School-community partnerships have an extensive history and a promising future. Strong partnerships empower both the school and the community, but even more important, they engage and enlighten the students. The result, for the students, is a powerful combination of mentors and resources which, without such partnership, would otherwise have been difficult, if not impossible, to attain. While there are many different types of partnerships and varying degrees of commitment, the best partnerships stand apart from the rest due to their ability to "create capacity" or to improve many facets of the school, such as awareness, effectiveness, resource pools, visibility, and sustainability. With so many different types of school-community partnerships to emulate, it is becoming increasingly difficult for educators, businesses, community leaders, and parents to determine which partnership to focus on, let alone how to achieve similar results.
Although many school-community partnerships have proven to be successful, one partnership, in particular, adheres strongly to the core values which school-community partnership experts have identified as imperative for success. Through the examination of one particular school-community partnership, the Georgia Project, one can perceive a template for other school-community partnerships to follow. The Georgia Project addresses the needs of an ever-growing population of students who speak Spanish as their primary language by sponsoring bilingual teachers who can help students to assimilate while respecting cultural differences. The community is united in a common purpose, and the partnership even offers professional opportunities to local and future teachers to meet their needs as well.
By surveying a statistically significant number of participants in the Georgia Project about the project's history, current process, and future plans, an accessible roadmap for other school-community partnerships becomes apparent. This critical, qualitative case study provides an in-depth examination of how the Georgia Project was established and the various manners in which the partnership has sustained itself over time. It also describes the specific features of the Georgia Project that have been noted by other researchers as qualities of successful school-community partnerships. Finally, it addresses how this particular partnership has institutionalized itself in terms of creating strategies to build capacity in the project.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04032007-212301 |
| Date | 27 June 2007 |
| Creators | Narcisse, Sito Jacky |
| Contributors | Dr. Charlene Trovato, Dr. Elaine McAllister, Dr. Charles Gorman, Dr. Sean Hughes |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04032007-212301/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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