COMETS will create a program called the Family TREE to recreate a modern Family TREE in the community where parents and custodians gain information about science while also learning about the responsibility to assist and encourage their children’s education. Without approval and encouragement from parents, children have difficulty seeing the value of science and its importance in their lives. COMETS will facilitate a family support network among the participating CCs to demonstrate the value of science and education. Regular workshops and family gatherings will encourage communication between project staff, parents, children and educators. An avenue is given to the diverse professional team at CASTEM to make an effective, immediate mediation between parents, community, and teachers. Within such ethno-culturally diverse school settings, COMETS can then ultimately resolve the problematic issue of poor communication between project staff and minority parents (Bernhard et al. 1998).
The COMETS parent program, The Family Tree, will be an embracing center that makes an aggressive, deliberate effort to branch out to reach parents and custodians of elementary and middle school students to encourage them to align themselves with their child’s teacher and to provide information and opportunities to help their children achieve their academic goals in math and science. Multiple strategies will be utilized to encourage parental participation. They include the following:
Transportation assistance provided to scheduled events;
Student recognition to highlight student programs and successes;
Food provided during scheduled events;
Additional educational programs held simultaneously for siblings provided by partners from 4-H and Junior Master Gardener;
Childcare for much younger siblings provided by either university honor societies such as Kappa Delta Pi or from the Family TREE budget;
Provided by the COMETS partner Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences, incentives given to participating families such as family memberships to the Clay Center Science Discovery Museum; and
Additional door prizes given to participating families such as Kroger or WalMart gift cards which will be donated by local companies or purchased from the Family TREE budget.
COMETS will hold 9 sessions a year with 4 sessions located at the Avampato Science Museum in Charleston, WV, and 5 sessions located throughout the community. Sessions at Avampato Science Museum will be provided by COMETS to encourage exploration of our local science museum by an under-served population. To encourage ongoing family participation, a family membership to the Avampato Museum will be provided by COMETS once a family has attended two Family TREE sessions.
The Family Tree will operate along side of the existing after-school programs as an outreach, which project investigators believe is imperative to allow program sustainability in the existing communities following the grant period. We will solicit feedback from each individual in the form of a survey following each session. The proposed events will be very exciting, interactive, informative, and will create a positive on going partnership with educators, parents and community.
The Family Tree will be Saturday events during the school year. Parents and custodians will be attending the scheduled events during the times when the students will be involved with their planned activity. Lunch will be provided during the Saturday events, as a motivation for parental involvement as well as door prizes provided by supporters of our university such as Wal-Mart, Pepsi, local sorority and fraternity chapters. The event schedule will be announced, and advertised in advance and will include: dynamic motivational speakers from the local area, hands-on interactive workshops; parent coaching; group discussions; and group outings that are relative to the goals of The Family Tree such as NASA Space Night, and transporting parents to attend the local scheduled events of the students to local research facilities. The series of Saturday events that will be put together during the school year will be strategically designed to:
Train our staff on the needs of families,
Reach out and bring family involvement back into education,
Encourage ongoing partnerships, and
Educate our children in STEM areas.
Bernhard, J.K., M.L. Lefebvre, K.M. Kilbride, G. Chud, R. Lange (1998). Troubled Relationships in Early Childhood Education: Parent-Teacher Interactions in Ethnoculturally Diverse Child Care Settings. Early Education and Development, 9, 5-28.
