Quick and Easy Ways to Connect With Students and Their Parents, Grades K-8
Improving Student Achievement Through Parent Involvement
- Diane Mierzwik - Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District
The book is full of ideas, strategies, and sample forms, documents, and letters that teachers can use or adapt for their own purposes. The author presents alternative ideas for adapting strategies and adopts an upbeat and enthusiastic tone to motivate teachers to use her strategies. Diane Mierzwik's strategies will improve the classroom environment, solve many classroom management problems, and keep students motivated, and most strategies require only a few minutes of a teacher's time each day. The research shows that parent involvement results in increased student achievement, so many schools are focusing on this component of school success.
Includes guidance on topics critical to beginning teachers:
} back-to-school night
} parent-teacher conferences
} parent volunteers
} reaching out to uninvolved parents
} talking to parents about difficult students and other problems
} using E-mail as a communication tool
time-saving tips
} motivating even the most difficult students
"A novice teacher should find Mierzwik’s book to be quite helpful as they face the many challenges of modern day classroom teaching."
"As a veteran teacher, I wondered what this book could teach me. Well, it taught me valuable ideas, some new, some long forgotten. It resulted in my brain processing a deluge of new ways to look at old behavior problems."
"This book is an excellent resource for veteran and beginning teachers. It contains a number of simple, practical, useful, and effective ideas, suggestions, and practices that can be easily implemented."
"Diane Mierzwik offers an approach to teaching which is both humane and effective. Her suggestions are backed by years of experience and research and will help everyone, from the brand new teachers to the old hand."
"This book is not only for the beginning teacher, but for the seasoned teacher that needs new and innovative ways of touching the lives of our growing student population with diverse needs."
"This book is chock full of ideas that can be put into place immediately. From personally greeting each child every morning to conducting parent conferences, the author provides practical, easy-to-accomplish strategies for building relationships that let students and parents know you care."
