Unit I - Chapter 2.3

SLO 2.3 - Develop systematic communication with students and stakeholders. 

• • Family involvement and engagement - Some scholars suggest that most accurate predictor of academic achievement is not socioeconomic status or how prestigious the school is that a child attends. Rather, they say the best predictor of student success is the extent to which families encourage learning at home and involve themselves in their child’s education.

  • Family empowerment - The conviction that parents are capable of being the primary teachers and nurturers for their own children.

  • Communication of progress - People need to be kept informed in order to increase involvement and commitment. Consistent communication is essential to the well-being of any classroom and reporting creates a valuable record of student’s academic life. Information and feedback can be used later to look back and decide how to improve student learning and success. 

  • Learning expedition (Field Trip) - Experience where students spend most of their time engaged in sustained, in-depth studies of a single theme or topic. Experiences, which generally last from hours to weeks, will include strong intellectual, emotional, and physical dimensions. Expeditions can be ntellectually rigorous projects and purposeful field or servicework connected to a vision or purpose and a strategy for assessment fully integrated with curriculum and instruction.

  • Community resource - an organization that serves a particular geographical area or group of people by providing tools to help that community grow in positive ways and improve the quality of life for the people of that community

At this point, we have set up our classroom, organized our values, designed procedures leading to routines, set expectations, and created behavior management systems. 

Now that we have a grasp on who we are and what kind of operation we are running, we need to make sure that we are communicating all these aspects of our classroom clearly to our students, but also team members, colleagues, other professionals, and parents. Let's focus on what information is essential for parents/guardians so that we can build their role and create additional capacity for our students and classroom community. 

Are families really that important to a student's academic success?

Ideally, families will know that you are there to support:

• Student learning

• Student behavior

Families are compromised of capable and caring humans and I've never really met one who didn't want the best for their student! In order to get families engaged, we have to try to create an environment where parents want to participate and communicate openly and freely. 

We do not want to have families that:

• Don’t ever know what is going on

• Or, constantly trying to figure out what is going on

The easiest way to solve your problem here is by giving the families an appropriate amount of information about your classroom upfront!

In order to do this, we need to communicate to our families who we are as people, teachers, and professionals. We need to communicate that we care, we are knowledgeable, and that we are professional. This will ensure to families that we are competent and that their child is in safe, loving and professional hands. We need to provide regular communication and opportunities for family members to be involved. We need to share a simple and common language about learning and success of students. We need to keep it simple.

A Strong School Community Includes Engaged Families

Engaging our students and teachers is a widely accepted approach to achieving school success. But great schools don't just focus on the people inside the building; they build a strong constituency in the community. This leads to the natural next step: engaging families. Engaged family members are proud to be associated with their child's school and advocate for it in the community. They feel that the school delivers on its promises. Engaged family members often go so far as to say that the school is "perfect" for their child.

The relationship between a family and their child's school may be similar to the relationship between a customer and a company they regularly interact with. How does parent engagement compare to customer engagement? Gallup Marketplace Research often finds that about 30% of customers are fully engaged with the organizations they patronize in the healthcare, hospitality, retail and financial services industries. As such, it's surprising to find that only about 20% of parents are fully engaged with their child's school.

School leaders need to prioritize family engagement as they strategize and activate plans for school improvement. Doing so requires a focus on some key drivers of parent engagement, as follows:

• School leadership. In many communities, a school's principal and leaders are as visible as politicians or business leaders. Strong school leaders embrace this role as they respond to community concerns and inspire the community to believe in the future of the school.

• Academic standards. Families want to know that the school is committed to helping their child perform well academically, regardless of whether their child is succeeding in honors courses or struggling to keep up in class. Families seek appropriate amounts of homework and support to help their students achieve.

• School environment. Families seek a welcoming school environment in which their student is treated with respect and there is appropriate discipline. To put it simply, a family want to know that their child enjoys being at school.

• Personalized learning. Engaged families appreciate having a teacher who cares about their student enough to get to know their strengths, and who spends time developing their potential. They seek opportunities for their child to do what they do best every day.

• Communication and involvement. While most schools do a good job of communicating with parents in transactional ways about grades, whether dismissals or safety incidents, parents also seek communication about ways to get involved. They crave positive, specific feedback about their child and desire a true partnership with their child's teachers.

Building a culture of engagement for students, teachers, and families takes effort, but it is not out of reach. It requires systematic efforts a range of validated tools. When you see the results, you need to share the results with your fellow teachers and broaden the conversation to ensure that your approach is validated across classrooms. 

This conversation is on a sensitive topic about a student being held back, but it is representative of the disconnect that sometimes exists between school and home. We are searching for a way to communicate effectively and ethically with parents. 

Consider the following questions as you watch the set of videos:

• What do you think is going on here? 

• What are the issues that exist and do they apply to other situations in the classroom?

• Where does the communication breakdown?

• What could we do to handle this situation differently?

• What should the teacher do differently?

• What should the parent do differently?

• What can be done in the future? 

To improve student well-being and expand access to diverse education pathways, you might consider these 5 strategies  (*optional enrichment):

1. Technology that fosters connections unlocks the next frontier: Administrators who have simply increased the frequency of their communication have sometimes found parents overloaded and overwhelmed with the guidance received. Leaders should ensure that new communications technologies build authentic connections with families and empower them to sustain and support student learning at home.

2. Two-generation approaches that support families alongside students yield long-term benefits: The “2Gen” model recognizes the family as the unit of change and focuses on building a family’s social capital. This requires that educators work with families to solve problems, access new resources, and sharpen existing talents and skills with the goal of helping communities to thrive economically and socially.

3. Having families participate in instructional ecosystems supports anytime, anywhere learning: Schools that do not partner with families are more likely to struggle to expand experiential and individualized learning opportunities. Nonprofits such as LEAP Innovations and Big Picture Learning  (*optional enrichment) help schools scale student-centered work-based experiences and internships outside school buildings.

4. Connecting families to one another expand students’ access to supports: Nurturing relationships between families helps them expand their networks and build social capital that translates to a wider net of support and resources available to children long term. However, traditional models of family engagement, such as inviting parents to slot into pre-specified roles at the schools, failed during the 2020-21 school year. Administrators should consider supporting a decentralized approach where parents aren’t limited to engaging with their schools at predetermined times or locations.

5. Investing in new family engagement metrics can be a game-changer: One simple strategy is to ask families to rate their relationships with schools in climate surveys. This will give administrators data about the number of families who feel they have a trusting relationship with the school. Currently, many tech tools manage only communication or attendance at family-oriented events.

By Max Fischer

These are all just suggestions and some of these techniques will actually be successful for you!

• Do make an initial call home within the first two weeks of school. Generally speaking, a call home very early in the year to check with parents on their child’s adjustment to your (elementary) classroom or secondary school program sends a powerful message: “I want your involvement in your child’s education, and I need to collaborate with you for the benefit of your child.” This non-threatening communication also lays a groundwork that makes subsequent discussion of delicate issues of discipline or homework easier to broach.

• Do communicate what’s going on within your classroom on a regular basis. Monthly (at least quarterly) newsletters are appreciated by involved parents, especially as students tend to clam up as they matriculate into middle school.

• Don’t be wordy or condescending in your written communication with parents. For some parents, letters full of “educationese” reaffirm a sense of intimidation or distrust of schools that may have developed over years of negative personal experiences -- either as students or as parents.

• Do utilize modern technology -- e-mail, voice mail, Web pages --wherever is available to help get your message out. With so many two-paycheck families, phone tag via answering machines can be a very inefficient method of communication. Delicate messages should not ever be placed on a family’s answering machine when it is unclear who will listen to them first. Impress upon parents that e-mail is often the most direct communication route. For secondary teachers with 100 or more students, online communication is especially advantageous.

• Do be sensitive to the characteristics of your community of families. Depending upon the community, schools may have to think outside the box— holding parent/guardian-conferences away from school; making home visits; and hosting “First Day” programs to celebrate the beginning of a new school year— to increase involvement among parents who might be uncomfortable making a personal appearance at school.

• Do give parents opportunities to visit school unencumbered by the often daunting prospect of parent conferences. Again, some creative thinking can lead to highly successful events. Having students display thematic expositions of their work that parents are invited to browse (possibly while enjoying light refreshments!) or holding a “Back to School” program can provide enjoyable experiences while promoting your school's academic programs.

• Don’t stereotype parents by socio-economic background. Involved parents and uninvolved parents can be found at all income levels. Take a one-parent-at-a-time approach.

• Do transmit messages of genuine praise about students. Whether they're accomplished through a phone call to a parent or a “Good News” postcard to a student, such communications send a strong signal that you care, and help dispel the idea that any communication from school should be avoided.

Adapted from: http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr415.shtml  (*optional enrichment)

via EdWeek 

Teachers have one of the most important jobs in the world. You educate the leaders of tomorrow. You help them as they navigate and befriend a classroom full of students who are both very different and very similar to them in a variety of ways. You help them make sense of what is sometimes a scary, yet beautiful and loving world. You are likely one of the most important adults in your students' lives right now.

Any family will tell you that their child is their most precious gift. The best way I have found to describe it is that my children are like my heart outside of my body, vulnerably walking around in this big, scary, beautiful, loving world. To me, there is not a job more important than whoever is caring for and teaching my children when it is not me. One year from now, when I am sending my daughter on her first day of kindergarten, I will be putting my faith in her teacher that she will return safely, knowing that her teacher is a grown-up she can trust, who cares about her and who makes her excited to learn and return to school the next day.

So as I prepare to send my first child out into the big world (your classroom) where she will be surrounded by new children and grown-ups, ready to learn and explore this big world, I share with you what I hope for her teachers.

Develop strong relationships with your students. Really get to know them and show an interest in them, their friends, and their family life. How are they adjusting to school? Are they making friends, or do they fly solo? Learn about their dreams and encourage them. Seek out your students' strengths and offer opportunities to use them and feel that joy of doing something they both like and are good at.

Get to know your students' parents. Involve them when you can beyond parent-teacher conferences. As parents, we send our kids off to their first days of school and never really know what happens. Did my daughter make a friend, or feel lonely through the day? Was someone unkind to her? Was she unkind to someone else? Is she grasping the content in class? Does she participate? Openly share your concerns, but also tell us what our kids are doing well. Because the common response to "How was school today?" is "fine" we'd love to know what we can talk with our kids about, and how we can work with them to support what you are doing in the classroom.

Communicate openly and honestly with your students' parents. It's a scary time to be raising little ones. At home we try to raise our kids to be kind, generous, helpful, and friendly. In our supervised playdates, we, as parents, can monitor that and help them process it when others do not do the same. In the news we hear about bullies, mass shootings, and terrorist attacks. Talk with parents about the scary stuff, and give us comfort about the plan your school has in place. Share with us how you prepare your students and how we can help them deal with a sometimes scary world. We, as parents, are taking a big leap of faith putting the well-being of our precious children in the hands of their teachers. Don't underestimate your importance in their lives. Communicate with us personally, honestly, and often. Help us know that you care for our children and reassure us.

Don't lose your energy for your students and teaching. Over the years I have met with a handful of student teachers who I wish I could hand pick to teach my own children. Some of my favorite career coaching appointments over the years are the ones in which the student teacher I am assisting with a resume lights up talking about their experiences with their students, an especially creative lesson, how they helped a student overcome a challenge or reach a goal. The passion they had for teaching, and how well they got to know their students and how very much they cared for them were delightfully evident. Don't lose that passion for teaching, love for your students, your creativity, or the energy and dedication to helping them succeed. Those things are what draw your students to you and what gives a parent comfort that their child is having a good experience at school.

Never underestimate how important you are in the lives of your students. For many, especially the youngest, your role in your students' lives may be similar to that of a parent. Whatever your grade level, content area, or specialty, thank you for educating, loving, supporting, encouraging, challenging, and caring for our children, your students, the leaders of tomorrow.

via District Administration

Parents value engagement but say schools fall short. Parents  (*optional enrichment) rate family and community engagement as the most important driver of satisfaction with their child’s school—but districts frequently fail to offer them a voice in the education system, according to a recent study from Rice University.

Of 7,200 public school parents surveyed, only 34 percent said they were “very satisfied” with family and community engagement, while 43 percent expressed satisfaction with their schools overall.

“When we talk to principals and administrators, some of them say, ‘Parents just want a lot of extracurriculars,’ or ‘Parents just want good teachers,’” says Vikas Mittal, a professor of marketing at Rice University and the study’s leader. “What we found is that the biggest weight that parents give is actually to family and community engagement.”

Parents named school safety and teacher quality as the next most important drivers of satisfaction. Extracurriculars came in last place.

Parents want a voice - Only 29 percent of parents reported feeling that they had a voice in running their child’s school. Parents also expressed low rates of satisfaction with administration and staff members’ eagerness to ask for input. And only a minority of parents said they felt encouraged to observe their students’ classes.

What do parents want most from their schools? The leading responses included the ability to offer input on school policy, having administrators respect their opinions about students and opportunities to get involved in school activities.

“Family and community engagement is not just about cursory consultation with parents,” Mittal says. “Parents need to be able to get a better handle on what is happening with their child in the school.”

Parent involvement can be overwhelming - Administrators tend to struggle with parent engagement when facing many other pressures, including accountability, says Hugh B. Price, author of Mobilizing the Community to Help Students Succeed. Also, the concept of parent engagement is so broad that it’s difficult for administrators to determine which specific activities they should offer, Mittal adds.

Schools should create opportunities for involvement, even through simple events such as bake sales, Mittal says.

Online forums and community meetings provide other ways for parents to connect. “Parents should be active partners in the education of their children,” Price says.

“They should be collaborating with the teachers and administrators in the building to help ensure that their children are performing, and to provide the kind of complementary support at home that augments what educators are trying to do in the classroom.”

Check out these videos where kids share their perspectives on their parents' wants and needs in school:

• Kids' Perspective on Parents Part 1   (*optional enrichment)

• Kids' Perspective on Parents Part 2  (*optional enrichment)

Suggestions and Communication Strategies  (* links are for optional enrichment)

Strengthening Parental Involvement: How to Strengthen Parent Involvement/ WHAT PARENTS WANT TO KNOW / TEACHER PARENT BLOG  

Also, check out how one Southern California school district approaches the issue:

    1. Parent empowerment.

    2. Bullying.

    3. Cultural issues.

    4. Parent involvement in student learning. 

What did we learn?

• Parents need to be empowered. What does that mean?

• Parents need to meet each other. How do we do that?

• Modeling is important. What does that look like?

How can you approach creating connections to the community and families?

1. Take home folders.

2. Class newsletters.

3. Class websites (more class websites) and social networks.

4. Progress reports (both good and bad).

5. Open house and conferences.

6. Volunteer day.

7. Phone tree or texting application

8. Class and school activities.

9. The power of a positive phone call

Being a New Teacher (*optional enrichment)

• • Ideas for Getting Started

  • Teacher-Tested Strategies and Tips

  • Effective Communication Is Key

  • Top Tips for School Leaders

  • How Parents Can Get Involved

  • Sharing your expectations for Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

• • New Teachers: Working With Parents: Find ideas to help teachers engage and build trust with families. (Edutopia, 2016)

  • The Beginners' Guide to Connecting Home and School: Discover five steps to engage parents, whether through at-home activities or in-class participation. (Edutopia, 2014)

  • Five-Minute Film Festival: Parent-Teacher Partnerships: Watch this video playlist on parent engagement for ideas on fostering strong parent-teacher relationships. (Edutopia, Updated 2014)

  • 12 Conversation Starters on What Parents Want You (Teachers) to Know: Put yourself in parents' shoes with this list of 12 conversations teachers should be having. (Edutopia, 2013)

  • Building Parent-Teacher Relationships: Check out a guide to effective parent-teacher relationships, including sections on benefits, communication strategies, and phone guidelines. (Reading Rockets)

  • Family Engagement Toolkit: Discover a variety of helpful readings, resources, and downloads for welcoming linguistically and culturally diverse parents. (Teaching Tolerance)

Teacher-Tested Strategies and Tips (*optional enrichment)

• • • 9 Tips for Organizing Family Conferences: Review steps to make family conferences welcoming and efficient like smart scheduling, sending questions in advance, keeping student materials on hand, and thinking like a parent. (Edutopia, 2015)

    • 3 Ways to Make Meaningful Connections With Your Students: To have a better sense of your students' lives outside of school, consider setting time aside to get to know them outside of class. (Edutopia, 2015)

    • Kitchen Table Connections (or 5 Ideas to Re-Envision Homework): Discover how homework can be used to bring bridges between students’ home lives and school lives. (Edutopia, 2015)

    • 8 Tips for Reaching Out to Parents: Discover eight tips for engaging with parents, from avoiding confrontation and communicating clearly, to earning their trust on back-to-school night and coaching their children's after-school activities. (Edutopia, Updated 2015)

    • Home Visits: Reaching Beyond the Classroom: Get to know your students and strengthen the home-school partnership with these seven tips for reaching out to parents and meeting families. (Edutopia, 2014)

    • 5 Tips for Engaging Parent Volunteers in the Classroom: Read about obstacles to and success strategies for engaging parent volunteers in the classroom. (Edutopia, 2013)

Effective Communication Is Key (*optional enrichment)

• • • Tech-Enhanced Parent Engagement: Use email, messaging apps, websites, or virtual office hours to keep parents in the loop about what’s going on in the classroom. (Edutopia, 2016)

    • Back-to-School Night: The Ultimate Conversation Starter for a Successful School Year: When establishing that first contact with parents on back-to-school night, start the year right by being transparent, direct, and consistent. (Edutopia, Updated 2015)

    • The Power of the Positive Phone Call Home: Discover how positive phone calls with students' families can transform your classroom dynamics. (Edutopia, Updated 2015)

    • Empathy and Research: Engaging Parents With Tech Initiatives: Welcome parents into the conversation, listen to their concerns, and make them part of the solution. (Edutopia, 2014)

    • Engaging and Communicating With Parents: a Teacher Guide: Explore different educator perspectives in this collection of articles about communicating effectively with parents. (Education Week Teacher, 2015)

    • Parent-Teacher Communications: Everything You Need: Find resources, ideas, and practices for parent-teacher conferences, open houses, newsletters, and more. (Scholastic)

How Parents Can Get Involved (*optional enrichment)

• • • Back-to-School Resources for Parents: Find resources to help children begin school with a positive mindset, support their transition into a new school year, and prepare them for fall learning. (Edutopia, Updated 2016)

    • Myths That Undermine Parent Involvement: See how parents can partner effectively by supporting home learning, establishing a constructive dialogue with educators and policymakers, and shining as individuals within their community. (Edutopia, 2016)

    • 5-Minute Film Festival: Building a Parent Toolkit: Check out a few of the best videos and tools for parents of kids at every age and grade from the Parent Toolkit website. (Edutopia, 2015)

    • 19 Proven Tips for Getting Parents Involved at School: Browse through proven strategies, courtesy of parents and educators in the Edutopia and GreatSchools online communities, for strengthening the connection between home and school. (Edutopia and GreatSchools, 2014)

We need to know what environmental resources exist in our community. Can you walk outside and name the types of plants and trees that are in your yard? Can you drive to the store and comment on all the professional resources in your community? Can you walk down the street and name the mountains and things you see in the distance? Do you know who your state representative is? Do you know what sports leagues and clubs are in your area?

Maybe some of you can. But, I am guessing most of us can’t. Why?

It is my belief that much of our education we receive in schools is reflective of something other than the worlds we live in. Whether it is the knowledge from the teachers and books coming from outside places, or whether it is teachers who are focused on teaching what they were taught, we do not often learn about our own backyards first, before we go out into the national and global worlds!!!!!!!!!!!

One way to do this is to have a field trip or bring in a community member. You should be able to use the resources of the community to leverage capacity for learning in the classroom. FIELD TRIPS!!!!

Teaching Strategies - Pre & Post-Work For the "Trip"

• Explore the "Trip" website. Check the program offerings, explore the topics covered, and pay attention to the targeted age groups. 

• Reach out to the "Trip". Share your questions and work with the staff to build a customized program that best serves your student's needs.

• Introduce the "Trip" to your students. Explore materials online to generate excitement and build context for what they might see and experience when they arrive. Develop some pre-trip activities aligned with the trip's content. 

• Share your expectations for the "Trip". Communicate your goals and expectations with students and chaperones.

• Unleash student curiosity on the "Trip." Allow your students some space to explore on their own.

• Debrief the "Trip". Once back in the classroom, discuss the students’ experiences to solidify learning. 

• Keep referencing the "Trip." Find ways to link new content taught in the classroom to lessons learned on the trip.

Teaching Strategies - Virtual Field Trip

Teaching Strategies - Virtual Field Trip

National Geographic shares a Virtual Field Trip where three storytellers share unique insights from their experiences as Native Americans. They travel to New Mexico where a dedicated conservationist reinvents maps through the Zuni Map Art Project. Then, they visit the Flathead Reservation in Montana where a photographer challenges stereotypes through journalism. And finally, a quick trip to Ontario, Canada, reveals how a 20-year-old artist examines what it means to be Indigenous in a colonialist world.

We should share all of this information and maybe more in the "parent letter". You might do this with a website or other multi-media tool. 

Sample Letters (*optional enrichment)

• Parent - Teacher Sample 1 

• Parent - Teacher Sample 2 

• Parent - Teacher Sample 3 

• Parent - Teacher Sample 4 

The following links are for optional enrichment. 

• 19 Meaningful Questions You Should Ask Your Child's Teacher: (Edutopia, 2013)

• Teachers and Families working together

• Increasing Family Engagement 

• Starting Parent Communication off Right 

Chapter 3.1 - Managing Student Engagement in Learning (Link to Google Sites)