What is the Teacher Partner Program?
The CFEC Teacher Partner Program aims to enhance the capacities of teachers to design, plan, implement, and evaluate family engagement initiatives for their classrooms, using evidence-based and practice-supported strategies to strengthen parent-teacher partnerships to improve student learning and development.
The approach to family engagement strategies is relationship-based, collaborative, inclusive of all families and students, linked to student learning and development outcomes, and recognizes the key role of the community in supporting successful family-school partnerships. See SC Framework for K-12 Family Engagement (SCDE, 2019) and Dual Capacity Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships (Version 2, Mapp et al., 2019).
Participating teachers (1) attend the school-wide family engagement professional development session, (2) participate in the Teacher Partner Program Orientation, and (3) meet monthly over a two-year period with their CFEC Regional Family Engagement Liaison (liaison) to (1) plan and implement at least one classroom family engagement goal/strategy using a tool based on the Getting To Outcomes® strategic planning method, (2) evaluate results using data gathered during implementation, (3) submit a summary of evaluation data and results to CFEC at the end of the program, and (4) use evaluation data to continuously improve results and sustain successful strategies over time.
Benefits of the Teacher Partner Program
- Ongoing technical assistance and coaching in all aspects of family engagement planning, implementation, and evaluation from a highly qualified CFEC liaison using evidence-based and practice-supported approaches, tools, and other resources.
- Enhanced parent-teacher partnerships that help meet academic goals and improve classroom climate.
- Knowledge, skills, and competencies in evidence-based and practice-supported family engagement strategies that help improve student learning and development.
- Certificate of Completion and letters of recognition to school and district administrators.
- Renewal credits toward teacher recertification.
- Access to additional Professional Development opportunities for family engagement in education (e.g., guided book studies, training sessions and workshops).