Middle and high schools face unique challenges in developing and maintaining comprehensive programs of school, family, and community partnerships.” So states the NNPS’s School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, Third Edition (Chapter 6, p. 193). There are several reasons that family involvement tends to drop off in the middle grades. Secondary schools are usually further from home than elementary schools, making it difficult for parents to attend school activities. Students feel more independent. Teachers have many students and must connect with many families. Most schools do not have an organized leadership team – e.g., an Action Team for Partnerships – to plan how to involve families and the community in ways that contribute to student attendance, behavior, and achievement.
Answers to Your Questions
Although there are real challenges to developing effective partnership programs, research shows that family and community involvement through high school is just as important as in the early grades. Three articles in Chapter 6 (by Joyce Epstein, Beth Simon, and Natalie Jansorn) answer these questions:
The NNPS Handbook—meant to be read cover to cover—is an important resource for developing partnership programs in middle and high schools.
Ideas for Your Programs
So is Promising Partnership Practices 2009. The new edition includes activities from 13 middle and 6 high schools on age-appropriate ways to engage parents and community partners. For example, Stevens Middle School in Pasco, WA, conducted A Night at the Oscars to involved families with students by linking reading with the movies and other entertainment. Salisbury Middle School in Salisbury, MD, brought teachers, families, and students together at A Night Under the Milky Way, to increase the number of families familiar with and able to support students’ work in science. Naperville North High School increased leadership for partnerships by forming three action team committees focused on student advisors and mentors, internships in the community, and tours for incoming students.
Other schools described parent chats; subject specific games; motivating underachieving teens; choosing high school courses; and involving students with fashion experts, health experts, and safety services in the community. Middle and high schools in NNPS are showing that it is important and possible to design and implement effective partnership programs to support teens’ success in school.
For these and other middle and high school practices in 2009 and prior books, visit http://www.partnershipschools.org and click on Success Stories. Use the SEARCH function to call for activities in middle and high schools.
Brenda G. Thomas
bthomas@csos.jhu.edu