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 Awareness of Your School Community
Within your school community you have a wealth of experiences, knowledge,skills, talents and perspectives that could potentially take learning in a differentdirection for your students. By making sure that you are aware of who is in ourschool community, and by making your school community aware of what you andyour students are learning about, you can harness this potential resource.
Parents
Teachers have mixed feelings about involving parents any more than the amountrequired by the school. A few parent tea sessions, information evenings andconferences are generally seen as enough. In these examples they tend to bepassive recipients of information If they are involved more, however, they canhave a very powerful effect on your community of learners. By bringing them in asmore active participants than is usually the case, you are able to harness theirpotential as mentors, as experts and as people who can make things happen thatmay not have been possible before. Naturally, you are usually going to get one ortwo “squeaky wheels”, parents who want to have their say all the time or whocriticize what you do the more aware they become of what you do. This can behighly irritating, but is it irritating enough to prevent you from trying to involveparents more? We would argue not.Think about the dynamic that you currently have with the parents of yourstudents. Where would it fit along this continuum?
Continuum of Parental Involvement
Many of us use parents as an audience, a chance for students to showcase whatthey have done at the end of units of study. Parents are, of course, alwaysextremely proud, and the experience
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valuable for the students. However, thereare opportunities to enhance student learning by not limiting parents to thispassive role.
Passive observers Practical “helpers” Active participants in learning
 
In many international schools, parents are people with a fair amount of power attheir fingertips. They might be directors of multi-national companies, NGOemployees, factory managers, art gallery owners, chefs and sports coaches. Theymay be able to offer opportunities to make real-world connections with yourcurriculum. They may be able to speak to your students as experts in their field.They may be able to come in and teach specific skills to your students. They mayalso have hidden talents, skills and interests! The more aware they become of what you are learning about, the more likely those connections are to happen foryou.Parent/child relationships will blossom as you involve parents in their child’slearning. Instead of just seeing what their child has done, they will becomeincreasingly aware of what their child thinks about things, what their opinions are,what their learning styles are and who they are when they are at school. Childrenwill also become more aware of what their parents think, what their opinions are,what their talents are and what their life has been like. These conversations areusually not possible in the context of home. Making them happen in yourclassrooms is really powerful and very exciting to watch as they unfold. Theconnections that emerge from experiences like these can become pivotal points ineach child’s education.
Get to know who the parents are 
Most schools have some kind of “Back to School Night”. This is a great chance tofind out about the parents by making it a two-way information session. Try toavoid standing in front of everybody and lecturing, unless that is required byschool policy. Create some slideshows that show you in action as a teacher, shareyou resumé, have your blog or website available for them to look at, haveenlarged copies of school information such as schedules available. Then, set upways for parents to provide information about themselves. This could include:
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 A hobbies, talents and interests chart.
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 A business card collection box
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 An interactive “Making Curriculum Connections” poster that outlines yourcurriculum for the year and invites them to look for opportunities to help insome capacity.
Involve parents in the initial stages of learning 
 
Get them to come in and work with the students when establishing what theyalready know about a topic or issue. Allow students and parents to use theirmother tongue so that they may have deeper conversations. Involve parents informative assessments and have them using rubrics or continuums to assess theirown child’s knowledge and understanding as well as to develop their ownunderstanding of those assessment methods.
Bring them back in the middle 
Invite parents to come and talk to the children in the middle of an inquiry. Havethe students present their ideas and their decisions to parents and encourageparents to provide guidance, feedback, support and even expert help.
Bring them back at the end 
This is where parents usually find themselves becoming involved, as an audience.However, don’t always settle for a passive audience. Get the parents to take partby providing feedback, by encouraging the students to teach them a skill, bygetting the parents to help with summative assessments or by gathering evidenceof student-initiated actions outside school.
Include parents in excursions 
Parents can be a very valuable resource when it comes to planning excursions. Assign them a group each and get them to take responsibility for those studentsduring the excursion. This can provide a lot more freedom to move and to respectthe students’ wishes with regard to stopping and looking at things, or going indifferent directions to the larger group. It can also provide great flexibility fordifferentiation as you are able to create a wider variety of groups that match thelearning styles and needs of your students. By allocating groups to parents,teachers can be more free to interact with students and to move between groups,taking photos and gathering evidence of student reactions to the experience.
Other teachers in the school
Don’t be afraid to annoy your colleagues with emails or face-to-face conversationsthat solicit their advice, their expertise, their talents or their skills. Here are someexamples of how we have brought other teacher in to our community of learners:
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