Building Support for Your School

This book demonstrates how educators can use children’s work to communicate what is being learned in early childhood and elementary school classrooms. Extending the work begun in Windows on Learning: Documenting Young Children’s Work, this new book combines Judy Helm’s experience with documentation and Amanda Helm’s expertise in marketing and public relations, to provide the tools educators need to present powerful evidence other than test scores that children are learning. Part I explains the need for school personnel to communicate more effectively and examines how professional strategies can make a difference. Part II presents seven strategies for implementing more effective professional communication. Part III is a handbook of resources on communication techniques. The book includes strategies from the communication field to help teachers and administrators process, display, publish, and share documentation of children’s work with parents and other members of the community and demonstrations of how the strategies and methods are used in real classrooms and schools—including interviews with teachers, administrators, and parents; examples of children’s work; photographs; and a full-color insert.

Judy Harris Helm assists schools and early childhood programs through her consulting and training company, Best Practices, Inc. Amanda Helm is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater