Engage. Empower. Transform.

PIQE’s programs engage, empower, and transform parents to actively engage in their children’s education and strengthen parent-school collaboration in order to improve the academic success of students.

PIQE works in 36 of California’s 58 Counties.  Below is the list of programs PIQE utilizes to advance its mission.

K-12 PARENT ENGAGEMENT IN EDUCATION PROGRAM

Throughout this nine-week workshop, PIQE’s signature program fulfills its goal of educating, empowering, and inspiring parents of K–12 school age children to take an active role in encouraging and enabling their children to: Stay in school; Improve their academic performance; Develop healthy and constructive relationships with their parents, teachers, and counselors; and, focus/prepare themselves for a post-secondary education.

EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT (ECD) PROGRAM

The ECD Program teaches parents how to provide a stimulating home environment that encourages and facilitates early success in school for their Pre-K and Kindergarten children. This program engages parents in activities that stimulate language development and essential pre-reading skills, as well as activities that help recognize the presence of mathematics in everyday life. Parents will understand the importance of an adequate preparation for kindergarten, and how it may impact future academic achievements.

EARLY K-3 LITERACY PROGRAM

In collaboration with the California Reading and Literature Project (CRLP), PIQE’s literacy curriculum introduces parents to the five elements of literacy in order to show parents how to be purposeful at home to help strengthen all of these areas. Parents are introduced to the Common Core State Standards for their child’s grade level. Parents get familiar with Dr. John Shefelbine’s Reading Framework of Skills and learn a series of fun, interactive and purposeful reading strategies to be used at home with their children. Parents will clearly understand the importance of their role in their child’s reading development.

PARENT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

This program focuses on developing parents’ capacity to engage in their child’s school at a deeper level by recognizing that the educational system faces many challenges. Parents reflect on their leadership qualities, identify critical school-centered issues impacting education, and learn how to establish a parent leadership team. They acquire tools that will help them conduct productive meetings with the principal and/or school staff. At the end of the sessions, parents will lead a dialogue with the principal, presenting from the parents’ perspective the most urgent needs affecting students at that school. Parents go on to serve as liaisons and role models for other parents.

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, AND MATHEMATICS (STEM) COURSE

This two-lesson curriculum educates parents on the importance of helping their children build a strong foundation in math and science. Parents learn the meaning of STEM and recognize the importance of fostering careers in these areas. They learn fun and interactive ways to teach their children about STEM concepts in their everyday lives. The curriculum also stresses how parents can cultivate their children’s interests towards a STEM career.

TEACHER-PARENT ENGAGEMENT WORKSHOP

In collaboration with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), PIQE designed a six-hour teacher workshop to help teachers and counselors review current research on parent involvement and its impact on student achievement. The workshop helps teachers and counselors develop skills to increase meaningful parent involvement. They reflect on the role of the parent and the role of the teacher: same world, different universe. There is a conversation about the many assumptions that can misrepresent the parent-teacher relationship, and the workshop concludes by designing a school-site Parent Involvement Action Plan.

FOUR-MONTH FOLLOW-UP “COACHES” PROGRAM

After parents have graduated from our signature Parent Engagement in Education Program, a PIQE Facilitator provides a monthly telephone call to the families that participated in the workshop. The purpose of the call is to keep motivating the parents to reinforce the principles and strategies learned during the nine-week workshop. The facilitator also listens to any concerns the parents may have and provides coaching and/or directs them to community resources. A monthly report is sent to the school principal with questions, issues and/or positive results reported by the parents during the calls. Principals have reported that the information received is valuable, given that parents provide realities from a different perspective.

FAMILY FINANCIAL LITERACY EDUCATION PROGRAM

This program generally imparted in partnership with various financial institutions to provide parents with essential basic money management skills such as budgeting, setting financial goals, and establishing as well as maintaining lines of credit. The program addresses the importance of college saving accounts (529 Plan), and wealth creation through asset accumulation. Also, parents become knowledgeable of mainstream financial services and programs offered by banks and credit unions; and when sponsored by a financial institution, they are given the opportunity to open checking and savings accounts.