There was a time when Francine Kaeka couldn't connect with her 11-year-old daughter, Nalani Nicholas-Kaeka.

"We constantly fought. I would yell at her and everything," Kaeka said. "I never really listened to her. I thought I was, but I really wasn't."

But that changed earlier this summer when the mother and daughter began a four-week program at Wahiawa Elementary School known as Parents Joining and Doing.

The program, now in its third year, invites selected Wahiawa and Ka'ala elementary school students and their parents to learn strategies on how to boost their English and math scores on standardized assessment tests, according to Pamela Fujita, program co-founder and a resource teacher for the Department of Education's Leilehua complex.

Both schools have been identified as corrective action schools under the No Child Left Behind Act.

But perhaps more important than the schoolwork, the program teaches the students and their parents to work together.

For Kaeka and her daughter, the yelling has been replaced by a nightly ritual of sitting down and working on Nalani's homework together. "Now, I put myself on the same level as she is on," Kaeka said, nodding at Nalani. "I learned how to deal with my daughter."

Nalani is also pleased by the results. "Now, we don't fight anymore," she said.

Kaeka said she hopes the lessons she has learned with Nalani during the program will be transferred when her 5-year-old son, Brandon Santos, starts learning in earnest as well.

Nickie Bateman, another mother in the program, said she tried unsuccessfully for a long time to be able to work with her children, 13-year-old Kevin and 9-year-old Ryanne.

"I had no clue how to help my children," Bateman said of life before Parents Joining and Doing. "They explained it to me a lot differently. They go step by step."

About 20 to 30 students and their parents joined four teachers for this summer's program, meeting twice a week. The final session was last week. About one-fourth of those who show up are parents, Fujita said.

"We want the families to be able to work together and learn together," she said. "We want the parents to learn strategies that they can use to help their children at home."

Because the program gets very little funding, a limited number of students and their parents can be accommodated.

The focus, therefore, has been not just on those students who need the most help on math and reading, but "those families who we know would benefit ... whose parents we know are trying," according to Wahiawa Elementary principal Shelley Ferrara. "So we want to help them as much as we can."

Among the families that have benefited most is that of Atlina Lejeur, a native of Majuro in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Lejeur and her family moved to Hawai'i in 2001.

Lejeur attends the class not only with her daughter, Yumi, 12, and son Tony, 6, but no less than five other nieces and nephews, nearly all of whom also were born in the Marshall Islands.

Lejeur said that while teachers in Majuro are supposed to teach both Marshallese and English, many are reluctant to teach English, making reading and writing more difficult for Marshallese children when they immigrate to the United States and attend public school.

But that's not all that Lejeur's family and other Marshallese in the program have learned.

"At first, they were not very open," Bateman said of the Marshallese in the program. Generally, they kept to themselves, she said. "Now, they're more friendly, and comfortable with the situation."

Douglass Chai said he believes the program also has helped his three children get over shyness. "My kids are not as outgoing as others," he said. Talking to others in a smaller group setting helps prepare them for interaction in larger classes, he said.

Chai said, however, that the most important thing about the program is "it teaches teamwork between the parent and the child."

Chai has been attending the sessions with his wife, Ruby, and children Alyssa, 11; Jarred, 9; and Nicholas, 7.

Fujita said she would like to expand the program to help more students at the two schools but is limited by funding. The first year, all the instructors volunteered, and it wasn't until last year that the schools found some money.

Different sponsors give snacks and school supplies that provide incentives for the students.

Fujita said she wants the program to serve as a model that can be used at other schools.

Francine Kaeka agreed: "They should have more programs like this."