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Parent Educator Certificate

Students in this certificate series will acquire skills to enhance their child's learning. The courses offered embody Bank Street's 90 years of experience in educating teachers and improving the education of children. Upon completing five courses, students will receive a certificate of completion in Parent Education from Bank Street College.

Certificate Course Offerings

Five courses required.

  • Understand Your Child Better through the Study of Child Development (Ages 5 - 13 years)

    Parents and caregivers will solidify their understanding of children and build upon their parenting/care-giving skills with some basic principles and approaches to guide their thinking and actions. Topics will include:

    1. How play promotes children's learning during and beyond the preschool years,
    2. How memories of our own childhood affect the way we parent,
    3. Issues of social cognition—such as making friends,
    4. Gender differences, sibling relationships, bullying, and how children come to understand "race".
  • Meaningful Discipline: Minimizing Power Struggles with Children (Ages 5 - 13 years)

    We will explore discipline from a developmental perspective and focus on teaching and learning- rather than on punishing. Parents will learn to help children become more resilient, gain self-control, respect the rights of others, and learn from their mistakes.

  • Enhancing Writing Instruction with Evidence-based Strategies (Grades 2 - 8)

    Participants will come away with a deeper awareness of the schemas that underlie writing and the writing process and learn how to facilitate students' progression through these steps more quickly, effectively, and easily.

  • Effective Use of the Internet for Student Research Projects (Grades 5 - 8)

    Rapidly evolving technology has provided children with unprecedented access to information from all over the world. But the sheer volume, rate of change, and staggering number of sources of information have created a whole set of new challenges for students, teachers and parents. In this online course, will guide parents through an Internet-based research project just like those their students are expected to do, introducing innovative web tools and strategies along the way.

  • Understanding and Teaching Mathematical Concepts (Grades 3 - 6)

    This course will provide a better understanding of mathematical concepts, so parent/caregivers are more able to support children's mathematical learning. The course will be highly interactive and will reflect the kind of teaching we do at Bank Street College: student centered, learning through doing, problem solving, and connected to the real world.