Open publication – Free publishing – More parents

I am so proud today that my friend and colleague Tracey Berry, Family Support Teacher at Forthview Primary School, West Pilton, Edinburgh has been awarded the MBE for her services to Education.

Tracey works at the frontier of education and is one of Scotland’s pioneers in bridging the gap between home and school faced by many parents and carers who have had bad experiences in school and society in the past.  Tracey is kind, deeply caring, totally committed to adapting learning to fit families, rather than the traditional approach of making families fit the way we do things in schools. This award is fit recognition that this work is valuable and important. However the real value of this work is in the difference Tracey has made and makes to the lives of children, mums, dads, grannies and the community of West Pilton, which is precious beyond words and awards. Well done Tracey.

I have attached an abbreviated version of a presentation Tracey and I delivered at East Lothian Learning Festival in September 2012. Calling All Parents was a presentation about adopting a wealth model of working in partnership between home and school. It was mainly based on Tracey’s work at Forthview Primary. For this website, I have only included photos and thoughts from the period I was headteacher at Forthview. The presentation was much wider than that but this gives you a wee taste of the most effective partnership with parents/carers I’ve ever seen in practice, some ideas of how we are trying to develop this in East Lothian and suggestions for other schools. For me, this is what it’s all about…