Parental Involvement and home visits
Students’ success and performance are affected not only by teachers, but also by their parents and environment. Therefore, parental involvement is a significant part of our school’s strategic goals. We created a new Home School Organization (HSO) policy, which resulted in separate HSO in each school building to increase the parental participation.
The school’s teachers perform home visits to understand the students’ problems and abilities and to create a better triad of parent-student-teacher relationships. During home visits, teachers encourage parents to take active role in student’s learning at home. As part of this program, the SASCS educators contact a minimum of ten school parents each week, and carry out a minimum of twelve home visits each academic year. Several teachers carried out more than 20 home visits during the academic year. The school receives many complements regarding its home visit program, which is one of the key elements in our parent outreach activity.
In grades K-8, elementary and middle schools organize several events throughout the year, mostly involves HSO, to make parents participate in activities at schools, such as grandparents day, donuts for dad, muffins for mom, field days, academic fun nights, girl empowerment nights, school dances, and winter/spring concerts and art shows. In addition, school holds annual Dean’s dinner for high honor roll students in 5-12th grades, for which parents and grandparents invited over a formal dinner where their student’s performance through the semester is highlighted and celebrated.
The SASCS Student Database System gives online access to parents, students, teachers and administrators. It enables parents to be continuously and actively involved in their children’s education. Parents are able to see their children’s assignments, teacher comments, test scores, and attendance instantly. Teachers can use the database to post comments regarding student performance. Therefore, it is very interactive and allows for two-way communication stream between parents and teachers.