FMU’s Center of Excellence provides professional development and on-going technical assistance to schools’ Action Team for Partnerships to help them communicate with parents and continually improve their programs and practices of family and community engagement. Recognized for its state leadership in education, the Francis Marion University Center of Excellence was the 2014 winner of the What Works SC Award for Excellence by the Riley Institute at Furman University and SC Future Minds.
Florence, South Carolina
Front row: Suzette Richardson, Lauren Jackson, Brenda Hill, Esther Brown, Miranda Felder, Tammy Pawloski (COE Director)
Communication is Key to Making Partnerships Work
How will you know what someone thinks if you do not ask? Many educators assume that parents and others in the community are happy with their children’s schools, but do not check these assumptions. Francis Marion University’s (FMU) Center of Excellence (COE) provides professional development and on-going technical assistance to schools’ Action Team for Partnerships (ATPs) to help them communicate with parents and continually improve their programs and practices of family and community engagement.
At a One-Day Team Training Workshop, two Early Childhood Education (ECE) Centers planned to increase family engagement by conducting a survey of parents about their satisfaction with and expectations of their schools. COE’s Leader for Partnerships sent samples of surveys to the ECE Centers, including the NNPS tool Measure of School, Family and Community Partnership. A combined two-school committee discussed the sample surveys, and all ATP members reviewed questions and discussed how to obtain parents’ open and honest answers on the anonymous surveys. They selected final questions to learn parents’ views about the school climate and what they wanted to know to be more involved in their children’s preschool education. The results will guide the schools’ next One Year Action Plans for Partnerships.
Communication is Key to Making Partnerships Work is featured in Promising Partnership Practices 2015.
Building and Sustaining Effective Partnership Programs in High Poverty Schools and Districts
Recognized for its state leadership in education, the Francis Marion University Center of Excellence (COE) was the 2014 winner of the What Works SC Award for Excellence by the Riley Institute at Furman University and SC Future Minds. Specializing in training to increase the effectiveness of those who work with under-resourced students, COE aims to increase the achievement of children of poverty through outreach activities that have the greatest potential for breaking the generations-old cycle of school failure in high-poverty schools. COE is a premier resource for educators and others who care about the success of all students and their families.
COE supports over 80 schools and 4 districts in developing and implementing teams and action plans for partnerships. COE equips educators with knowledge and skills to work effectively with family and community partners in education. Examples of these actions are graduate courses; statewide presentations on COE’s collaboration with NNPS; advanced professional development workshops for NNPS member schools; on-site technical assistance upon request; one-day team training workshops for schools that join NNPS; small grants awarded to schools as incentives to strengthen their partnership programs; web based family and community resource library; updates and partnership highlights in COE’s monthly E-Newsletter; and an annual End-of-Year Celebration. COE’s agenda is to build and sustain partnership programs that involve families in meaningful, inclusive ways linked to school goals that help students be successful.
