Parent engagement topic at meeting of school councils

If you want parents involved in their children's schooling, you must make decisions with them, not for them.

This was part of the message that Dr. Debbie Pushor had for school community council members at Living Sky School Division's sixth annual School Community Council Workshop Oct. 30.

School Community Councils are committees of parents, students, teachers and administrators in each school. They serve to guide the planning process in support of student achievement and well-being.

Representatives from school community councils across Living Sky School Division heard Dr. Pushor describe several practical areas where parents can be truly involved, not just in supporting such things as fundraising and school events, as important as they are, but in areas critical to their child's learning.

Some practical suggestions of how to get started in this process included such things as a community canvas, where teachers interact with the communities in the neighbourhoods they live in, a school welcome wagon for new families, a community walk, parent orientations for staff, parent letters, home visits, home and school learning albums and parent planning and programming sessions. None of this asks parents to take the role of teachers, but it does recognize that education truly begins in the home, and many of the most important skills we learn develop there, critical to life success.

Dr. Pushor has been a teacher, principal, and administrator, and is currently in the Curriculum Studies faculty at the University of Saskatchewan.