SECTION B - ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT
OF THE PARENTS-AS-PARTNERS-AS-LEARNERS PROJECT IN THE E.T.S.B.

1- BEGINNINGS

In the Fall of 1986 the pan-time literacy animator visited Princess Elizabeth Elementary School and talked to the Principal about the difficulty of reaching out to adults who had basic education problems. His reaction was brief and to the point: "If you want illiterate adults, the parents of many of our students can't read. Find me a project that will reach them and we'll do it."

That exchange precipitated a hunt which led to Joyce White with the Ottawa School Board, who was investigating the idea of "Parents-as-Partners". She had received information from Dale Shuttleworth of the Board of Education for the Borough of York where they had established a "Parents-as-Partners" project based on the research of Hewison and Tizzard in England in the late 1970's. The researchers had studied the relationship between parental involvement and the reading attainment of 7 and 8 year old children and found that the factor which correlated most highly with reading ability was whether or not the mother regularly listened to the child read. The implications of this finding were picked up by the Belfield Community School in Rochdale, Lancashire (England) who developed the Belfield Reading Project. It consisted of asking parents to hear their children read their school reading book for a short time, five days a week, and to keep a record with their comments and initials.

When the idea of parents helping was brought to Canada by Frank McTeague, Co-Ordinator of English for the Board of Education of the City of York, a demonstration project was developed under the title "Parents-as-Partners". It was to respond to the concerns about the low reading levels of students and the high illiteracy rate among their parents.

Both, the Belfield Reading Project and the Parents-as-Partners Project resulted in:

• improved reading test scores;

• greater reading enjoyment;

• better relations between home and school;

• more self confidence on the part of the child;

• the involvement of some parents in adult basic education programs.

It looked like this project could answer to the needs expressed at Princess Elizabeth Elementary School. However, because of the involvement of the adult literacy animator, it was decided to give added emphasis to the parents' educational needs, and so the project name was enlarged to "Parents-as-Partners-as-Learners".

A small pilot project was undertaken by a Grade 3 teacher, Mrs. Leila Atkin. Her initial intention was to include 16 children who were having problems with reading; 5 from Grade 2, the remainder from Grade 3. However, once the other Grade 3 children understood what was going on, they all wanted to join in, resulting in a larger group for the project.