Engaging Parents for Improved Student Success

Parents are universally accepted as a child’s first teacher. It’s intuitive, and we usually know it from our own experience. Schools that embrace this reality and recognize the important role parents play in their child’s education are better able to create curriculum and build relationships with parents that have a profound effect on a child’s journey through school.

The Illinois Parent Information Resource Center (Illinois PIRC) also recognizes how critical parents are to children’s learning and development. An initiative of the Center for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College Chicago, Illinois PIRC is part of the United States Department of Education’s national effort to support school improvement and student success through parent involvement.

Illinois PIRC uses an arts-based, community-centered approach to parent involvement that supports the school’s effort to meet the educational needs of children. Our services and resources are aligned with the opportunities that are outlined in Section 1118 of Title I. As such, we serve as an information depot to help schools, school districts and parent groups inform parents about school choice, supplemental educational services available in their community, and how to help parents better understand Illinois’ state accountability systems. As a result, we’re seeing parents learn how to communicate with teachers, participate in policy-making and school improvement efforts, and create a better learning environment at home.

Another critical part to this national effort is to build a more holistic environment in schools and districts where parents are viewed as an integral partner within the achievement puzzle our education system works to construct, and solve. Illinois PIRC supports this through a variety of strategies, resources and technical assistance, and by modeling best practices. We also offer professional development not only for schools wishing to strengthen their parental involvement plans, but also for parents who wish to demonstrate more leadership in their schools and communities. Our parent resource rooms in targeted schools are evidence of the welcoming spirit and strategy embraced for encouraging parents to become more active in their child’s education. Resources abound for parents wishing to become more supportive in their child’s learning in school and at home. We even have resources for parents, such as ESL or computer classes, that help strengthen their capacity to learn, to work within the system, and to better utilize the resources available to them.

Each PIRC around the nation looks a bit different, and Illinois PIRC has a unique focus in that it uses learning in and through the arts as a vehicle for strengthening parent engagement and the family-school connection. An excellent example is our Family Portraits program. Community arts organizations, schools and families are brought together in after school sessions that allow participants to connect and discover their creativity. Through text and digital photography, parents and their children explore ways to celebrate and lift up their own individual stories, and those of their families. Beautiful scrapbook and photo albums are created through these workshops, but more importantly parents become more engaged in the school environment. In working with facilitators and artists, they better understand the developmental needs of their children and become empowered to work more creatively with them when they return home. Parents also come to appreciate their school more, including the administrative leaders who help provide such programming.

This is just a sample of the innovative work being done by Illinois PIRC to increase parent involvement and improve student success. Learn more about how you can get involved at www.colum.edu/ilpirc because supporting parental involvement is more often than not the missing link to improving student achievement.

David Flatley is the executive director for the Center for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College Chicago and the managing director for Illinois PIRC.

[Photo credit: jose_kevo]