Debbie’s career began with Edmonton Public Schools in Alberta, Canada where she worked as a teacher, a consultant, a principal and a central services administrator.
Her experiences as a parent of school-aged children caused her to attend to the positioning of parents in relation to schools and prompted the focus of her doctoral work, A Storied Photo Album of Parents’ Positioning and the Landscape of Schools.

[podcast]/wp-content/uploads/EducationalGatewayPushorInterview.mp3[/podcast]

Debbie Pushor opened our session by inviting participants to bring to mind a recollection of their participation in a common early years event: an event such as a parent orientation meeting for a childcare, preschool, ECE or K program or a Meet the Teacher Night for Grade 1 or 2. After each table grouping had sketched out an agenda that typically represents an event such as this, Debbie asked us to analyze the event:

• Who created the agenda?
• Who led the session?
• How much time during the meeting did the educator(s) talk?
• How much time during the meeting did parents talk?
• What did the parents’ talk consist of?
• How much planned/facilitated interaction took place between and among parents?

Analyzing the “old story”

As groups shared the agenda they had sketched out, and their analysis of that agenda, it became evident they had certain elements in common:

• These events typically happened in the early years classroom/centre.
• They were planned and facilitated by the educator/s.
• The educator/s did most of the talking during the event.
• The educator/s shared policy and programming decisions they had made with parents.
• Most interactions occurred in a back and forth between the educator/s and the parent/s, not between and among parents.
• Parents were invited to be involved in their child’s early years program in the ways the educator/s outlined/proposed.

Proposing a “new story”

Debbie then proposed a “new story” of parent engagement in the early years. She invited participants to consider an alternative to the “old story” they had just described and analyzed. Instead of the typical orientation event we had just discussed, she suggested we put in its place, as an example, a 6 week orientation process for parents whose children are entering an early years context.

Session 1:

• Held in early years setting.
• Friendly, relaxed, food available, time to mingle.
• Educator(s) introduce themselves to parents/caregivers both personally and professionally.
• Parents are invited to introduce themselves to the group.
• An educator shares a story with the parent group, such as Linger by Marny Duncan-Cary.
• In response, parents are invited to talk in small groups about how they are feeling regarding having their child enter the early years context:
  • Hopes and dreams
  • Fears
  • The information they feel they want or need to support their child in their early years program.

Sessions 2 – 6:

• The information shared by parents in the first session is used to plan the remaining sessions. These sessions may include such things as:
  • Parents sharing how they are engaged with their children at home/the kinds of things they do together.
  • Introductions of other staff from the centre/school (1 or 2 each session with time to talk about what that person does and how they may interact with the family over the course of the program).
  • Presentations on topics the parents have asked to be discussed/want to learn more about.
  • A feature on one aspect of the early years program (e.g. literacy, numeracy, play).
  • Site tour.
  • Time for parents to mingle with one another and with the educators.

Beliefs and assumptions about parents in a “new story” of parent engagement in the early years

As Debbie analyzed the agenda she had sketched out, she emphasized that this “new story” is based on different assumptions and beliefs about parents:

• The home is as important a site of learning as the early years setting.
• Educators  and parents are both “knowers” about children, teaching and learning.
• There is benefit in educators sharing power/decision-making with parents.
• A web of relationships is important:
  • Educator with parent,
  • Parents with parents.
  • This “new story” of early years learning creates opportunities for parent engagement.
  • A story of parent engagement is a story that:
    • Is strength-based
    • Engages parents as parents, not as teachers
    • Honors the capacity parents possess
    • “Asks them”
      • What their hopes and dreams are
      • To share their knowledge
      • How they want to be engaged
• Ensures all individuals (children, educators and parents) are strengthened through their engagement.

Debbie then challenged participants to generate their own “new story” of parent engagement in the early years. The following items, listed on their brainstormed charts, reflect participants’ initial thinking and work.

Participants’ imaginings of a new early years story of parent engagement

• School – hold the orientation over a 2 week period, keep it informal, provide parents the opportunity to meet and interact with the teachers.
• Child Care Centre – provide the opportunity for a site tour during interview/registration times, discuss and write specifics and notes about individual needs into the contract, include a comments section for parents on the contract, use the website as a rich source of information, share parent testimonials with others.
• OEYC – provide a survey for participants to complete after workshops, survey parents about  specific topics of interest to them (e.g. specific behaviour, resources, any issues, comfort level to approach), ensure workshops are available and are well-communicated.
• During agendas, as well as having the principal/teacher talk and share information, have the teacher invite parents to share information, to ask questions, and to have a short time for parent visits.
• Establish a parent-led cooking program – an opportunity to cook together, to discuss nutrition, to engage in decision making.
• Distribute an open-ended parent questionnaire at the beginning of the school year: “Tell me about your child.”
• Hold a Make and Take Event – parent and child create a shadow box, and tell about their family.
• Host a Career Day/Meet My Parents – an invitation to parents to tell about themselves to the class.
• As a fun way to gain parent insight/input, hold a raffle with a different spin on it. On the raffle paper, include a question regarding the program. Parent answers the question as part of their entry
• Orientation:W
  • Week before nursery school, children and parents were invited to meet teachers & tour classroom. Parents were offered coffee, children were engaged in craft/circle time. Parents completed forms and reviewed parent handbook.
  • JK stagger start – introduce into Parenting and Family Literacy Centres.
  • Parents are oriented with supervisor.

• Engaging Parents:
  • How to use everyday material to sort colours (Parenting and Family Literacy centres), homemade learning materials.
  • Shared reading
  • Family Literacy Night
  • “In a million words or less tell us about your child and yourself”
  • Music Program – “ABC and Me”.

• Speaking with parents, listening to parents, using communication books, inviting dialogue.
• Parent handbook – develop the parent handbook with a committee of parents.
• Introduce self, program.
• Get to know families.
• Provide a tour – child plays/explores.
• Answer all questions/concerns.
• Find out child’s/family’s history.
• Work together.
• Phone home when things are going well.
• Ask new parents what they need/want to know.
• Help parents find their voice.
• Use simple communication to find common ground.
• Honour parents’ knowledge about children.
• Engage in goal setting with communication.
• Help parents to “live life” with their children.
• Share themes – ask parents what they could add (info/ideas/resources).
• Ask parents about their culture and religion.
• Ask how parent wants to volunteer – to share his/her strengths.
• Plan face-to-face communication.
• Draft an agenda – and give parents a chance to respond/provide input.

While the points listed here may be brief, the discussion and sharing surrounded them was rich. Please feel invited to use these ideas as a starting point for creating your own “new story”!

On Thursday, January 21, the Early Childhood Community Development Centre (ECCDC), the District School Board of Niagara (DSBN) and the Niagara Catholic District School Board (NCDSB) hosted a special workshop for early childhood educators, teachers and parents. The even took place at the Quality Parkway Hotel & Convention Centre in St. Catharines and featured a presentation by Dr. Debbie Pushor, Associate Professor of Education from the University of Saskatchewan.

Joining Our Voices – Part 2

Full Article PDF

Research on early learning and child care is conclusive: a child’s experiences during the first five years of her/his life can set a critical direction for future success in school and for living a healthy and fulfilling life (Pascal’s Early Learning Report, 2009; Canadian Council on Learning, 2007). The research on parent engagement is equally as conclusive: when parents are engaged in their children’s schooling, children stay in school longer, do better in school, and like school more (Henderson & Mapp, 2002).

What this research means for us is that when we join our voices as parents, educators, and staff, rigt from the start of our children’s lives and through the school years, we can make a significant difference to their health and security; emotional, social and academic competence; and their interest, confidence, and success as learners.

Join Our Voices – PDF

Thursday, January 21, 2010 from 6:00 to 8:30 pm
Quality Parkway Hotel & Convention Center, 325 Ontario Street, St. Catharines ON
No cost, however registration is required by Monday, Janurary 18, 2010
To register please contact the ECCDC at 905.646.7311 ext. 304 or email eccdc@eccdc.org

Following the session, Anne Teutsch, Chair of the Ottawa- Carleton Assembly of School Council, commented that “Dr. Pushor’s presentation was a wonderful vision of engaged parents more as partners in their children’s education than as onlookers or merely helpers – a model in which the education of our children is enhanced by parents and teachers sharing the responsibility for their education. Dr. Pushor’s vision builds on the knowledge gained from studies showing that students whose parents play an active role in their child’s education show better results in any number of tests or measures of success.”

The following day, Dr. Pushor presented to educators from the school district, asking the participants to position parent knowledge alongside the educators knowledge. Amy Hannah, Safe and Caring Schools Coordinator, says “Dr. Pushor re-emphasizes the need to not only involve parents but engage them in the school community. She claims that parents are “knowledge carriers” and that as educators, we should consistently seek ways to learn from one another. This piece resonated with me as within the OCDSB, we have our Community of Character, which embeds the character attributes of respect, acceptance, appreciation and fairness. As a community, we are all responsible for the success of our students and this only reiterates that we must continue to engage with one another.”

More information on Dr. Pushor, parental engagement and her research can be found at: www.debbiepushor.com

Dr. Pushor was one of three speakers obtained by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board as part of the OCDSB Speakers’ Series – Connected Conversations – Parents and Teachers Helping Students Learn, a project funded through the Ministry of Education’s Parents Reaching Out grant program.

by Cheryle Watson
Policy Analyst Ottawa-Carleton
DSB

Education World August 2009 gives more information on the subject.

For years that process has been the norm, but now it is changing. In more and more schools, students are leading conferences, and, overall, the word is that they’re doing a fine job.

Many teachers themselves speak enthusiastically of the advantages of student-led conferences over teacher-led ones. “We found the [student-led] conferences most beneficial,” said Keith Eddinger of the Marcus Whitman Middle School in Rushville, New York. “From a teacher’s perspective, we were able to get a better picture of each child. It forced us to sit down with each student and review strengths and weaknesses. This conversation often told us the students learned more than perhaps we had measured through conventional assessments.”

[podcast]http://debbiepushor.com/wp-content/uploads/conversations48 20090913.mp3[/podcast]

Student led parent teacher conferences
by Lorna on October 28, 2009

Debbie Pushor Keynote

Full Article on YCDSB

What activities are filling our time? Why are we doing them? Who are they serving? What is the result?

How are these example activities reflective of the kind of work you do?

• the development and implementation of a school council survey to determine/understand the needs of the school community,
• training on the advisory roles of the council,
• the development of Bylaws to govern operations e.g. Code of Ethics/Conduct, Roles & Responsibilities, Communication Protocols & Reporting, Terms of Office, Meeting Schedules and Agendas.

How much of your time is consumed by tasks of governance and the administration of organizational structures, of procedures, of reporting? What legislation, policy, guidelines or accountability measures require from you this time and activity? What have the results of this time and activity been for your children?

The purpose for the current emphasis on increasing parent engagement in schooling is to enhance student achievement and other educational outcomes. The Ministry of Education in Ontario, through such initiatives as the establishment of a Parent Involvement Policy, a Parent Engagement Office, Parent Involvement Councils and the previous Provincial Parent Board, has been very clear about this purpose. The important question, then, is after countless hours of time and energy invested into activities such as the examples I listed above: Are more parents engaged in their children’s schooling? Are parents more engaged in their children’s schooling? How is this engagement impacting student achievement and other educational outcomes?

Too often I think we ask ourselves “Are we doing things right?” instead of asking ourselves, “Are we doing the right things?” In a recent article I read by Nel Noddings (2009), she asserts that we concern ourselves with accountability in schools when our concern instead should be with responsibility. She states that accountability points upward in the power chain to authorities, to demonstrating to those in power we are doing the things we have been mandated to do. In contrast, responsibility points downward in the power chain, to attending to the legitimate needs of those placed in our care. Are the schooling processes we are engaged in as parents the work of accountability or the work of responsibility?

In the September 21, 2009 edition of the Toronto Sun, Moira Macdonald’s column highlighted the work being done at H.J. Alexander School in Toronto to enhance student achievement. Macdonald notes that as well as outperforming the provincial average on student achievement results and scoring in the 99th percentile in the C.D. Howe Institute’s analysis of school quality for overcoming socio-economic factors and other challenges to student success, parent engagement also sets the school apart. Here are three specific things she cites as happening:

“Besides a near-scientific attention to individual children’s assessment data and strategies and supports to bring them along, parents are courted to understand what their children are working on and what’s needed at home to help them.”

“Parents are brought in for curriculum nights organized by grade, and last year Grade 3 parents were brought in two months before the test to go over what the test and different levels of achievement might look like.”

“Parents are also asked to attend meetings to brainstorm customized teaching strategies to help their own child.”

These parent engagement activities are acts of responsibility – acts which attend to the legitimate needs of those placed in our care. They are the acts which, according to research, make a difference. Henderson and Mapp (2002) assert, “Parent and community involvement that is linked to student learning has a greater effect on achievement than more general forms of involvement” (p. 38). The key words here are linked to student learning. In Jeynes’ meta-analysis (2005), he found it was not particular parent actions – such as attending school functions – that yielded the statistically significant effect sizes in gains in student achievement. Instead, it was things which created “an educationally oriented ambiance” – a sense of support and standards in the child’s mind – which produced the strongest results.

When I consider what H.J. Alexander School is doing to engage parents, three things immediately strike me:

• Parents and staff are both given important information, and the opportunity to discuss it.
• Parent meetings are about learning. They are purposeful (curriculum-oriented), specific (what different levels of learning might look like) and relational (done in grade level groupings).
• Parents’ knowledge of their child and how that child learns is considered important to school planning and to teaching.

Parent and community engagement at H.J. Alexander School is clearly linked to student learning and it is having a demonstrable effect on achievement. What they are doing, why they are doing it, for whom, and the results they are getting all speak to their sense of responsibility to children and to learning.

Time is often our greatest resource and, like any resource, it is finite. Knowing that there is only so much we can do with the time we have, let’s continue to ask ourselves if we are doing the things that are most important to engaging more parents, to enabling parents to be more engaged in student learning, and to enhancing student achievement and other educational outcomes.

Full School Advocate – PDF

In her keynote presentation, Debbie will discuss current research and practices in the field of parent engagement. Following her keynote, Debbie will assist in facilitating a process in which participants develop a parent engagement action plan to enact in their home school board: this is what I learned, this is what I can and will do to act on what I know.

The audience for this session will include:

• All Public and Catholic School Council/ Home and School/ Parent group leaders in the geographical area ( London – Woodstock – St. Thomas and surrounding area)
• South Western Ontario neighbouring PIC leaders
• Teachers/principals/ administration, trustees and all stakeholders/community partners in education
• Partners in the First Nation community and the ESL community

Debbie, together with participants, will be discussing the two big questions: So what? Now what?

Speaker: Dr. Debbie Pushor
Location: Adult High School – Auditorium, 300 Rochester Street Ottawa, ON
Date & Time: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Full Details – Parental Engagement Connecting Schools and Families