As I sit here in my hotel room in Nashville, I noticed a new fangled coffee maker on the desk where I am doing some work for an upcoming presentation.

What is unusual about this coffeemaker was the fact that it didn’t have a pot!

Instead of a pot there was a place where you put a cup of water in and then simply put you cup where you would normally put the pot. It also had a special coffee filter setup in a disposable plastic container. This worked great and keeps people from taking extra coffee home with them.

Great design ideas!

You might ask what the heck does this have to do with parent involvement?

Well, great design will often lead to great results. If you are throwing money at your parent involvement program by buying books on P.I. for your school library or holding disconnected school events, you have a very poor design, or more likely, no design at all. Your results will not be measurable and you will see very little in the way of an increase in noticeable parent involvement at your school.

Without a good design, without measurable goals, objectives and the involvement of staff and parents in the design your results will be hit and miss.

Schools that make a conscious plan for the involvement of parents, in a variety of ways and then implement those plans that support school goals are much more likely to see success with parents.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr. Chuck and Su Amodeo are the authors of “Reaching the Hardest to Involve Parents” teacher/parent training manual.