Tuscaloosa, AL

Not Pictured: Dr. Elizabeth Wilson

Obtaining Support by Building Trust

The goal of this leadership activity is to continue to provide district leaders with information and training on family and community engagement.  District partners and the Parent Teacher Leadership Academy director and facilitator attended an NNPS Leadership Institute in Baltimore, MD.  Then, a PTLA Advisory Committee was formed, which meets quarterly.

The committee reviews feedback from workshops for school and district leaders who attend PTLA workshops.  With this input and discussion, the Committee improved the content of the workshops.  The organization is ready to provide comprehensive training to district leaders and their schools for strong implementation of programs of family and community engagement.  It was important to build trust with district leaders so that they knew that the University PTLA would support their efforts with schools over time.  They also learned that NNPS would be an additional support at the national level.

Parent-Teacher Leadership Academy—Building a Foundation

The Parent Teacher Leadership Academy (PTLA) is a program to build parents’ and teachers’ capacities to lead their schools’ programs of family and community engagement for student success in school.   The program has grown over the years to include preschool, elementary, and middle school parent leaders, special sessions for Hispanic parents, and training for teachers at all school levels.

In the past, parent and teacher groups met separately and came together for one joint session to consider a cooperative project based on NNPS guidelines linked to goals in the Alabama Continuous Improvement Plan.  After reviewing the results of this structure, PTLA leaders reorganized a program of joint training to parents and teachers would be a better approach, based on a solid foundation of research, examples, and support from NNPS.   This year, parents and teachers from schools in six districts met for basic training with an NNPS Facilitator.  They identified their vision for partnerships and discussed the unique needs of students and families in their own schools and communities.  They began to think, together, about a partnership project linked to goals in their own school improvement plan that would benefit their school, its families, and its students.  By meeting, dining, and learning together, teachers and parents in PTLA are gaining a common foundation for program development.

This activity is featured in Promising Partnership Practices 2018.