Family Advocate Guide
A Guide to the Family Advocate System answers common questions for teachers and other
staff taking u p their new role as family advocates in First Things First schools:
What are the responsibilities of a family advocate?
What happens during family advocate periods?
How do we prepare students for the Family Advocate System?
How will I introduce families to the Family Advocate System?
Initially coupled with training, the Guide becomes a continuing source of practical
information and specific activities. The user-friendly binder allows family advocates
to add their own activities and ideas to the Guide and to use it as an easy reference.
What is the Family Advocate System?
One of the three primary strategies in First Things First, the Family Advocate System,
matches every student and family with a staff member whose job is to do whatever it takes
to help that student succeed. As a rule, every teacher, administrator and other qualified
staff member in the school serves as a family advocate (or co-advocate) to 15 to 17 students
and their families. Family advocates bridge the gap between home and school and work with
students and their families to set goals and identify the steps all parties need to take to
realize them. Family advocates stay with students and families through all the years those
students are in the school.
What the Guide includes.
A Guide to the Family Advocate System (FAS) begins with a general overview of First
Things First and discusses the ways that FTF districts and schools measure progress.
An in-depth look at FAS then details a family advocate's responsibilities, strategies for
success and guidelines for working with families, students and staff. Included are tips
and techniques for:
- Reaching out to families regularly, including those families that are hardest to reach.
- Conducting fall and spring conferences with students and their families.
- Dealing with language barriers.
- Working with colleagues to support students.
In addition to contacting families, family advocates meet regularly with individual
students and with the group of students for whom they advocate. The Guide's final three
chapters contain more than 60 lessons that family advocates can use for group meetings.
Divided by semester, the lessons help students:
- Develop communication skills.
- Engage in personal and group goal-setting.
- Build relationships and teamwork within their small learning communities.
Lessons cover such topics as "Getting to Know Your Advocate,"
"Goal Setting for Academic Success," "Time Management,"
"Summer Jobs" and "Dealing with Conflict." Other lessons talk
about difficult issues in the life of a young person, such as the Family Advocate
System and violence.
You can learn much more about the Family Advocate System.
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