Father/Family Involvement Programs for Schools & Head Starts
The Central Texas Fatherhood Initiative (CTFI) and Strong Fathers-Strong Families (www.strongfathers.com) are proud to partner together to offer father and family involvement programs for schools and Head Start programs. Our aim is to help you work more effectively with the fathers and families that bring their children to your campus. The programs listed below work in all kinds of schools and communities and can be tailored to best fit the needs of your constituents.
Bring Your Dad to School Day - a school morning program for dads to visit their child's classroom and attend a workshop on stronger father involvement. Events are usually broken down by specific grade levels for crowd management and workshop relevance.
Father-Child Reading Night - Dads and kids interact to books built for fathers and children or group interaction. Facilitators model masculine reading techniques and address the value of fathers reading to their children.
Father-Child Math Night or Math Morning - Dads and kids interact with math games played with cards and dice. Facilitators train participants on how to play the games and instruct fathers on the value of helping with math homework.
Father-Child Science Night - Dads and kids interact as a team to build the best paper airplane, best "stomp" rocket, mousetrap catapult, and propulsion rocket. Facilitators train participants on helping children become more exploratory and science-minded in everyday endeavors.
Problem-Solving Game Night - Dads and kids take part in crazy interactive games that begin at the level of play and use physical games to move through team building exercises and problem-solving activities. Facilitators show how problem-solving techniques used in the classroom were used in the evening's activities. Fathers are trained how to spot these techniques when helping with homework.
Transition Programming - These are father-child programs that are designed to help dads and kids connect before they both enter a new phase of education. These programs are typically scheduled in the late Spring of the school year and are appropriate for children moving from elementary to middle school and middle school to high school.
Teacher/Staff Training - Available options include: (a) training for "front line" staff to build better communication patterns and procedures and develop better father and family friendliness practices for parents entering building or calling on the phone; (b) training for classroom staff to better deal with fathers and families and to see the complex needs of the modern family; and (c) ongoing training (1 hour, every six weeks) for teachers to build on their parent involvement experiences.
We can build a program with many of these elements in place to work the best within your financial and time constraints. CTFI and Strong Fathers-Strong Families want to help enhance your efforts in making fathers and families stronger partners in the education of their children.
