"As individuals and as a group, parents are the key partners with the school as it works toward its vision of what all students need in order to be successful now and in the future. It is very true that you were your children's first teachers. You know them best as individuals. The teachers know your children in groups better than most parents. Your knowledge and the teachers' knowledge combined is a very powerful body of expertise focused on success for all your children. As you and your children's teachers embark on this adventure we call middle school please remember that working with young adolescents is a very special calling. This is true for you as parents, and for the staff. I don't think it's possible to do this unless we really love being in their world."

Two of my colleagues, Rebecca Dickinson and Katherine Harcourt, and I then used PowerPoint presentations to help explain the 14 principles outlined in "This We Believe." As part of our NMSA grant, we bought copies of the book for all families, but we were realistic enough to know that not all copies may have made it home in the girls' backpacks in time for their parents to have been able to read them, and we wanted to be sure that everyone understood what the middle school model is all about.

Finally, we borrowed an idea from Chris Toy which he had outlined in an online diary for MiddleWeb about one of the Parent Team meetings at Freeport Middle School. We gave paper to all the parents, and asked them to write down what they wanted to have happen for their daughters this year - not the specific issues which could better be handled by talking to advisors, but more general thoughts which might apply to all the girls. Unfortunately, I was not clear that there should be only one idea per piece of paper, which meant I had to do some quick copying of each individual idea onto separate pieces of paper. I've never written so neatly and quickly at the same time in my entire life! The good side to this is that we probably got many more ideas than we otherwise would have. The parents were then given five smiley-face stickers, and after looking at and reading over all the ideas, placed their stickers under the ideas they felt were the most important. We will be compiling this data over the next few days to determine what are the top priorities of the parents, and we will be able to use this in our planning through the year.

While the parents were placing their stickers, Katherine and I were commenting that working with the parents was just like working with their daughters - you try an activity to see what you get, and they respond with this explosion of wonderful, thoughtful, insightful ideas. It was an inspiring evening, and a great start to our parent-teacher partnership and this aspect of our work on the grant.