Parents & Families as Partners Starter Pack
The Parents & Families as Partners Starter Pack is useful for everyone, but it’s especially pertinent to teachers, teacher leaders, or school staff or administrators who are looking for ways to innovate their partnerships with families. It is also useful for families looking for new ways to connect with their children’s schools.
Creating genuine partnerships with families is part of equitable mathematics teaching.
At TODOS, we believe that mathematics educators should cultivate the role that families and communities play in students’ identity and agency. By building trust and engaging families as partners, we can take action to create inclusive classrooms that build on students’ and families’ strengths.
Reflect and Take Action
Each resource in the starter pack comes with reflection questions and connects to our Social Justice statement which encourages acknowledgement, action, and accountability.
Preview the Resources in the Starter Pack
How do teachers and families work together towards educational change, utilizing organizing traditions? Melissa Adams Corral, who has a background in community organizing, shares her perspective and experiences with us on how to approach genuine collaboration with parents – particularly parents from historically marginalized populations.
TODOS Live! Episode Including family and community in the elementary mathematics classroom is necessary for our students’ mathematical agency, identity and knowledge. To truly valorar, however, will require thoughtful reflection about why exclusion is a consistent problem in education and how we are complicit in this process. This video builds on the ideas of community organizing and storytelling to offer an opportunity to listen, reflect and consider how we can take action and hold ourselves accountable.
TODOS Conference Session Recording
This session addresses specific ways that teachers and parents can engage and learn from each other as a means to support students’ mathematics learning. We will share how teachers and parents from two elementary school sites in Latinx communities are working together to create a two-way dialogue in mathematics between home and school to leverage family and community resources. Two teachers will share examples of how they are collaborating with parents to do this critical work.
TODOS Conference Session Recording
Supporting mathematics learning at home is often framed as supporting the development of academic skills learned at school, creating a power dynamic that positions the school as the site for superior knowledge. This video discusses how parents are intellectual resources for the teaching and learning of mathematics who can support the development of their children’s mathematical agency in and out of the classroom. Get ideas for how to restructure schools and parent partnerships to work together towards social justice in mathematics education.
Download the Starter Pack
Check out the full, printable Starter Pack
The downloadable version of our Parents & Families as Partners Starter Pack is designed to be used for professional learning. The resources and guiding questions in this Starter Pack can be used by educators in variety of ways. Whether you are a new teacher, veteran educator, or family member of a student – there is something for everyone!
Download the full Starter Pack