Current Topic
Building the Parent Teacher Relationship
The Mentors
Co-authors of Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family-School Partnerships (with Vivian R. Johnson and Don Davies), Anne T. Henderson and Karen L. Mapp offer advice and dozens of practical solutions for building strong family-school-community relationships to benefit student learning. They have partnered with school districts, foundations, teacher organizations, and grassroots parent and community groups across the country. For more than 20 years each, they have worked in the field of parent involvement—researching, speaking, consulting, and writing about how and why engaging families can narrow the achievement gap.
A senior consultant to the Community Involvement Program at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Henderson has written a small library of reader-friendly reports, guides, articles and books. After serving as Boston Public School’s Deputy Superintendent for Family and Community Engagement, Mapp joined Harvard’s Graduate School of Education as a Lecturer on Education in 2005. With their expertise in educational partnerships, Mapp and Henderson are key voices in the national discussion on family involvement.
Henderson and Mapp will answer your questions on the relationship between parents and teachers—which, at times, can be complicated. What can you, as a teacher, do to engage parents in your already overscheduled day? What’s the best approach for navigating cultural, class, or racial differences with your students’ families? What supports should you expect—and get—from school leaders? And what’s the secret to coping with problem parents?
Please submit your questions for Henderson and Mapp here: