Parent Resources

We will be updating this page regularly once the school year is in full swing. We look forward to sharing the educational literature that teachers are reading, as well as other resources that they and our students are using throughout the year.

We Recommend

Readings:

• Here are resources to help families approach the topic of violence:

From the American Academy of Pediatrics:
http://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/Children-and-Disasters/Pages/Talking-to-Children-About-Disasters.aspx

From the Centers for Disease Control: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/general.asp

From the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry: http://www.aacap.org

From the National Association of School Psychologists:
http://www.nasponline.org/resources/crisis_safety/terror_general.aspx (this site offers "Talking to Children About Violence: Tips for Parents and Teachers)

• For an orientation to Bridges in Mathematics, the program used in grades K-5, go to the parent orientation section of the Bridges website.

• Here's a link to a report on value of outdoor education from the National Wildlife Federation. It's entitled Back to School: Back Outside.

• Learn more about Responsive Classroom and Developmental Design, the relational approaches to teaching and learning that are in practice at TPS. They are based on the premise that children learn best when they have both academic and social-emotional skills. They help cement the stones of trust, responsibility, and respect, while the skills of cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control are explicitly taught and reinforced.

• Reaching Boys, co-authored by Dr. Michael Reichert, executive director, Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives. Dr. Reichart spoke at a TPS parent education program during the 2009-10 school year.

• "Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?"
By Paul Tough, New York Times (from September 25, 2009)
According to Tough, “Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged among scholars and scientists who study early-childhood development, a phrase that sounds more as if it belongs in the boardroom than the classroom: executive function. Originally a neuroscience term, it refers to the ability to think straight: to order your thoughts, to process information in a coherent way, to hold relevant details in your short-term memory, to avoid distractions and mental traps and focus on the task in front of you. And recently, cognitive psychologists have come to believe that executive function, and specifically the skill of self-regulation, might hold the answers to some of the most vexing questions in education today.”

What Happened to Childhood?
Commentary by Clara Hemphill, The New York Times (from December 12, 2010)
“The pressure cooker that parents create to prepare their children for college represents individual families’ imperfect response to wider economic conditions: the rising gap between the haves and the have-nots and the shrinking of the middle class. Parents and schools should limit after-school activities, cap the number of AP classes a child may take and remind kids that character counts as much as grades do. Schools and families can ease the pressure on high school students by acknowledging that there are many fine colleges and universities that don’t require perfect SAT scores and straight As. But any parent who reads the newspapers knows that the very rich are getting richer while incomes are stagnating for almost everyone else. These conditions may fuel parents’ fears that any child who doesn’t attend an elite high school and a super elite university will end up flipping hamburgers.”

Parent Committees and Groups:

• BUILDS: Building Understanding about Intelligences, Learning Differences and Styles. In the TPS tradition of “taking care of each other” and “getting smarter,” the parent group BUILDS brings together parents of children with learning differences and unique learning styles for education and parent-to-parent support. BUILDS maintains a wiki full of resources about learning differences, tutoring, testing, therapy, and other supports. At our monthly meetings, we share ways to highlight our children’s strengths, address their challenges, keep family balance -- and have some fun along the way! BUILDS is a TPSA group and, to complement our efforts, we are coordinating with the Family Diversity Committee on meeting the needs of diverse learners and the TPSA Green & Healthy Team on safe learning environments. If you have questions about BUILDS or would like to join the group's wiki, used to communicate about upcoming meetings and resources of interest, email tpswebmaster@tpschool.org.

• Community Response Team. This group of parents aids in mobilizing and coordinating meals, child care, transportation, or other assistance to TPS families in need, while respecting privacy and confidentiality. Be it the birth of a new baby, an illness in the family, or some other event, TPS parents are there to help. Contact tpswebmaster@tpschool.org to get connected to the Community Response Team.