Family Isn’t Always Blood Related
While research proves that effective family engagement is a vital asset to student success in the classroom, it is often placed at the end of an educator’s to-do list. Many educators label family engagement as just “one more thing” to do in a sea full of deliverables (understandably) AND, if there’s anything that has increased the longevity of my teaching career, building relationships with both students and families have been one of the most intentional acts I've engaged with in this work.
As a response, many of our nation’s school districts have created family engagement committees that aim to get parents more involved in their students’ learning. This includes BBQs, raffles, block parties, free haircuts/ styling, or anything else you can think of to bridge the relational gap between families and schools. While all of these initiatives are very much intentional, many have lacked one very important component- genuine relationship building.
If you are looking for some ways to engage the families of your students, one of the most important stakeholders you can build with, here are some pointers that I’ve found to be helpful in my practice:
Action Step: Use apps like Remind, Class Dojo, Google Voice or messaging apps etc… to communicate individually with families in personal ways that pertain to their learners both academically and non-academically.
Purpose: Sending weekly emails is a great way to keep families in the loop, however, this may not be the best way to communicate with ALL families. “Talking to” versus “Talking at” is a powerful saying! I personally have many families who may not check the weekly emails I send, but are super quick to respond to messages sent via Remind or text. This can be due to the fact that they feel like they are being engaged with rather than having loads of information communicated to them. Whole group emails (especially when long) can feel very impersonal and bore you to sleep…. just saying!
Action Step: Allow your families to get to know you!
Purpose: It’s easy for us to feel the need to separate our personal lives from our professional lives, especially under this political climate and especially when we spend so much of our waking hours in or planning for the classroom. While this makes 100% sense, there are ways to let our families know WHO teaches their babies everyday without giving away the Social Security number, social media accounts, and all the other nitty gritty details that we maintain in our personal lives. It is OK to connect with them on a personal level by sharing with them our interests. Do you like live music? They do too! Having brunch on a Sunday before the work week sweeps you away? Ditto! Cooking for the people you love? Exchange recipes! We. Are. All. Human.
Action Step: Invite them to be part of the classroom, and therefore their student’s learning! Here are some examples:
Asking a family member to laminate papers (Thank you, April and Precious!)
Pull a small group during math or literacy blocks (Thank you, April!)
Invite/ welcome families to help supervise during recess. Many parents come to pick their students up early, which is a great time to leverage their help, discuss their student’s progress, or tell them about a funny moment in the classroom (Thank you Ms. Gray)!
Ask them to put their own skills to use in the classroom. This year, one of my parents came up with these creative drawings of bats for our students to color during Halloween and create a bat cave in our cubbies (Thank you, Jocelyn!)
Action Step: Taking the time to personally check-in with families after they have communicated a need of support from you.
Purpose: Following up is just as important as follow through. This one can be tricky as we don’t want to unnecessarily insert ourselves in sensitive situations, so it’s best to put this into practice once a solid and trusting relationship with families is solidified and reciprocal. Once families feel like they can trust us, they are likely willing to keep an open line of communication with us throughout the year.
Conclusively, there are so many more ways to engage our families in meaningful ways and these are only some ways to implement them in our practice. During this school year in particular, I have found that our students and their families will oftentimes be the first people to check in on me in the morning and the last to thank me at night after a long and trying day at work. Detroit Prep families, we love you and appreciate you for trusting us with your precious creations.
Love,
Ms. Alexa