Preface About the Author Part I: Connecting With Students 1. Having Students Introduce Themselves 2. Greeting Students 3. Making the Most of Classroom Time 4. Congratulating Students With Certificates 5. Connecting With Your Students Through the Curriculum 6. Recognizing Your Students as Stars Part II: Connecting With Parents 7. Sending Home Your Introduction Letter 8. Learning About Your Students From Their Parents 9. Presenting at Back-to-School Night 10. Requesting Parent Suggestions 11. Conducting Parent-Teacher Conferences 12. Thanking Parents 13. Contacting Parents Using E-mail 14. Phoning Home 15. Mailing Home Good News Postcards 16. Inviting Parents to Visit 17. Getting Attention From the Media Resource: Sample Forms and Letters Index
Dianne Mierzwik, a long-time teacher and teacher trainer, has put together a book based on her own best practices of ways to motivate K-8 students and connect with their parents. Her ideas have been classroom-tested by herself and by the many teachers she has trained at in-service workshops. Quick and Easy Ways to Connect with Students and Their Parents, Grades K-8 is full of ideas, strategies, and sample forms, documents, and letters that teachers can use or adapt for their own purposes. The author presents alternative ideas for adapting strategies and adopts an upbeat and enthusiastic tone to motivate teachers to use her strategies. Mierzwik's strategies will improve the classroom environment, solve many classroom management problems, and keep students motivated, and most strategies require only a few minutes of a teacher's time each day. The research shows that parent involvement results in increased student achievement, so many schools are focusing on this component of school success.
Diane Mierzwik currently teaches seventh and eighth grade English at Parkview Middle School for the Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District in California. In her 16 years of teaching, she has had experience with first- through 12th graders. She has been Gifted And Talented Education coordinator, Leadership team member, Department Head, a mentor teacher, completed the Inland Empire Writing Project, and served as a Language Arts consultant for the California Language Arts Project. She is also the author of Quick and Easy Ways to Connect With Students and Their Parents, available from Corwin Press, and Wishes in the Field, a middle grade historical fiction novel.