Announcing...PPE's NEXT STEP!

Practical Parent Education, LLC, (PPE) has announced the second phase of its Parent Engagement Program for Schools.  NEXT STEP is an intense one day workshop for PPE trained facilitators who have been using the PPE program.  It is designed to help the facilitators identify their families' assets as well as their program needs for the next year and to design a program to meet those needs.

According to Lucy Long, Ph.D. PPE's Director of Operations, NEXT STEP answers the frequently asked question "How do we get parents to come?"  Tested in late 2010 using PPE's Profile of Families Checklist, this new product directs each school facilitator(s) in planning unique parent engagement activities for their unique needs. 

Although a large body of research indicates that children's home environments and their parents' engagement with their schools are powerful determining factors to their academic success, there are still gaps in how schools want parents to engage and how parents are willing to engage.  NEXT STEP is designed to close those gaps. 

Currently operating in thirty six states, Japan and Mexico, Practical Parent Education has been providing curricula, training, evaluation tools and consulting for schools and other family education groups for   twenty-six years.   As a family education program based on theories of family systems and ages and stages of children, it serves families from the time their children are born until the children are career ready.  NEXT STEP is now available to all PPE trained parent educators to provide focus for their programs.

To schedule a NEXT STEP training, please call 877.340.6262 or email ppe@practicalparent.org.

Parents are the biggest stakeholders in the education process. 

They have the most to give - they spend more time with their children during the first twenty-one years than educators spend. 

They have the most to lose - if schools fail, their children are at risk for incarceration and substandard job opportunities. 

They have the most to win - if schools succeed, their children will be critical thinkers who are compassionate and responsible and they will take good care of their parents in their old age.

So why is it that we have to work so hard to get parents engaged in their children's learning?  According to Kathleen Hoover-Dempsey and Howard Sandler at Vanderbilt University, there are three factors that influence the choices that parents make about being involved in their children's education:

How parents develop their job description as a parent.   What do they think they are supposed to do to help their children?

How confident parents feel about their ability to help their children.  Many parents throw up their hands and quite trying to be effective parents.

Whether parents feel invited - both by their children and by the school. Although helping parents with their parenting practices has traditionally not been a part of a public school educator's role, it is today.  Dr. Joyce Epstein lists assisting families with parenting as one of her keys for effective parent engagement programs.

The Pew  Charities Trust research reports that parenting practices are the single most definitive predictor of social ills such as teen pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, drug use, truancy and dropout.  When the school and the community partner with parents to support their parenting efforts and to build their parenting capacity, everybody's job get easier.

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