Cross City Parent Leadership

The Cross City Parent Leadership Initiative is a professional development opportunity for parent coordinators and parent leaders where they gain the tools and support they need to facilitate effective family-school programs at their schools and learn organizing skills. The initiative includes: (1) a retreat for a leadership core; (2) six monthly workshops focused on topics identified by the parent leaders and a culminating celebration; and (3) onsite coaching.
The cross-city leadership training began in 2003 with over 70 parent leaders participating thus far. In the first year, we offered monthly leadership trainings to parent leaders from three schools. In the second year, we offered monthly leadership trainings to parent leaders from six schools and added a homework component to each workshop, so that participants were responsible for taking the learned information back to their schools. In our third year, we held our first annual parent leadership retreat and involved veteran parent leaders as facilitators of the monthly trainings. In the 2007-2008 school year, we had the parent leaders sign a contract to state explicitly how skills developed and lessons learned will contribute to improving the school environment.

Concurrent with the Cross-City trainings, Tellin’ Stories staff collaborates with the parent coordinators and parent leaders to facilitate workshops in 7 of the 8 schools.