IRIS Collaborating with Families

I just wanted to share Anne Henderson's comment about a "family friendly school":

"I do want to emphasize the points about how important it is to make sure everybody in the school community feels welcome and involved. I sometimes worry when we’re sitting down and looking at school data and we say, well, these certain kids aren’t doing well. We really have to raise their achievement so let’s work with their parents, when the school as a whole isn’t working with parents well. We have to create what I would call a family friendly school that really is open and accessible to families, that reaches out to them, all families, and create a general climate of partnership in the school. And then when we reach out to families whose children are lagging academically or emotionally or behaviorally, or whatever it is, you’re going to have the groundwork all laid to make the steps to have that extra collaboration that’s so needed. It’s the school that sets that tone. If the school is really centered on children and children doing well, then they run much less of a risk of parents being advocates narrowly just for their own children. And everybody in the school community’s going to be more mindful of what’s happening for all children in the school".- Anne T. Henderson
http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/fam/cwrap/cwrap_trans_henderson/#content 

 I love the idea of creating a "family friendly school." Reaching out to all families and creating a partnership so that when a child is lagging in some way the ground work is already laid to start collaborating.