Parents & Teachers: Building Bridges

• Engaging and building trust with parents, creating supportive and integrated community and home-to-school connections.
• Improving their skills and resources to build constructive and positive relationships with students and families in order to facilitate cooperation and integral development of every student.
• Being able to recognize the needs, fears and expectations of students and families in order to build a safe and supportive environment.
• Learning clues to improve communication with families, with individual and organizational approaches.
• Learning specific resources and programmes to improve communication and problem solving techniques.
• Being more aware of the power of therole of the teacher, having a clear position to unleash all constructive influence.
• Being able to use different methods of implementing creative solution in professional lives, discovering their own creative resources at the same time.
• Being aware of benefits of a language use, improving skills of assertive communication, ability of paraphrasing, verbal and nonverbal communication, etc.
• Beginning to understand and manage feelings, learning to listen to students and parents to create the atmosphere of understanding focusing on solutions.
• Knowing how to foster withteacher’s own example in the everyday life in schools the skills of the 21st century education.

The approach will be practical, experiential and based on an analysis of reality and the group concerns. Mainly, we will work on the forms of a role play, drama methods, group dynamics, brainstorming and assembly, encouraging reflections and creativity in order to expand some options and alternatives for action. 80% practice and 20% theory, by using multimedia presentations, videos and additional training materials, learning will be conducted in a relaxed atmosphere for all participants.

Additionally, the course follow-up strategy will be proposed to all the teachers in order to monitor the implementation of good practices in their schools based on the knowledge, skills and competencies gained by them during the workshop.

By completing this course, participants will be able to acquire new skills and competences that will allow them to considerably improve their relationships with parents in terms of:

• Verifying and developing their pedagogical and communication skills.
• Improving the perspectives and development opportunities of each student.
• Giving possibility to attract students more by presenting topic in a more interesting and appealing way.
• Increasing motivation for professional development.
• Reaching even the most demanding students in an easier way.
• Managing feelings and conflicts by focusing on solutions.
• Cooperating with teachers as well as with students and parents.
• Promoting group work and long-term projects to provoke changes which will allow to take off unnecessary burden off the shoulders of the educational staff and exert greater impact on the learning process and more satisfying and stimulating climate of coexistence in the school context.