Bay Surface area District Offers ELL Parent Outreach on Mutual Core

San Francisco Examiner, 2014.How-do-you-do, everyone!  Nosotros wanted to share a story nearly some recent ELL parent engagement efforts around the Common Core that might spark some ideas of your own!

Earlier this calendar month, teachers of the Jefferson Unproblematic Federation of Teachers (JEFT) in Daly Urban center, CA teamed upward with the American Federation of Teachers and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) to host an outreach event focused on providing parents and educators with information about the Common Cadre State Standards. The event was office of the AFT's Reclaiming the Promise initiative.  (Learn more about the day's activities in this news story from the San Francisco Examiner and this Spanish-language Univision news study.)

While organizers had been expecting 200 participants, more 400 turned out for the briefing, which offered simultaneous translation in Spanish and Arabic and sessions that were conducted in each of those languages likewise.  Highlights included:

  • Sessions on the Common Core for both parents and educators with titles such as "Common Cadre ELA in the K-5 Classroom" and "X Effective Ways to Support Academic Readiness at Home"
  • Data about Colorín Colorado, FirstBook, and AFT'southward online lesson bank, ShareMyLesson
  • Storytelling for children with local author Tony Robles and illustrator Carl Affections, who teamed upwardly to create the bilingual English-Tagalog stories Lakas and the Manilatown Fish and Lakas and the Makibaka Hotel
  • Free book giveaways for students

Events such as this one accept a lot of work – but the success in Daly City shows non only the interest of diverse groups of parents in learning more about the Common Core but the feasibility of organizing events that ELL families will notice meaningful when planning is done with their needs and questions in listen. This point is underscored by JEFT president Melinda Dart: "As education professionals we want the same thing for our students as their parents—a meliorate future," she said.  "Making academic success a reality for every child doesn't accept magic, but it does take commitment, focus and a great bargain of collaboration between parents and school employees.  That is something we really want to highlight."

If you're interested in trying something similar or simply making data about the CCSS available to all of your schoolhouse'south families, exist sure to take a look at the Daly City result agenda and invitation flyers in English language and Castilian (the flier was also translated into Arabic), shared with u.s. by the AFT's Giselle Lundy-Ponce.

Related Resources

You may also find useful information on our Parent Information page in the Mutual Core and ELLs department on Colorín Colorado.  The page includes free CCSS guides, videos, and toolkits for parents which are available in multiple languages and can be used for parent meetings or outreach events.

Nosotros'd also honey to hear from you about Common Core ELL parent outreach in your schools:

  • What outreach efforts take you seen for ELL parents effectually the Common Core in your district, if any?
  • What questions have you heard from parents most the Common Core?
  • Are ELL parents beingness updated this spring about assessments, airplane pilot tests, and other changes that are affecting testing this year?

Related Resources

  • Daly City Conference Program from March 8, 2014
  • Common Core and ELLs: Bilingual Parent Resource

AFT: Reclaiming the Hope

This event was part of the American Federation of Teachers' Reclaiming the Promise initiative.

Photograph credit: San Francisco Examiner, 2014.

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