PLACES

Step 1: Needs assessment and collaborative inquiry. A solid assessment of strengths and areas of need is essential to growth and change; that is why data collection is always the first step. The school leadership team should use SMART objectives and a collaborative inquiry process to achieve anticipated outcomes.

Tools:

• Collaborative Inquiry. This is a method by which members of a school leadership team, or any professional learning community, come together to systematically examine their educational practice. Teams work together to ask questions, develop theories of action, determine action steps, and gather and analyze evidence to assess the impact of their actions.

• Community Asset Mapping. Community asset mapping offers a clear picture of the resources and gaps from a strengths-based, community-driven perspective. There are community organizations and stakeholders that can assist leadership in engaging with father’s and other male role models. By mapping community assets, the leadership team learns about the specific skills, services, and capacities present in the community that can support school staff, students, and families. This process may also uncover gaps and concerns, and while important, these should not hinder the strengths-based approach.

• Blended Family Fact Sheet. There is not a family that doesn’t experience challenges, however when families are blended there are additional issues to consider. This Fact Sheet provides important information to consider when working with blended families and its impact on students.

• Building Bridges. Getting to know the families that the school is serving takes some effort and intentionality, but it is important for addressing barriers and creating bridges to engage families fully. The information gathered from this activity can help the Leadership Team identify particular barriers to engagement as it relates to blended families, and generate some creative solutions to breaking down those barriers.

• In our own words… Considering that there is no legal definition for blended family or step-family, it is critical that the leadership team develop some common language to define and better understand these families. Families have evolved over time, particularly blended families, and it is important to ensure that the language used when describing families is an inclusive as possible. Consistent language and further understanding of blended families will foster maximum engagement with all of the important adults in the lives of these students.

Step 2: Goal setting and action planning. Engaging with families is essential for academic success. Once you complete the data collection for all families, the next step is to make a plan that is designed for reaching and supporting specific family subgroups, including blended families. Establish SMART goals and then plan backwards from the goals to create actionable steps and engage in ongoing assessment to determine whether you are on track to meeting your goals.

Tools:

• What Are Our Goals Worksheet. The goals should be a direct result of the Leadership Team’s collaborative inquiry process. Goals should reflect the specific needs of the targeted group. This activity will help the Leadership Team form their goals using consensus decision-making.

• How to Achieve Our Goals Worksheet. This activity provides an opportunity for the Leadership Team to work together to refine their priorities for engagement, set goals, and outline how to go about accomplishing each one. It also ties into the Community Asset Mapping activity by identifying resources that will best support each specific goal.

• Action Plan Template. The Action Plan Template provides a structure to organize and incorporate earlier pieces of the process into one document (i.e. SMART Goals, Theory of Action, etc.) as well as a place to record roles and responsibilities for accountability for implementation.

Step 3: Implementation and monitoring. It is vital for the Leadership Team to monitor the action plan activities and track progress. Thinking through the potential outcomes of the action plan will help set some guidelines for assessing progress. At follow-up meetings, it will be important for the Leadership Team to check that the action plan is on target, all members know their roles and responsibilities, and they are still willing to support this effort.

• Let’s Create Our Implementation and Monitoring Plan Worksheet. An implementation and monitoring plan is an efficient way to monitor action plan activities. It describes the progress indicators linked to achieving the action steps, and shows whether the action steps had the expected impact.

Wrap-up

Family, School, and Community Engagement (FSCE) initiatives are essential to helping families, community members, and educators work together to promote school reform and improve student achievement. Families are student’s first and lifelong teachers and they must be part of the educational process to improve school climates and increase academic achievement. As schools and families develop a mutual trust for one another the level of engagement and student achievement will begin to increase.

Additional Resources

Blended Family Support Network
http://www.blendedfamilyfocus.com/

National Stepfamily Resource Center
http://www.stepfamilies.info/

Additional Readings

Re-defining Family Engagement for Student Success — Harvard Family Research Project
http://hfrp.org/family-involvement/publications-resources/redefining-family-engagement-for-student-success

Step-Parenting and Blended Families
http://www.helpguide.org/articles/family-divorce/step-parenting-blended-families.htm#resources