Quick and Easy Ways to Connect With Students and Their Parents, Grades K-8

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's trained at in-service workshops.
The book 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. Diane 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.
Includes guidance on topics critical to beginning teachers:
} back-to-school night
} parent-teacher conferences
} parent volunteers
} reaching out to uninvolved parents
} talking to parents about difficult students and other problems
} using E-mail as a communication tool
time-saving tips
} motivating even the most difficult students

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.

"This book is chock full of ideas that can be put into place immediately. From personally greeting each child every morning to conducting parent conferences, the author provides practical, easy-to-accomplish strategies for building relationships that let students and parents know you care."