Parent Leadership Training

One of Turning the Page's goals has always been to assist parents as they build strong structures to ensure families play an active role in their children's education. To that end, we have developed a parent leadership initiative to encourage parental empowerment in school activities, parent groups, and school improvement. Turning the Page hopes that parents' successes in taking leadership roles within their schools will be just the first step they take to becoming more active leaders within their communities. There are two parts to TTP's Parent Leadership initiative: the first focuses on all-school Parent Leadership training programs and the second involves supporting school-specific parent leadership projects.

The Parent Leadership Certification Program brings together active parents from each of Turning the Page's seven partner schools in order to foster their leadership skills. Therefore, in addition to being a forum for increasing parent leadership and involvement in the schools, the Parent Leadership Certification Program trains parents in general leadership skills such as goal setting, communication, and meeting facilitation. In addition to these leadership skills, trainings also focus on providing parents with resources they can use to become stronger leaders within their school community.

During the 2008-2009 school year, three six-hour Saturday trainings were held. The curriculum at these trainings focused on parents' rights within the No Child Left Behind law, and invited members of the DC City Council to speak with parents about ways for them to become active in effecting change on a city-wide level. The trainings were extremely successful, with more parents participating than ever before, and with outcomes that ranged from meetings with principals to parent leaders joining their school's Local School Restructuring Team. No matter what their prior involvement has been in school and community organizations, we believe that all of the parents who attend have already shown themselves to be leaders; by committing themselves to school programs and organizations, they lead by example.