5: FAMILY ENGAGEMENT

Schools that support family engagement in boosting at-home digital use can expect better outcomes.

All guiding questions are aligned to the element criteria located in the Portfolio Guide.

Community Outreach

Guiding questions:

What are the needs of your community, and how are you meeting them?

We live in a time filled with digital transactions and the world of education is moving forward with classwork and home learning evolving into a digital learning space infused with everyday interactions. Our students need to be able to meaningfully engage in digital spaces, navigate the internet safely, learn how to care for devices to ensure their longevity, and be able to access digital resources that extend their learning beyond the classroom. Our students are not falling behind by having the digital resources provided to each of them through the digital promise of VILS.

DHCS has also identified the needs of the community are focused on how to best assist families to support their children with technology. The VILS Coach works closely with the Technology Device Manager, Operations Team, and Student Support Team to brainstorm the best strategies for supporting the needs of the community. This group of individuals is also working toward developing additional resources for families to use in the 2023-2024 school year in order to increase the impact of providing students access to devices has on their learning and growth as students.

How are families empowered to support their children at home?

Families are empowered to assist their students at home in that they have a direct line to the Verizon Coach and school when they have any questions or concerns. This information is primarily featured in the VILS Device Handbook and every family recieves a copy when their student enrolls at DHCS.

VILS Device Handbook

At the beginning of the 22-23 school year, all DHCS 5-8 students received a copy of the Student Technology Handbook. This handbook outlined DHCS's VILS device policy and included a section geared specifically toward family engagement.

The family section of the handbook detailed different ways for families to support their students in caring for their devices and suggested possible guidelines to use at home when supervising device usage. All students were required to sign this handbook and have a family member sign it. The signed handbook was then returned to the DHCS VILS Coach. Students were unable to receive their VILS devices without a signed copy of the handbook.

This handbook was also made available in Spanish, attached below

Translated copy of Spanish_ Height Student Technology Handbook_2022 2023.pdf

2022 DHCS_CCS VILS Implementation Handbook for Students.pdf

3. How did you support technology literacy in your community?

The VILS Coach supports technology literacy in the DHCS community by helping create and participate in school-wide functions, family workshops, and academic family nights. The VILS Coach has also created a curriculum for building tech literacy amongst the DHCS community, which can be found on the Equity is a Mindset page of this site. After realizing the gap in computer literacy in the community when it comes to basic computer skills, the VILS Coach and School Leader added a section to the Equity as a Mindset section of the transformation plan to address this critical gap.

4. What are your plans for family engagement at your school? How have/will these activities enhance and support technology integration with your families?

Currently, families have multiple ways of learning about technology with all the different resources and activities DHCS offers at several different time schedules and languages. These activities enhance families understanding of how technology is used in classrooms at DHCS and how to support their students in furthering their development, using the devices, at home. These are outlined in the following sections on this site page.

Report Card Conferences

Height Copy of Fall Report Card VILS Brochure (1).pdf

Report Card Conferences in November 2022 was the first day that families were invited into the DHCS building for the 22-23 School Year.

The VILS Coach had a table for families to stop by, next to the Family Survey station. The VILS coach answered any questions and distributed these brochures.

The brochure included information on computer safety, monitoring students grades through School Runner, academic websites used in classes, and additional engaging websites students could use over the Thanksgiving Break.

Theh brochure was also translated into Spanish to make it accessible to all of our students' families.

Spanish Copy of Height Copy of Fall Report Card VILS Brochure (2).pdf

Winter Break Choice Board

5-8 Winter Break Choice Board (Extension Activities)

For Winter Break, the VILS Coach created this Winter Break choice board for teachers to share with families as a way to increase meaningful VILS device usage over the winter holiday break. 5-8 teachers were encouraged to shape this choice board to fit their needs and share it with families.

The choice board prompts families to engage with several EdTech platforms, such as Discovery Education, Nearpod, and Quizziz. These are platforms that are used frequently in classes, so this activity will help families better understand how their students use devices in classes to further their learning.

This choice board also helps families understand ways in which students can use their VILS devices at home to further their learning, without direct teacher instruction. For example, families can continue to use the typing practice, Discovery Education exploration, and Quizziz activities beyond winter break.

Black History Month Project

Portfolio Copy of Height: Black History Month Project [A Life Worth Knowing]

For Black History Month, the VILS coach designed a 5th-8th Grade "A Life Worth Knowing" Project. Students chose someone to create an informational poster about with their families. They then did a mini-research project and used Canva or Google slides to create posters. These posters were printed and hung around the school building throughout Black History Month.

This project sought engage families in working with their students on their VILS devices outside of school hours beyond homework or classwork review. Templates were also provided to support students and families as they practiced their graphic design skills.

Element Reflection

Self Reflection on the Element: (Choose one: Emerging, Aligning, or Optimizing)

I believe that we are currently Emerging in this Element.

Strengths: How did your campus exemplify illustrating this element?

Currently, we have strong onboarding processes when it comes to family engagement and the VILS program. At the beginning of the school year, all families receive a plethora of information on how to best support their students and the devices. We also feature VILS meaningfully during school-wide planned events, like Academic Nights and Report Card Conferences.

Next Steps: What could you have done differently to better align with this element?

We could better align with this element through intentional family engagement throughout the year when it comes to the VILS program. Our families receive a weekly email from our school leader and I believe that featuring VILS in this weekly newsletter would allow us to establish a more routine way to leverage family engagement pertaining to the VILS devices. In addition, we were unable to build out a living library of video tutorials on how to navigate important platforms on the VILS devices and were unable to offer tech trainings to our community. These are two action items listed in our transformation plan that could better shift us toward Aligning or Optimizing within this element.

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