Quick and Easy Ways to Connect With Students and Their Parents, Grades K-8 ─ Improving Student Achievement Through Parent Involvement

The research is indisputable. The more involved parents are with their child’s education, the more successful that child will be in school. Therefore, finding ways as a teacher to reach out to students and their parents is crucial in improving academic performance.
Quick and Easy Ways to Connect With Students and Their Parents, Grades K-8 provides strategies to enrich the classroom environment, motivate students, and improve communication with parents. Supplying numerous sample forms, documents, and letters that teachers can use or adapt for their own purposes, author Diane Mierzwik offers simple, classroom-tested methods for building relationships with students and their parents.
Designed for both beginning and experienced teachers, this hands-on guidebook includes information on:
Facilitating constructive parent-teacher conferences
Preparing for Back-to-School nights
Reaching out to uninvolved parents
Talking to parents about troubled students
Motivating even the most difficult students
Using e-mail as a communication tool and other time-saving tips
The activities, suggestions, and techniques in this book can help any teacher make a substantive impact on the lives of students.

Diane Mierzwik currently teaches seventh and eighth grade English at Parkview Middle School for the Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District in California. In her 16 years of teaching, she has had experience with first- through 12th graders. She has been Gifted And Talented Education coordinator, Leadership team member, Department Head, a mentor teacher, completed the Inland Empire Writing Project, and served as a Language Arts consultant for the California Language Arts Project. She lives in Yucaipa, California.