Learning Curve
Parent Mentor Duo Teams with Ga. Southern
Meet Fay Blythe in Bulloch County
Meet Christina Holland in Candler County
This duo of parent mentors in neighboring districts created a family engagement event focused on families of children with Autism. This collaborative effort by Holland and Blythe grew out of concerns about the growing numbers of students in their districts who were being served in Special Education due to an autism diagnosis. When Georgia Southern reached out to Holland after seeing a recent Facebook post about parent trainings for parents of students with Autism, the mentors knew they needed to provide a collaborative community program. And Georgia Southern offerred to host, which, for anyone planning a regional event knows, is a big part of planning an event like this.
This is the first time the two are collaborating together and they hope to use this first event as a way to identify other family training topics needed for events in the future.
“We live in a rural area so it’s nice to work with a neighboring county; also, for this area the autism resources are limited, so it’s nice to share what we can with parents. But we are figuring this out as we go along, so I would encourage other mentors to take the leap when coming up with ideas for parent engagement!”
Fay Blythe