EMPTY PARENT PROGRAMS:
Here's how one principal
solved the problem
t's an
ongoing headache for principals: You design a parent
program, schedule a speaker, send home the notices,
post it on the marquee in front of school, notify the
newspaper, and then — next to nobody shows up.
Was
there ever a time when moms and dads came to
parent programs? If there was, it wasn't in the lifetime
of most principals — unless, of course, it's time
for the school Talent Show.
A hopeless situation? Not quite.
Joan
Moorman is
principal at Barranca School in Covina, California.
At her present (and previous) school, she draws a
full house of 300-400 working class parents — without a
talent show. Her essay, "Using the McDonald's
Approach to Generate Parent Involvement," was
published in Principal magazine in
2001 and should be required reading for school administrators.
Moorman and the magazine have granted permission
for the article to be reprinted here at this Web
site.
Joan Moorman
I have
witnessed Joan Moorman's own school situation
as well as sites that used her formula. For example,
in one week in California I was speaking at two widely
different venues: Fontana (the trucking capitol of America)
and Laguna Niguel (no trucks allowed, so to speak); one
was lower-working class, the other wealthy. Fontana
used the Moorman formula and Laguna Niguel chose not
to, though I recommended it to both. The attendance
speaks for itself: Fontana-400; Laguna
Niguel-18.
Joan's formula is available as an Adobe Acrobat
document (PDF) and can be read either on line of
downloaded for reading/printing off-line. To read
it online, click here on Moorman.
To download it, choose:
www.trelease-on-reading.com/parent_program.pdf.zip
