From April Lee in Wayne County: Part of my ongoing middle school initiative over the past few years was to make learning at home and preparing for the CRCT interactive and engaging. The goal was to help parents with doing home activities to improve an area of need.

I collaborated with six teachers to select 33 students who may benefit from additional assistance through the year.  We used the TIPS samples and a few teachers created some of their own based on the specific needs of their students. There are also helpful online resources for teachers and similar online home interaction curriculum.

  “If we ask parents to help at home and give them no way of understanding what their child is learning, we are enlarging the gap of family engagement and parent-to-student conversations.

One of the goals of parent mentors is to encourage schools to educate the parents as well as the students on the importance of using the skills being taught in the classroom.  If learning is not meaningful, engaging and reproducible, there will be fewer students meeting their graduation and post-secondary goals.”