Your Communication Plan

Staffing 

• Be sure that the time involved in communicating inclusively is captured in job descriptions. If bilingual staff members are supporting your translation efforts, pay attention to time boundaries so that no one is expected to be in two places at once.

• Treat diversity as an asset and qualification for working in your school. Consider whether bilingualism could be added as a requirement or preferred qualification for some positions, or whether existing roles could be expanded to include family communication responsibilities. 

• Stretch your staffing capacity by cultivating family member leadership. Families can help you get the word out and can support your listening efforts. Offering stipends or gift cards will encourage families with time and economic barriers to participate. 

• Designate one individual to coordinate accessibility. Specifically: coordinating document translation, arranging language interpretation, coordinating disability accommodations including ASL interpretation, and ensuring information shared electronically is ADA compliant. This will allow you to draw on volunteers, staff members, and professionals to complete the actual work without the entire faculty needing to keep track of all of the details.

Training & Professional Development

• Prioritize training that builds a shared culture around family engagement. Use the Space Launch metaphor and Massachusetts Statewide Framework to develop a shared vocabular and toolkit for family engagement. Use a portion of your existing professional development time to orient educators and staff on interpretation, translation, and disability accommodation procedures.

• Create a centralized location where staff can find procedure "cheat sheets." Staff will be more likely to follow procedures that are easy to understand and located in a consistent place. Document various communication procedures using a simple one-page format, and save them in a shared folder, One Note, or intranet or Google Site. 

• Prioritize racial equity, cultural diversity, disability awareness, and anti-bias training. Unconscious bias shows up in our communication. Partner with local cultural groups to provide meaningful learning opportunities where educators and staff can learn about the diversity of your community.

Resource Development 

• Involve families in developing and refining resources aimed at supporting and informing families. Especially when you identify a need to address a sensitive topic, the perspectives of families will strengthen your understanding of the many lenses through which the topic can be viewed. 

• Involve educators and staff in developing and refining resources that pertain to their work. Find out what communication practices are already being used by educators in your district and expand their impact by creating templates and tools based on these tested strategies. Educators who are already invested in family engagement will be your most persuasive ambassadors as you roll out new procedures and recommended practices. 

• Work with community partners who know things about the community that may not be obvious from inside the school and district. Community partners may have templates, tools, workshops and translated hand-outs that can complement your efforts to inform, empower, and partner with your families.

Evaluation 

• Treat evaluation as a welcome source of information to continually improve. Remember to celebrate your improvements and accomplishments, while saving time to gather feedback and observe the impact of your communication efforts.

• Turn to families as the experts. Check out the Listen section of this site for reminders and strategies.

• Don't be intimidated by the concept of data. "Data" is just another word for information, and there are many different sources of information that you can use to measure your effectiveness. 

• Value both "birds-eye" and "street level" data.  Larger-scale surveys can help you to identify common areas of strength or areas of concern among your families. At the same time, you might notice that some groups of families are not participating in those surveys. This "street level" observation is just as important as the "birds-eye" results of your survey. Pay attention to what you see points to a possible need to have differntiated ways of gathering information from your families.