children is reflected in the way school's care about the children's families." What do you think she means by this? What do you see as the fundamental reason that schools, families and communities need to work together? Also, Abravanel's paper Building Community Through Service-Learning: The Role of Community Partner, makes interesting points about community involvement. Describe your vision of what this kind of engagement would look like in your community.

Los Pen

Profile the kind of empirical evidence at Los Pen that supports the school's transformation. Focus on quantitative data. Based on the statistical data gleaned from the readings what qualitative conclusions would you draw about the efficacy of the many aspects of differentiated parent support?Journal

Partnership

Write a paragraph identifying a community organization or business that you could contact with which to build a partnership and why this might work.

Carefully review the Grading Rubric for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your journal entries.

Final Project

Parent Involvement for the 21st Century

Effective parent and community involvement in a school setting does not just happen-it requires effort on the part of the school staff to first establish good relationships with parents and the community and then requires additional effort to maintain and improve these relationships. This is a necessary task for schools to attend to. Good parent and community relations make for a better school experience for everyone connected to the school.

For your final assignment in this course, you will create a parent and community involvement plan. Your plan should be ten to twelve pages in length, not including the title page and reference page. Be sure to include a minimum of five scholarly sources (not including your textbook), cited and referenced in APA style, that support your ideas.

Your plan should address the following items:

• Describe a philosophy of the plan. Why you are creating this involvement plan?
• Describe aims of the plan. What you intend to do?
• Describe goals of the plan. What you intend to accomplish?
• Describe school resources to implement the plan. Include personnel, materials, and funding.
• Explain the student role in the plan. What will they be doing?
• Explain the parent role in the plan. What they will be doing?
• Explain the role of other community members/organizations in the plan. What will they be doing?
• Explain actions to gain support for the plan. How will you create and engage support?
• Explain events to gain support for the plan; include events to gain parent participation and community attendance.
• Explain how you will evaluate the plan and criteria for success.
• Carefully review the Grading Rubric for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.