Title: Introduction: The Teacher as Everyday Advocate
Headings: Introduction: The Teacher as Everyday Advocate
Everyday Engagement
Introduction: The Teacher as Everyday Advocate
Finding a New Solution to a Familiar Challenge
Meaningful Engagement
Being the Difference, Being the Advocate
Requesting Permission

Content: According to the 2006 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, new teachers consider engaging and working with parents their greatest challenge, more so than classroom management, organizing a new classroom, or obtaining supplies. In fact, parent involvement in learning is the area they feel the least prepared to respond to during their first year of teaching. Not surprisingly, fewer than half of the new teachers surveyed were satisfied with their relationship with parents. It is time for a change. It is time to look at parent partnership in a different way, using the lens of engagement. Encouraging parent partnership doesn't mean tallying the number of hours parents are in the school building each week or teaching parents how to teach reading. What it means is cultivating a welcoming atmosphere for parents, just as we create a welcoming atmosphere for our students. It means giving parents comfortable and significant ways to participate in the schooling process in the same way we aim to give our students meaningful and appropriate work to help them master academic goals and other classroom challenges. Meaningful Engagement
One of the most valuable lessons I've learned as a teacher is that all students need to feel seen and known. Before they will fully engage their minds in the classroom, they need to believe that their teacher has an understanding of who they are.