Reflection+on+EDLD+5326+Assignments

School Community Relations
The assignment for this class took place over several weeks. The first thing to do was a needs assessment in the area of school-community relations. Is the relationship strong, weak, or even nonexistent? I determined that one need was for an after school program to keep the children occupied, and in a safe environment until they could be picked up by their parents. I envisioned a collaborative group of an administrator, teachers, parent volunteers, and business owners. Then I needed a vision for this after school program. As I was reading some of the documents concerning community relations and how to create collaborative action teams I came across a statement that made me stop and think about the order of the steps involved in any action plan. Ferguson (2005) writes, though educators tend to begin all improvement efforts with a visioning process, developing a deeper contextual understanding of the school’s culture can provide long-term benefits. This shared knowledge and experience about different stakeholders’ perspectives can ultimately support a visioning process done at a later date (p. 3). For me the vision is always hard to write. I know what I want to achieve but how to put it into words is my difficulty. Since I am at this point in time following the steps required for my assignment I must continue. How was this program going to address the need and just as importantly would this program increase the academic success of the students? I needed to write goals, strategies, and objectives for the after school program. I needed to show how I expected this program to increase student performance in school. During the process of creating the plan for the program, I learned that on paper it sure seems easy but as I was picturing the process in my head, I realized it would take several months of planning for the program to really succeed. I had always thought of the after school program at our elementary as just baby-sitting but a requirement of this plan was to show how student performance would increase so I found that if you plan the afternoons right it should be a fun but educational experience. At this point I am thinking there is not much else to do to in planning the after school program; I am sadly mistaken. I must identify all stakeholders involved. According to Sanders (2001), action teams consist of six to twelve members, including family members, teachers representing different grade levels, an administrator, other school staff member (i.e., counselors, nurses, parent liaisons), and community representatives (p. 55). I also need to determine what resources will be needed, how I will market the plan to business owners and parents, what steps I will take to acquire approval, and finally, what means of evaluation will be used to determine success. Now that I have laid the groundwork and have realized the time involved for planning, I need a timeline for preparation. Responsibilities must be delegated and the evaluation process finalized. Planning of this kind is new to me; I have only had to plan afternoon or half-day workshops for our teachers, nothing that involved the students this way. So I asked our elementary principal questions about the TKO after-school program our district used to have, who was involved in the planning and how they made decisions about the afternoon activities. My last exercise before implementation is to make a presentation to the administrators and local school board members. This is the instrument that will hopefully bring about a consensus among the stakeholders. I know our school children will benefit from a program like this. When I was planning the CASS (Colmesneil After-School School) program I worried that it would not be enough for the children. I also was not sure if an after-school school program would qualify as a school-community relationship. I knew I would need parent volunteers; they are community, and local business owners, since they also are community. I came up with the idea for having the business owners come and make presentations to the children. We are always asking the students “what do you want to be when you grow up?”, so the exposure to what they can be when they grow up will be beneficial to them. According to Epstein (1997) collaborating with the community provides students an awareness of careers and options for future education and work. (“Collaborating with Community”, Results for Students). As I went back over my plan from the idea to the presentation I decided that it would fit the need for a school-community action plan.

Epstein, J.L., Coates, L., Salinas, K.C., Sanders, M.G., & Simon, B.S. (1997). Epstein’s six types of involvement. //School, family, and community partnerships: Your handbook for action.// Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Ferguson, C. (2005). Developing a collaborative team approach to support family and community connections with schools: What can school leaders do?. //National Center for family and Community Connections with Schools//. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratories. Sanders, M. (2001). Schools, families, and communities partnering for middle level students’ success. //National Association of Secondary School Principals; NASSP Bulletin, 85// (627), 53-60.