Community Partnerships

Bake sales, PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences have long been seen as the key to engaging parents in their children's education.

Relying on these traditional approaches, however, limits the agency and expertise of parents. Even worse, such approaches are particularly apt to marginalize parents from non-dominant communities.

At too many schools across the country, parents are left out of the learning equation. Ellie Canter (MEd ’12) is working to change this oversight as director of programs at Turning the Page, a non-profit that is empowering parents in Washington, D.C. to become active and effective participants in their children’s education.

Canter supervises AmeriCorps VISTA members and three partnership coordinators to strengthen relationships between teachers and families.

From an early age, Lorena Guillen felt a call to change the status quo of schooling. The Los Angeles native heard stories from family members who were scolded by their teachers and administrators for speaking Spanish in school.

Despite that treatment, her mother instilled the importance of education, and Guillen would go on to teach in a Los Angeles high school. Problems at the under-resourced school soon surfaced however.

Mia Tuan, a distinguished scholar who has worked to strengthen equity and inclusion in educational settings, will officially assume the deanship of the University of Washington College of Education on July 1.

Dr. Tuan joins UW after serving as a professor of education studies at the University of Oregon. During her 18 years at UO, she held a number of leadership roles, including interim dean of its College of Education, associate dean of its Graduate School, and director of the Center on Diversity & Community.

A hum fills the classroom in Marysville's Liberty Elementary. Students huddle together in groups over large sheets of poster board, sketching maps and arranging prints of photos.

University of Washington College of Education post-doctoral researcher Shelley Stromholt leans down to talk with one group of two boys and a girl, asking where their photographs were taken. Two weeks earlier, the students snapped pictures of some of their favorite places in and around Liberty Elementary. Tonight, they're working together to draw a map of the school with their photos to illustrate it.