Thursday, March 22, 2012

Response: A Conversation About Building Trust Between #Parents & #Teachers - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo #soschat

Response: A Conversation About Building Trust Between Parents & Teachers - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo - Education Week Teacher:

Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo


Response: A Conversation About Building Trust Between Parents & Teachers

(This is Part Two of a three part series on parent engagement. You can see Part One here)
Kanwal Sachdeva asked:
I enjoyed reading your article on 'how to make students learn to listen'. My question is- How do we make parents to listen to the teachers? You know, for the students who need more help, the parents are not available to talk or they will not really listen. How do we make them understand teacher's perspective and not believe everything that the student is saying? How do we build that trust?
Parent engagement is a critical piece in creating a successful learning environment. Thanks for raising this important issue, Kanwal!
Earlier this week, National PTA President Betsy Landers and Carrie Rose, Executive Director of the Parent/Teacher Home Visit Project, shared their responses to this question. Next week, I'll be responding, along with other guests and readers.
Today, though, I'm lucky enough to have Steve Constantino and Joe Mazza share a conversation they had on this topic.
Response From Steve Constantino and Joe Mazza
Steve Constantino serves as superintendent of Williamsburg-James City Country School District in Williamsburg, Virginia. He has traveled extensively as a speaker, capacity-builder and leader in the arena of family engagement and has worked in hundreds of schools in 

An award-winning English and Social Studies teacher at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif., Larry Ferlazzo is the author of Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers To Classroom ChallengesEnglish Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work, and Building Parent Engagement In Schools.He also maintains the popular Websites of the Day blog. In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, he will address readers' questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to lferlazzo@epe.org. And offer your own thoughts and responses in the comments section.