Advanced Learning Plan

Purpose: To skillfully facilitate culturally sustaining engagement practices that integrate family voices and goals into your classroom

Goals and Outcomes

I can...

Develop an assets-based approach to how I engage with all families. This will encourage and build families' strengths as partners in their children's learning.
Sustain trusting, 2-way, and respectful relationships with families that support student success.

I will practice the skills in this module by...

Examining my past and present attitudes towards families and find ways to highlight the strengths and resources each brings to the schooling partnership.
Adding to my Family Engagement strategies "toolkit." I will select, plan, and implement at least four of the suggested family engagement strategies and assess the effectiveness of each one at deepening partnerships with the families.

Reflect/Review:

First Things First...

Reflect: Think about past experiences, both rewarding and frustrating, you have encountered in your interactions with families.

Quick Write: Explore the reasons you enjoyed positive connections with some families. Why do you think relationships with other family members proved less productive or disappointing?

Use: The inventory sheet from Reframing Partnerships with Families: Six Mindset Shifts For Moving Towards Relationship-Centered Family Engagement (Search Institute, 2023) to reflect on strategies that move from a deficit mindset of families to an assets or strengths-based approach.

Describe: Where are you now in your family engagement practices? How is your school doing? Where would you like to be as a classroom teacher? Where would you like to see your school community grow?

6-Shifts-Self-Reflection-Tool_Rev-0423.pdf

Watch: In the series of videos below from Ohio State University's Family Engagement Center, click on the video titled, "Session 5: Measuring Family Engagement: An Introduction by Dr. Amanda Klein" to discover ways you can measure the success of your family engagement.

Mindshift: Highlighting Assets Families Bring to Schooling

Read the article below for tips on how to begin seeing all families as valuable partners in their children's schooling:

Learning from students’ families as a step toward equity in literacy instruction | KQEDRecognizing all the forms of literacy in children’s lives and homes is part of a culturally relevant teaching practice.

Task 1: Revisit and Reframe Reflection

Reread: The descriptions you wrote earlier of the positive and disappointing experiences you've had with families.
List: The strengths of the families with whom you had respectful and productive partnerships. Now try the mindshift strategies from the article to list strengths challenging families may have brought to their children's schooling.
Respond: In what ways did you feel your attitude towards the challenging families shift after this exercise? How might you learn about the assets every family brings to their child's schooling in order to develop a positive partnership? (Look at the suggestions below to get you started...)

Review Additional Resources if interested:

Connecting with Your Child’s School

Indigenous Family Support Toolkit

AIAN-Toolkit-WEB.pdf

Try it!

Go to the Family Engagement Calendar page and review Strategies 1-7, adding to the Family Engagement Calendar that began the first time you took the SILKAT class.

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