In working together with educators, parents can accelerate their child progress.

You can initiate conversations and collaborate with your new teacher in order to work together on your child's goals. The progress children make at home can greatly help them at school, and advances at school will reflect on your child's family life as well!

So let's recap how you gained the knowledge to empower yourself in 2020:

1. Read the below about learning to recognise and amplify your child's voice and strengths

2. Share your child's strengths with their teachers and plan goals that are based on these strengths

3. Discuss with your teachers what improves your child's wellbeing - this will help design strategies to support your child achieve goals

4. Agree with your teachers how you will collaborate and communicate about goal progress. If you work on the same goals at home, your child will achieve their goals faster and... new goals can be put in place!

We are innovative and collaborative! We worked together to:

1: Understand your child's strengths so that your child's voice could be included in their educational planning

2: Journey together - families and teachers - and pooled our knowledge about your child's wellbeing to support them in achieving their goals

3: Develop a shared understanding on how we wanted to communicate all year long about progress on goals so that these goals could be achieved collaboratively between students, teachers and families.

Principal Elletson also participated in some of the Student Voice sessions and the PLSP meetings where parents brought their Student Voice knowledge and resources to the meeting. He said:

“I can see the difference in the families when they come to the meeting, for some it is life changing to learn from their Early Intervention meetings how to set goals. These goals are rich and meaningful to the families. I told some parents that we can help them develop and achieve these goals, that the meeting is just the start of our collaboration and that this knowledge will serve them in the years to come. I would like the Student Voice project to run through the whole school - for all children”.

Collaborate with your child's teacher to help your child thrive! Including your knowledge about your child's strengths in planning for their preschool will help will bring out the best in your child and get the best results.

Dr. Lea Waters, author of the Strength Switch book asks: "What if you could make a small shift in your parenting style that would yield enormous results for your child… and for you?" Lea is a Board Member and the 2017-2019 President of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA). Her break-through strength-based parenting approach helps parents see what is right about their children, then nurture and cultivate their innate strengths and talents. Start with observation! Read more about it here and watch the video clips above!

Sophie, school coordinator reports that there already are some great learning from this new type of collaboration. Sophie supports teachers in the school to apply Student Voice project learning and collate progress through their Teacher Dashboards. “So far, Punchbowl students have passed the 15 goals achieved mark in August whilst all the other goals are progressing well”.

Amplifying student voice learning

We learned about 2 mechanisms to capture student voice: understanding the student’s Signature Strengths and what increases his or her wellbeing. The Student Voice program is about making sure we include these elements in our supporting the child to achieve their goals.

“We harnessed Aamira’s 'Love of learning' Signature Strength and the ‘Relationships' and 'Achievement' wellbeing factors to achieve this goal. We built on her motivation to share with peers, gave her the role to hand out bells to other students - which she loves and she visibly enjoyed this achievement. We then updated Sherine, her Mum via the Student Voice Facebook group and via Seesaw about the goal achieved and discussed the goal’s next step to duplicate success without educator support. We’re now focusing on building upon what we learnt about this student’s voice to collaborate with home to achieve Goal 2”.

Educator Lia commented, “Working collaboratively with Meili was heartbreaking at first because she shared the struggles she faced on a daily basis. Meili spoke about her son (Solopani) conveying several behavioural outbursts, especially in his morning routine. This was overcome by breaking down larger goals into smaller steps. By Meili encouraging Solopani to make new choices thus exercising his voice, they were able to see an improvement and achieve his set goals. His educators further enabled Solopani to continue the decision making process at Preschool, nourishing his independence and communication.”

Great school-home collaboration stories

• Addressing the fussy eater (no fruit!) challenge:

  • At school, Nathalie observed that the child was looking at another child’s dinosaur nuggets so she informed Mum and how he eats these at school!

• • At home, Nourhan ‘cracked the mystery’ of assisting her son eat more fruit!! Nourhan used her Creativity and Curiosity Signature Strengths she identified at Session 2 of Student Voice to develop two recipes which include fruits for his birthday. Finding out what a fussy eater likes deserves a medal - not just the recognition that a goal is achieved!!! Nourhan shared the recipes via Facebook for a yummy homemade fruit ice cream and a kiwifruit birthday cake (well… the kiwifruit was disguised but hey, that’s OK right!!?):

    • Ice cream: Blend two kiwis with yogurt. Add sugar or honey to your taste, then blend again. Add to this mixture thickened cream, powder milk and liquid milk.

    • Remove one cup of this mixture for the cake - put the remainder in the freezer for the ice cream! Mix the ingredients for a traditional cake but substitute 1 cup of the above mixture for the liquid and one cup of blended fruit. Choose a fruit that you know your child likes the taste of!

Teacher learning

• Sophie: “Technology can play an important role to share and collaborate with parents about progressing with students’ communication goals. We can capture on video and share on Seesaw how a student is able to wait for his or her turn for a specific time. This information matters a lot to parents and encourages them to build on our early successes and try to break new records at home!”

• Nathalie spotted progress on a toilet training goal which happened at school and immediately informed the mum through facebook and verbally. This new information spurred full collaboration between home and school. In a busy school world, one may feel time-poor to update parents of small steps, however achievements at school are very motivating for parents - and sure enough the students’ goal progresses more rapidly.

Parents sharing in session and via Facebook

Rozina first shared her worry about her son’s challenge with using a toothbrush at Student Voice session 2. Other parents in the session suggested trying an electric toothbrush and her son achieved his goal within a few weeks! Rozina then moved on to Goal 2, and achieved this one too. Now she reports working with her son’s teacher and is near Goal 3 achievement!

Rozina shared with other parents on the project: “Hi everyone. I hope all of you are doing well . I am glad to share with you as Ayaan has made some progress to achieve his 2nd goal. He is getting better and better at communicating with people. He has started saying words like hello, mum, yes, more, bye, dad and he started copying us. He follows instructions and tries to understand his teachers and therapists commands. Though it takes a bit longer, he is happy to wait while we set a countdown timer for any activity. He is happy to share toys and takes turns with friends. All these are included in my 2nd goal (which is communication). Ayaan's 1st goal was teeth brushing. He allows us to help him brush his teeth now. I start brushing his teeth with an electric brush and then he continues, though I have to supervise him. Thank you so much to the parent in this group who advised me to try brushing with an electric toothbrush. Thanks to the students/child voice team for such a wonderful project. I am still working on his communication with LAMP and school readiness (the 3rd goal) including toilet training. Looking forward to meeting you all and hearing more success stories from you. Wishing you all the best Rozina!”

Another parent reacted right away, commenting on the growing friendship between their children and with the teacher commenting on the family’s progress with goals. Upon our team’s encouragement to set new goals, the mother responded: “thanks for your suggestion. Yes I am going to set new goals after talking with [our teacher] So that goals could be more achievable for Ayaan.Thank you so much for being there for us.”

Read about these stories and others in the online newsletter that was sent to parents about the progress of the Student Voice program. or scroll below to read the newsletter.