Strong family engagement has been shown to improve student outcomes, school climate and more, but schools and parents alike often find that meaningful engagement can be extremely challenging to put into practice.
On Jan. 15, the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments held a webinar that featured a panel of educational leaders, parents and caregivers answering questions related to how schools can effectively partner with families and what can be done to improve the ways they connect with families to promote effective and honest communication and collaborative efforts to address the needs of students.
Anne Henderson, a senior consultant and the vice chair of the board at the National Association for Family School and Community Engagement, noted that when schools successfully develop trusting, collaborative relationships with families, everything else falls into place.
“Students do better in every way that we measure,” Henderson said. “They’re happier in school, they come to school, they like going to school, they challenge themselves more, they behave better when they’re there because they feel that it’s the place for them and they’re happy to be there and they tend to graduate and go on to higher education.
“Teachers are more effective because they have more information about their students and that makes them feel more effective as professionals, which improves their morale,” she continued. “They feel they have more support from families and they’re more successful in motivating and engaging their students.”
A critical aspect of engagement activities is how they are linked to student learning, Henderson said.
Parents want to know what their children are learning, how they are doing in class and what the goals and standards are for their students, according to Henderson. She cited surveys showing that families want to see communication that is continuous and flows both ways between home and school, and that fosters a sense of “mutual respect, honesty, openness, transparency and trust.”
Henderson outlined three operating principles for creating relational trust, which is vital for strong engagement:
- Always putting the relationship first. Take the time to say “hello” and get to know students and families to ensure people feel welcome.
- Make sure that everyone — students, teachers, families, school staff and community members — feel seen, heard, understood and valued.
- Practice “ongoing discovery” through continuous conversation that goes beyond the superficial.
Thao Tran, a parent and special education advocate as well as a disability consultant and graduate from the National Leadership Training Institute in California, also called on schools to focus on the whole child and tailor communication to meet the needs of all family members.
This should include taking into consideration a family’s culture, limiting jargon, holding meetings in accessible locations and ensuring sign language interpreters or other supports are available if needed.
Understanding the time constraints families face and intentionally working around those can also widen the net of voices included in discussions. For instance, since most adults work Monday through Friday, schools should work with educators to host parents groups on a Saturday or Sunday.
“We need to be creative in terms of how we get families to come to the table,” Tran said. “We have to meet them at where they are. We want to get the educators and the parents all in the room to share ideas, brainstorm and come up with solutions, because the educators are not the only ones to come with solutions. Long gone are those days when we do parent conferences with just one-on-one. We need to work as if this is a village.”
