The team at your Parent Resource Center hopes you all enjoyed a happy and restful Thanksgiving holiday weekend. This week as Family Engagement Month draws to an end, we are delighted to welcome the Virginia Department of Education’s Family Engagement Specialist, Ms. Chiquita Seaborne, to Arlington Public Schools. In our culminating Family Engagement Month Event, Ms. Seaborne will join us on Tuesday, November 30th, at 7pm for a virtual parent session to address the important topic of how parents and schools can collaborate with one another to support student success.
Benefits of Collaboration
When families are involved in education, there are significant benefits for students, educators, and families. Students demonstrate more positive attitudes toward school and learning, higher achievement and test scores, improved behavior, increased homework completion, greater participation in academic activities, and improved school attendance. Educators report greater job satisfaction, higher evaluation ratings from parents and administrators, and mor e positive associations with families. Parents experience enhanced self-efficacy, better understanding and more positive experiences with educators and schools, improved communication with their children, and better appreciation for their role in their children’s education. These positive outcomes have been documented across families from diverse cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and socio-economic backgrounds. National Association of School Psychologists, 2005
Building strong home school partnerships directly contributes to student success. We hope you’ll join us to learn more along with Ms. Seaborne tomorrow at 7pm. Please register here – we look forward to seeing you online tomorrow! 🙂
Special Education Telenovela Episodes Now Online!
We were thrilled to welcome families and staff from Arlington and neighboring school districts, as well as participants from across the US and overseas to the premiere of La Sopa de la Abuela last week. If you missed the premiere, we are excited to announce that all five episodes of this series are now available online. The episodes are in Spanish with English subtitles, and are a wonderful and entertaining glimpse into a family’s journey through the special education process. Woven into the telenovela are key messages designed to support family engagement and advocacy, as our family navigates the special education process and the emotions that often accompany it while becoming advocates and active members of their child’s educational team.
Many thanks to the original design team – Ms. Gina Argotti, APS parent; Dr. Rosa Briceno, former APS Family Engagement Specialist; Ms. Kathleen Donovan, Parent Resource Center Coordinator; Ms. Karina Lagos, former APS parent; Emma Parral-Sanchez, Parent Resource Center Administrative Assistant; and Ms. Francesca Reilly-McDonnell, former English Learners Specialist; Ms. Monica Lozano, Equity and Excellence Coordinator; who has worked to develop companion parent learning sessions and co-facilitated our premiere launch; the phenomenal cast; the Offices of Family Engagement and English Learners, and finally, the amazing AETV team – John Stuhldreher, Byran Eckerson, Jeremy Koller and Rubaiyat Rhidoy – who brought our vision to reality. We hope this series will be a useful tool for both families and staff, and look forward to the accompanying learning sessions coming in January!
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