This project stems from a problem we face in our schools : It is insufficient involvement of parents in educational process,which results in underachievement,dropping out of school and excessive burden for school administration.It is statistically verified that parent involvement rate is higher at primary stage of education but at secondary/high school level it decreases. The concrete condition of the problem can be tracked over the attendance rates of parents meetings and the participating schools' SWOT and PEST analyses.Being universal is one of the main characteristics of education. Focusing on this very feature of education, we wanted to see the state of parent involvement at other secondary / high schools in other countries.Thus we uploaded our project proposal on e-twining portal. Many schools from different countries wanted to be partners with us mentioning their need for such a project.On the other hand some other schools wanted to be a partner of the project so as to display how well they manage to obtain parent involvement and share their experiences about it.We thought that it would be challenging to see the better and relatively worse examples to attain a final synthesis. At this point, we established a 2-year partnership consisting of 7 countries: Turkey,Latvia, Greece, Poland Portugal,Spain and Romania. All our partners are secondary schools with (15-19) year-old students. Focusing on the Erasmus+ school education priority :’Supporting schools to tackle ESL and disadvantage as well as address all students from the lowest to the highest end of the academic spectrum’ , we have planned our project with our partners to enhance parent involvement by carrying out some activities which require inclusion of parents,students and teachers. At the planning process, we firstly wrote our Project Inıtiation Document as the backbone of our project. This document includes all the plan to implement, monitor and disseminate the activities mentioning the task division. During the project lifecycle we have planned 7 transnational meetings. At 2 of these meetings we will have 2 5-day long LTT activities for students about 1) Relationship and Communication Management (in Turkey) 2) ICT skills :Club Code-App Inventor (in Greece). At the other 5 meetings,we will have workshops and management meetings where monitoring and evaluating activities and reports will be handled. All the project activities have been designed with the aim of enhancing parent involvement. Here the crucial point is that their design is on the basis of willingness and enthusiasm rather than obligatory terms,which will hopefully affect the impact of the project positively. ‘Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK )‘ methodology will be used to carry out the project activities. If we are to mention these activities, we can say the following : 1) writing down awareness about relationships on the specially designed notebooks,(students and parents are supposed to use the notebooks at a 2-month slot) 2) preparing a scenic calendar having aide-memoires to enhance relationships (parent-child, child-teacher,teacher parent) 3) cross-curricular dossiers that have been designed to be applied with the participation of parents, students and teachers 4) thematic meetings emphasizing some universal values- equity, culture, time and its management etc. 5) Street parade 6) Mural reflecting the message of the projectThese activities will have some tangible and intangible results Tangible results will be the deliverables and outputs of the project while intangible results will be qualitative and can be tracked over the changes in manners during and after the implementation of the project activities. Here are some of the tangible results : 1) A booklet with quotations from ‘awareness notebooks’ 2) printed scenic calendar 3) the notes of learning/teaching/training activities 4) printed and digital forms of cross-curricular activities 4) notes for thematic meetings 5) The charter of the EU club 6) Test to monitor sustainability etcThrough the activities and their results, we anticipate several relevant impact on our audience and stakeholders – students, parents, teachers, the whole EU society.There will be some quantitative and qualitative indicators of this impact such as higher academic achievement, decreased number of dropouts , improved manners, improved language and digital skills and increased cultural awareness.In order to disseminate the activities and sustain the impact ,we have made thorough plans. The project website will be the most important instrument of these plans and it will be on process after the project lifecycle and there will be free access to the uploaded project documents. Being teachers we are direct stakeholders of education and we hope to see the positive impact on our audience to be more satisfied with what we are doing. Moreover, we believe that the anticipated impact will bring added value to the EU society.
This project stemmed from a problem we faced in our schools : It is insufficient involvement of parents in educational process,which results in underachievement,dropping out of school and excessive burden for school administrations.It is statistically verified that parent involvement rate is higher at primary stage of education but at secondary/high school level it decreases. The concrete condition of the problem can be tracked over the attendance rates of parents meetings and the partner schools' SWOT and PEST analyses.As education is a universal issue. we wanted to see the state of parent involvement at other secondary / high schools in other countries.Thus we uploaded our project proposal on e-twining portal. Many schools from different countries wanted to be partners with us mentioning their need for such a project.On the other hand, some other schools wanted to be a partner so as to display how well they manage to obtain parent involvement and share their experiences about it.We thought that it would be challenging to see the better and relatively worse examples to attain a final synthesis. At this point, we established a 2-year partnership consisting of 7 countries: Turkey,Latvia, Greece, Poland Portugal,Spain and Romania. All our partners are secondary schools with (15-19) year-old students. Focusing on the Erasmus+ school education priority :’Supporting schools to tackle ESL and disadvantage as well as address all students from the lowest to the highest end of the academic spectrum’ , we planned our project to enhance parent involvement by carrying out some activities which require inclusion of parents,students and teachers. At the planning process, we firstly wrote our Project Inıtiation Document as the backbone of our project. This document included all the plan to implement, monitor and disseminate the activities mentioning the task division. During the project lifecycle we held 5 transnational project meetings and 2 LTT activities for students about 1) ICT skills Club Code-App Inventor (in Greece). 2) Relationship and Communication Management (in Poland) At the other 5 meetings,we had workshops and management meetings where monitoring and evaluating activities and reports were handled. All the project activities were designed with the aim of enhancing parent involvement. Here the crucial point was that their design was on the basis of willingness and enthusiasm rather than obligatory terms.. ‘Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK )‘ methodology was used to carry out the project activities. If we are to mention these activities, we can say the following : 1) Parents and students wrote down their awareness about relationships on the specially designed notebooks for 2 months, then each partner school selected the best sentences and finally all the selected ones were put together as a multinational book. 2) We prepared a scenic calendar having aide-memoires to enhance relationships (parent-child, child-teacher,teacher parent) 3)We prepared cross-curricular dossiers that were designed to be applied with the participation of our stakeholders 4) We had thematic meetings emphasizing some universal values- equity, culture, time and its management etc.At these meetings we discussed the topic with parents. 5) We organised a street parade to disseminate our message. 6) All partner schools painted a mural reflecting the message of the project with parents and students.All these activities have had some tangible and intangible results Tangible results are the deliverables and outputs of the project while intangible results are qualitative and are tracked over the changes in manners during and after the implementation of the project activities. Here are some of the tangible results : 1) A booklet with quotations from ‘awareness notebooks’ 2) Printed scenic calendar 3) The notes of LTT activities 4) Printed and digital forms of cross-curricular dossiers 5) Notes for thematic meetings 6) The charter of the EU club Through the activities and their results, we have gained relevant impact on our audience and stakeholders – students, parents, teachers, the whole EU society.There are some quantitative and qualitative indicators of this impact such as higher academic achievement, decreased number of dropouts , improved manners, improved language and digital skills, increased cultural awareness and solidarity. In order to disseminate the activities and sustain the impact ,we made several social and media activities. Our website has been the most important instrument of dissemination and it will be on process after the project lifecycle and there is free access to the uploaded project documents. As teachers we are direct stakeholders of education and happy to see the positive impact on our audience. We hope to inspire new projects,which will be one of the long-term benefits of our project. Finally, we believe that we achieved to bring added value to the EU society.