EDUC/545
Family Engagement and Community Involvement
Online
Format
$525
Estimated Tuition
3 credits
Total credits
4 weeks
Course length
Start when you're ready
Choose an upcoming start date:
Enroll by 1pm Central:
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Course level: Continuing Teacher Education
This course focuses on family engagement and community involvement in K-12 education. Participants examine strategies for establishing and maintaining collaborative relationships with culturally diverse parents, families, and communities. The emphasis is on building relationships, family outreach, and developing an understanding and appreciation of families from diverse backgrounds. Participants explore methods to improve communication and collaboration to support learning, and explore ways to connect students, parents, families, and schools with the community. This course is not available for enrollment to residents of Alabama, Arkansas, and Kentucky.
Prerequisites
None
What you'll learn
Course skills and outcomes
Communicating With Parents and Families
- Examine ways to promote regular, two-way, meaningful communication between parents, families, and schools.
- Explore ways to promote an atmosphere for parents and families so that they feel welcome, valued, and connected to school staff.
- Discuss strategies for working with students, parents, and families from diverse sociocultural backgrounds.
- Determine methods to improve parent-teacher conferences.
Collaborating with Families and the School Community
- Discuss the characteristics of effective collaboration.
- Explore ways to foster collaboration and involvement between parents, families, and schools.
- Identify approaches to promote school–home connections.
- Describe ethical issues to consider when working with parents and families.
- Synthesize current research findings on school and community relations.
- Assess the demographics, dynamics, issues, and trends of a diverse school community and the implications for partnerships and collaborations.
- Explore ways to promote collaboration of parents, families, and schools with the community.
- Describe ethical issues to consider when working with community groups.
- Develop a multifaceted plan that enables the community and school to serve each other to develop relevant and needed services.
Collaborating With the Business Community
- Examine a school’s current partnerships with business groups in the community.
- Identify opportunities for establishing partnerships with community businesses.
- Describe ethical issues to consider when working with business groups.
- Create a process for building and maintaining a reciprocal partnership with community businesses.
Empowerment, Advocacy, and Decision Making
- Describe ways to empower parents and families to advocate for their children.
- Explain ways to promote an equal partnership between parents, families, and schools with regard to decision making.
- Examine ways to get parents and families involved in informing, influencing, and creating school policies, practices, and programs.
