POSTED ON BEHALF OF EDEN MESGHENNA

Teaching for Change is a non-profit organization that supplies parents, teachers, and students with tools and resources that mobilize school reform by building literacy skills. Located in the Washington DC area Teaching for Change works with local schools by offering professional development, parent support connections and publication recourses for all ages that focus on building critical thought and reflection of the world inside and outside of the classroom.

Check them out at: www.teachingforchange.org

Tellin Stories is a project that aims at building parent involvement in the schools. The focus of the project is to create opportunities for parents to connect with schools by encouraging parents to come into the classroom and share their stories.  Allowing parents to share their experiences within the classroom begins a process that bridges a cultural and socioeconomic gap between schools and community. In the Telling Stories project parents have opportunities to read to students or tell personal stories about who they are in the classroom. Parents then join together with other parents to build a story quilt that binds pieces of who they are together.

I found the idea of story telling to be a very natural way of beginning the process of strengthening parent involvement in the school and was encouraged by the high level of response parents from different cultural backgrounds had towards investing in there new community.  Included is a link to a short video on the Tellin Stories project: