Provide one or two examples of new ways you might include parents by allowing them to use their skill sets.

[Austin]

As mitigation and mandate guidelines allow, I would like to include parents in the educational process. One way to include parent/family involvement in the classroom would be to have guest experts for the day. This would require reaching out to families at the beginning of the year and sharing an abbreviated scope and sequence of the years curriculum and see if there are any family members that would like to share a skill set that they have that might coincide with some of our content standards. For example, when we study the skeletal system, a radiologist could visit and share pictures of broken bones, or when we study rural communities, a farmer could visit and bring examples of grain or an animal.

The other way I would like to try to incorporate parents into the classroom would be in setting up a routine volunteer schedule. If there is a parent that loves art and craft projects, I would invite them to come during holiday festivities to help make extension projects with the students. If a parent loves reading or writing, they could have a weekly station where students in the course could rotate through a writing or reading workshop with that parent. This is only my 2nd year in this grade level and both years have been very disrupted with the pandemic. I am hopeful for being to integrate parent involvement in the future.