Family engagement is a major challenge in my school. In my first year, I struggled to make consistent communication with my students’ families. One of the major challenges was the lack of parent contact information, which prevented the spread of information. Our parent contact directory is filled with discontinued phone numbers or missing email addresses. In an effort to reach families in 2020-2021, I gathered contact information from letters sent home with students and the recent device distribution log which required parent input of emails and numbers to acquire devices. Using my own contact log, I am able to broadcast information to specific classes about upcoming assignments and reach out regarding common concerns (e.g. missing assignments and attendance). The contact logs supplement the application of my long-term family engagement plan.

My long-term family engagement plan was developed in tandem with the different experiences and knowledge of a small group of educators. We created a comprehensive ten-month long family engagement plan which focused on specific topics with shared relevance to our unique placements. The common themes are backed by research-driven practices conducive to a school environment and are supplemented by visual presentations and applicable activities used to establish a real-world connection.

The core content of the family engagement plan utilizes major themes relevant to my school community. Topics such as school security and student health (i.e. emotional, mental, physical) propagate to families the seriousness in which I pursue cultivating a safe classroom and school environment supportive of their child's needs. For example, the theme for August is School Security with an emphasis on ensuring parents about the number one priority of maintaining a safe and healthy school environment. The long-term plan breaks down into a detailed immediate action-plan and continued progress monitoring throughout the month. August's immediate plan includes an information session on school safety protocols with progress monitoring surveys and the school Facebook page. 

The ten-month long family engagement plan is fine-tuned to the specific contextual needs of the Clarksdale community.  Covid presents major challenges to conveying information and providing safe, quality instruction. School Status and Facebook provide avenues of communication to my families to alert them about upcoming parent meetings and other opportunities. Through these communication access points, families can access the necessary information needed to navigate online-learning and participate in Q&A sessions to clarify the confusion. 

My community faces issues like wifi and device inaccessibility, which raised initial problems for converging to a virtual learning environment. In an effort to ensure student access, I directly reached out via School Status to survey family needs. For example, surveying family wifi and device needs to ensure students are adequately able to engage in an online learning environment. This information supported accurate device and hotspot needs and compare the data in preparation for device distribution. In addition, the conversations helped ease family contentions with the uncertainty of an online learning environment.