100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Engaging Parents by Janet Goodall & Kathryn Weston

Author:Janet Goodall & Kathryn Weston [Goodall, Janet & Weston, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: EDUCATION, Schools, Levels, Secondary, Parent Participation, Teaching, General, Juvenile Nonfiction, Study Aids
ISBN: 9781472976611
Google: G8XVDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2020-11-12T21:45:53+00:00

If you’re not clear on your objective, go back to the drawing board – look at Idea 7 as a starting place. You wouldn’t put on a lesson without a clear idea of what you hope to achieve; working with parents needs the same attention and clarity.

IDEA 47

Did it work?

‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.’ (Attributed to Albert Einstein)

Schools are – or have become – remarkably data-rich environments; it seems that every detail of school life is recorded somehow or other, somewhere or other.

However, evaluating this data, at least in our experience, tends to break down almost completely when it comes to work with parents. Often, when we ask whether schools have evaluated their work with parents, we’re told that ‘of course they have’. However, that evaluation is at the level of what is known in the trade as a ‘happy sheet’ – an ‘evaluation’ form filled in at the time of the event, which gives a very surface-level response to what has happened. While those sheets are helpful in relation to short-term issues, such as whether the venue was too hot or too cold, they’re not helpful in letting you know the impact of the event, workshop or whatever it is you’re evaluating.

The kind of evaluation that is really useful should take place not just once, but over a period of time. If you’ve ever attended training run by one of us, the chances are high that you’ve been asked to put a note in your diary for a few months after the training, to remind yourself to reflect on the day and what you’ve done as a result of it.

To be helpful, evaluation needs to take place over a longer period, and to be far more in-depth than a sheet that simply says ‘I enjoyed the evening’.

•Make evaluation a central part of your record-keeping system – get into the habit of writing and recording short evaluations as a matter of course.

•Plan evaluation as you plan your events – work evaluation into the processes.

•Ask people to record what they’ve learned and what they are going to do differently as a result of the event.

•Collect these ideas and publish them (anonymously) in a way that will be seen by most of your parents – for example, on the school website, on social media and in the school foyer.

•What you really want to know is not whether or not people enjoyed a particular event, but whether or not that event has had an impact that can’t necessarily be seen on the day.

•Celebrate what has been learned and what’s changing.

•Make it easy for parents and colleagues to give you evaluations: email them simple forms or questions, or use something like Google Forms (the simpler you make them, the easier it is to get the information from them!).

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