Oregon PIRC provides educators throughout the state of Oregon with a number of resources to strengthen families and foster parent involvement in schools. Educators in Oregon can request print copies of most of the materials listed below. We can also provide large sets of these materials to be distributed during parent-teacher conferences or at family-involvement events.

Educator Newsletter

The newsletter is written for educators and provides information about research and best practices in school-family partnerships. It highlights programs throughout the state that can assist educators in meeting their parent involvement goals, and programs that can assist families in meeting the educational needs of their children.

• A Special Day for Parent Involvement (Vol. I, Issue 4)
• From Parent Involvement to Family Partnerships (Vol. I, Issue 3)
• Creating Partnerships Early (Vol. I, Issue 2)
• Introducing Oregon's PIRC (Vol. I, Issue 1)

Downloadable Resources for Educators

These resources were developed by the School-Family-Community Partnerships team at our parent organization, Education Northwest.

Building Relationships for Student Success
This booklet draws from current research and school experiences to give teachers, parents, and administrators examples of successful partnership strategies. Teachers, parents, and staff at six high-poverty, high-minority schools were interviewed to provide their perspective on what research-based methods look like in practice. Together, these voices of committed educators and families help deepen our understanding of family involvement practices, teaching us much about their diversity and creativity.

Classroom to Community and Back
This manual is a practitioner's guide to strategies that draw on the knowledge, skills, experiences, and culture of family and community members in order to meet academic standards and enhance learning for all students. The guide introduces culturally responsive, standards-based (CRSB) teaching and provides ideas and planning tools to implement it in the classroom or within a program. CRSB Teaching looks at the convergence of practices in three areas: culturally responsive teaching, standards-based teaching, and family-community partnerships. The implementation of these research-based, effective strategies in all three areas will enhance student engagement and motivation, create academic rigor and challenging curriculum, and improve school-family-community partnerships (intermediate outcomes), which in turn will increase student achievement and youth success (ultimate outcome).

Partnerships by Design
This guide helps schools and programs assess their current approaches to involving families and community members, and assists them in implementing more effective strategies. It is based on the assumption that many educators have been actively seeking to involve families, but are not getting the results they desire. It is designed to help educators move beyond relying on typical family involvement activities toward building more effective and meaningful school-family-community partnerships within their classrooms, programs, or schools. It is a practical, realistic tool, focused on working with families and the community, and provides easy-to-read information and an efficient planning process. It contains simple forms, worksheets, and activities that help schools and organizations write their own school-family-community partnership plan. It also includes "Ideas for Action"-hints, tips, and practical suggestions for putting the plans into action.

Planning for Youth Success (also download the Supplemental Manual on assessing youth success)
This resource and training manual provides a positive way for members of a school community (school staff, students, families, and community members) to form or strengthen partnerships that will help to ensure success for their youth. The manual outlines how parents and community members can work with school staff and students to answer the questions:

• How do we define youth success?
• How can we measure youth success?
• What community resources can promote youth success?
• What project shall we undertake to promote youth success, and how can we engage the community and measure the results of this project?

The process outlined in the manual enables school community members to ask themselves, "What do we have to build on?", and then helps them to design a project that builds on those strengths with support from the community's existing resources and assets.

Resources for School and District Parent Events

Empowering Parents School Box

• Order sets of the School Box to distribute at your next parent event
• Download the School Box Booklets

This toolkit provides several short booklets that can assist parents in a number of educational areas:

• Learning Checklist Booklet: This 28-page booklet gives parents ideas about how to help their child learn as he or she navigates through school. The learning checklists start with when kids are in Preschool and contain information for all stages (elementary, middle, and high school). It even provides some information about how to help your child on to college.

• Taking a Closer Look Booklet: This 24-page booklet contains detailed information about topics related to educational opportunities offered to parents and students, including parental involvement, school choice, tutoring, and financial aid for college. This booklet provides stories to illustrate each topic and supplies a note section for parents to write their own thoughts and questions about each topic.

• What Parents Need to Know Booklet: This 8-page booklet presents information about current education law and how it benefits parents and their children. It provides short descriptions of local report cards, high-quality teachers, Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), etc.

• Other resources in the school box include a brochure containing a list of resources for parents, a poster, bookmark, and door hanger.