Thursday 26 December 2019

7 Tips to Unify Parents and Schools: Umoja in Action

Today is the first day of Kwanzaa. Growing up my family celebrated Kwanzaa before we celebrated Christmas. Therefore the principles of the Nguzo Saba have always been important guides in my life. We can borrow inspiration from today’s principle, Umoja to unify parents and schools. First, for those who are new to Kwanzaa, some context. …

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Tuesday 10 December 2019

What Difference Does Family Engagement Make? Research Shows a Big One

Does parent and family engagement really make a difference in our schools?  Education suffers from trends – might family engagement just be another one of them? Well, quite frankly, no.  Family engagement still isn’t as trendy as it should be as a school improvement strategy, especially given what the research teaches us. Leading researchers in …

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Tuesday 3 December 2019

One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Diverse Parent Volunteer Opportunities

In Anne Henderson and Karen Mapp’s report (http://www.sedl.org/connections/resources/evidence.pdf) they found that volunteers can help create a supportive and welcoming school climate.  This can help improve student’s behavior and performance. To get a diverse and large set of parents engaged, there needs to be a diverse and large set of volunteer opportunities. Not all parents enjoy …

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Meet Our Team – Roquel Crutcher

  When Roquel was a student, she quickly realized that the education system was broken. Born and raised in Memphis, she attended three different schools — a traditional public elementary school, a public charter middle school, and a private high school. “There’s no reason for any kid to have to bounce around this much to …

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Monday 2 December 2019

Top 10 Educator Gifts This Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday is full of great educator gifts this year! As a former teacher and school principal, I noticed that the yearly classroom item budget requests from teachers were very similar year after year. The Possip team has put together a list of the top 10 educator gifts on Cyber Monday so you can send …

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Tuesday 26 November 2019

What I’m Thankful I Learned About Parent Engagement Ten Years Later

I started teaching ten years ago as a high school English teacher in North Nashville. I had just moved to the city, and even had the exact same job as my mom that year — both of us teaching Freshman English, though she was working at a private school outside of Cincinnati, where I’d grown …

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8 Tips to Help Parents Be Homework Heroes

Schools and teachers play a crucial role in empowering and helping parents to support their students with homework and general academics.  If parents aren’t equipped to help with homework, assigning homework can be painful – or even inequitable. Recently in our Possip surveys, we’ve heard parents asking questions about how to support their student with …

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Thursday 21 November 2019

Helping Parents Help Students Succeed

Parents and schools are on the same team. They both want to help students achieve, learn, and grow. Helping parents help students succeed.  In this Possip Power webinar we share some tips on how schools, teachers, and parents can all play a role in helping students learn and grow at home.  

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Tuesday 19 November 2019

Supporting Teachers Through the Season: Part 2

Part 1 of our blog on Supporting Teachers Through the Season (https://www.possipit.com/supporting-teachers/) provided some tips for school leaders to implement if you have overwhelmed teachers know that supporting teachers matters. We know that prioritizing teacher morale and sustainability is essential to overall school success. Dysregulated adults can never create regulated children. School leaders can focus …

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Principal Support This Season: 7 Ideas

Supporting teachers is important this time of year – but so is principal support.  I remember a line from Superman when I was a kid.  Superman has just caught Lois Lane from a falling building. Superman: Easy, miss. I’ve got you. Lois Lane: You, you‘ve got me? Who’s got you? Who Provides Principal Support? As I think about …

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Monday 18 November 2019

Supporting Teachers: Possip 15-Minute Power Session

Supporting Teachers Through the Season Holiday season can be an exciting time for our students.  But for teachers, it can prove a little stressful.  Supporting teachers is important all year, and especially now! This is a time where teachers have worked hard – but they aren’t always yet to the place where they are seeing …

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Monday 11 November 2019

Supporting Teachers Through the Season

Supporting teachers matters.  As we head into the holiday season, Possip’s internal research shows that the Thanksgiving holiday can be the start of a high season of teacher turnover and attrition. Further, esearch shows that almost 50% of teachers leave the profession in their first 5 years. http://www.nea.org/tools/17054.htm  The good news is there are things …

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Thursday 7 November 2019

Getting Parents onto Campus – or Engaged if Not

Schools often want to get parents onto campus and engaged.   Yet there are barriers.   In this 15 minute power session, former principal Amanda Richards shares some quick tips for how to get parents onto campus. Also, parents can’t get to campus – so how can you engage them if they can’t! Sign up …

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Tuesday 5 November 2019

6 Tips for Teacher Parent Communication: Principal’s Corner

Last week we shared part 1 of our series on teacher parent communication. You can find it here: https://www.possipit.com/teacher-parent-communication-principals-corner/ We know that parents and teachers have diverse needs and wants.  Our last blog shares a bit about how principals can help teachers segment their parents.  We also want to share some tactical steps for teacher …

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Tuesday 29 October 2019

Teacher Parent Communication: Principal’s Corner

How To Improve Teacher Parent Communication Teacher parent communication. Parents sometimes say “I want better communication with my child’s teacher.”  What does that mean?  And is it really possible?  The short answer is – yes!  There are easier ways to improve teacher to parent communication.  This is part 1 of our 2 part series on …

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Wednesday 23 October 2019

Teacher Vacancies Mid-Year: Principal’s Corner

Mid-year teacher vacancies is tough!  The teachers I worked with knew that choosing to leave mid-year was not an option in my mind. Studies show that students who have a teacher leave mid-year lose about 54 days of academic growth compared to those who have a stable teacher all year (see the research here). Teacher retention …

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Wednesday 16 October 2019

How Vulnerability Can Be The Key To Getting Parents Engaged (Part Two)

Natalie is a 2nd grade teacher in one of Possip’s partner schools. Recently, she talked with our team about parent engagement, and how she got over her fear of being vulnerable with her students’ parents. This is part two of a two part blog. Read Part One here.   Photo by stem.T4L on Unsplash At the end of …

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Getting Your School a Plan to Respond to Bullying

Last week we blogged about preventative bullying tips.  The reality is, bullying happens even with the best planning. Also, we have found that parents can give grace when their child experiences bullying at school.  However, they can get frustrated when there isn’t a plan to address it.  So this week we’re back with tips on …

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Reacting to Bullying: A Detailed Plan

This post is a more detailed plan of a summary blog post we have. SUMMARY 1- Communicate what you know as soon as possible to parents.  Sometimes we are hesitant to reach out to parents until we have everything – but we really can and should communicate with what we know. 2 – Learn, learn, …

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Rural Schools and Engaged Parents

Seeing Rural Schools From a New Perspective I’ve often thought about engaged parents from the lens of my own experiences with family members who attended rural schools. Moving to New York recently has me thinking a bit differently.  Since I’m originally from Mississippi and Tennessee I find the subway experience fascinating. Between 6-9AM on New …

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Tuesday 15 October 2019

How Vulnerability Can Be the Key to Getting Parents Engaged

  Natalie is a 2nd grade teacher in one of Possip’s partner schools. Recently, she talked with our team about parent engagement, and how she got over her fear of being vulnerable with her students’ parents. During Natalie’s first several years of teaching, she taught kindergarten and first grade, and was originally a little nervous …

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Monday 14 October 2019

5 Reasons to Take a School Tour 

In many of our districts and schools across the country, we are starting to enter a time period where parents will need to choose where their child goes to school – whether kindergarten or high school.  This is, admittedly, a huge choice. But here’s the deal!  Whether you are sending your child to your neighborhood …

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Thursday 10 October 2019

Meet Our Team – Michael Dyer

Michael is one of the newest members of the Possip team and has already started to play a vital role in helping Possip reach more schools throughout the country. We talked with him recently about his own experience in school growing up, and how he thinks about Possip as a tool to leverage parent and …

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Wednesday 9 October 2019

Preventing Bullying: How Schools and Parents Can Partner

Bullying rates are on the rise. According to a survey done by YouthTruth (https://youthtruthsurvey.org/bullying-today/), 1 in 3 students are bullied in schools. As a parent and principal, seeing a statistic like this is hard.  Is bullying different or is the definition of bullying changing? What are ways we can be active in preventing bullying? The …

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Principal’s Corner: Tutoring Program that Works for Your School and Students

This week, a trending question from parents is after school tutoring. Most of this blog is designed to help schools put on a tutoring program and plan – but parents, scroll to the bottom to see suggestions for how you can support your child if your school doesn’t have tutoring resources available. A tutoring program …

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Principal’s Corner – Reflecting on Parent Engagement as a School Leader

  Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash In Amanda’s second year as a principal in Dallas, she knew she needed to make parent engagement a priority. She’d returned to the school district she’d originally taught in after finishing her master’s degree, and she realized that engaging the parents and families of her students would be key to making her …

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Wednesday 2 October 2019

Principal’s Corner: 8 Steps to Building an Effective Parent Organization

A recent 2018 survey from the Learning Policy Institute (https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/nassp-understanding-addressing-principal-turnover-review-research-report) found that the fifth highest factor that would help principal retention (behind pay, increased PD, time, and school budget) is having more positive parental support. As a previous principal, I understand the stress that comes with unsatisfied parents. The principal position is so complex and …

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Friday 27 September 2019

Partner Feature – Nashville Classical

Nashville classical was one of Possip’s first partner schools. Their enrollment, parent happiness and teacher satisfaction are all inspiring. We wanted to talk to them a bit about their family engagement mindsets and systems. What are a few things you want to make sure all parents know before the start of the school year? Nashville …

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Wednesday 25 September 2019

4 Tips to Quickly Communicate Academic Progress

Parents want to know how their child is doing academically.  Schools can often feel pressure about the best ways to share this information without overburdening teachers or current systems.  There is hope.  There are simple ways schools can share academic progress information.  Also, parents can be an important resource for schools in getting academic information. …

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Friday 20 September 2019

Immigrant Families Navigating Family Engagement

Isha is a current student who just started her sophomore year at Emory. She is passionate about the immigrant experience and interned with Possip this past summer and is sharing today on our blog a little bit about her experience with parent engagement as the child of immigrants.    Growing up, I always dreaded parent teacher …

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Wednesday 18 September 2019

Build Lifelong Learning Thru Parents

Every city is officially back to school.  Yay! This means we’re also back to working with parents, schools and districts on building community and improved parent engagement.  Possip is a learning tool so we are always thinking about lifelong learning.  In that spirit, we wanted to share some ways that parents and schools can work …

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Monday 16 September 2019

Parents Need A Sense of Belonging Too! 7 Tips to Help Parents Belong

Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us.  – Brene Brown In Possip’s work with schools and districts, we’ve noticed something. Teachers and schools are given so much responsibility for the success of students, they sometimes are left thinking they – the teachers and school administrators – need to …

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Friday 13 September 2019

Navigating a New School District

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash When Kate and her family relocated from Portland to a new, larger district this Summer, there was a lot of new. A new job, a new city, and, naturally, new schools for her first and fifth grade kids. In many ways, it was daunting. As a long time educator, though, she thought …

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Monday 9 September 2019

What If the Principal Rode the Bus?

What if the principal rode the bus? During my third year of teaching, I got an email with a sign up sheet for all the different bus routes during the first few weeks of the school year. It was a bit overwhelming — on top of lesson planning and adjusting to my new schedule (an …

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