Friday, March 2, 2012

Helping Parents Communicate with Teachers

Charlotte Mecklenburg Library provides library outreach programs at the Latin American Coalition. These workforce development classes are designed to help patrons increase computer skills to communicate, find jobs and create opportunities to enhance employment. Classes at the Coalition are planned and implemented by staff member Irania Patterson. Irania was excited when she connected the content of her class with the students need. Part of the curriculum of the computer classes is establishing an e-mail account. Once the students created the account and practiced it within the class, Irania was not able to tell if the students continued to use the account for communication. The students approached Irania when they wanted to use their e-mail account and computer skills to communicate with their children's teacher, since grades and student information is electronic for Charlotte Mecklenburg School parents. Irania created a lesson that taught parents how to search the CMS website to find their students grades and they used their new e-mail account to communicate with their children's teacher! This was a huge accomplishment for our computer class, but a more important accomplishment for our computer class students. The free services from the library are helping parents access information that helps their child with educational success! For more information on Spanish language computer classes call 704.416.0557 or ipatterson@cmlibrary.org.

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