Clarke Central High School Family Engagement Specialist Christian Barner speaks in Room 231 about his experiences with parent involvement at CCHS. Barner’s work includes organizing opportunities such as parent-teacher conferences. “(The job includes) everything that has to do with trying to essentially help parents get involved here at the school and know what’s going on and be able to help students at home as best they can,” Barner said. Photo by Gerardo Navarro
As of the 2018-19 school year, Clarke Central High School Family Engagement Specialist Christian Barner is working to increase parent involvement in the CCHS community.
Family Engagement Specialist Christian Barner, appointed just prior to the start of the 2018-19 school year, works to provide resources and opportunities for Clarke Central High School parents to get involved in the school.
“(My job includes) working with students’ families,” Barner said. “It’s very important for us to have that extra support just with students in regards to making sure that students are doing the work they need to do or turning in their coursework or staying on top of their responsibilities.”
Barner works to connect parents to advisers through the facilitation of parent-teacher conferences.
“We have parent conferences in fall and spring, so I coordinate those, as well, which has to do with providing teachers with the materials they need, as well as dealing with translators because we have a Spanish-speaking population,” Barner said.
Barner feels advisers are beneficial to family engagement because of their opportunity to focus on small groups of students.
“We’ve got four counselors for 1800 students, so the counselors can’t really even develop relationships with that many students, but an adviser only has 20-25 students that they’re focused on,” Barner said. “The adviser meets with the parents at least twice a year (and) the adviser often is also checking student’s grades and reporting back with parents.”
According to Barner, there are many opportunities for parents to become involved in their children’s academic lives.
“I think the best way (to engage with families) is face-to-face. I think our parent conferences are a great way to do this, (the Parent Teacher Student Organization) is a great way to do it,” Barner said. “Anytime we can get parents in the building to actually interact with teachers and advisers and staff and faculty is the best way for us to engage.”
Foreign language department teacher and freshman adviser Erica Cascio feels parental involvement can be helpful.
“The more involved a parent is the more a child will be successful, and I don’t mean the kind of involvement where the parent helicopters around and bullies teachers, but the kind of involvement where parents hold their children accountable for their successes and for their failures,” Cascio said.
Barner believes family involvement in the school has a positive impact on the lives of students.
“The more connection that we can make between families and the community and the school, I think the richer your education is, the richer your life is, the richer your experiences are,” Barner said.
More from Audrey Enghauser
More from Valeria Garcia-Pozo
