As the next school year comes closer, begin to plan for better parent meetings.  Demonstrate that you value parents as co-missioners in passing on the faith. Communicate in words and deeds that Jesus—through you—loves them and is listening to them. Prepare a comfortable and attractive meeting space. If your parent meetings are in a classroom, rearrange the desks into friendly circles or provide adult-sized chairs. Have a meaningful opening and closing prayer.

Make the meeting a conversation rather than a lecture. Provide opportunities for parents to talk to you and to one another about questions that matter. Some conversation starters:

• How is the world different now than when you were growing up?
• What do you hope your children will remember that you were trying to teach them?
• What are your biggest worries for your children now?
• What difference has technology made in your family’s lifestyle?
• What are key values that you want to pass on to your children?

Blest Are We Faith in Action Director’s Resource, pp. 71-72, has more plans for parent gatherings.

Resources for supporting parents and families. Your faith formation programs have excellent resources for engaging with parents and helping them share the Good News at home. 

• Blest Are We Faith in Action makes family faith formation a priority, starting each chapter with Take Home pages. Reinforce the efforts of parents by echoing the messages from the Take Home pages in your classroom lessons. Reviewing the Take Home pages in the classroom helps children understand that you and their parents are partners in their faith formation.
• Stay in touch with parents by sharing links to digital versions of the Take Home pages and video resources, available in the Grade Level Organizer pages of your Flourish website. 
• Family Life student books and Parent Connection booklets help parents know how to talk with their children. Share links to Catholic Parenting 101 and Videos from Experts, all found in the Grade Level Organizer in Flourish.

Not all parents will be as engaged as you hope. Your students come from homes with a wide variety of church practice and affiliation. Yet, their parents have chosen your Catholic school or parish program to be their partner in guiding their children’s moral and faith development. We need to walk alongside parents with humility and patience and develop what Pope Francis has called a “spirituality of accompaniment.” Given time and encouragement, parents who have spent years on the edges of parish life may be inspired to become more actively involved.

Celebrate each step parents take toward a stronger family life and deeper faith. Pope Francis said that he dreams of a Church with its arms wide open—like the arms of the father of the Prodigal Son—where there is a place for others, no matter what is happening in their lives (The Joy of the Gospel, no. 47). Let this also be our dream for the parents of our students.

About the Author
Dr. Lauri Przybysz specializes in equipping families to live their vocation to be domestic churches and signs of God’s love. Lauri received the Doctor of Ministry from the Catholic University of America, and she has been both a Catholic middle school religion teacher and a faith formation coordinator at the archdiocesan and parish levels. She is the mother of six children and grandmother of 21.

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