On May 6, 2025, MAEC hosted the inaugural Connections virtual event, bringing together over 300 family members and practitioners from 38 states. This conference offered 25 session that explored best practices in family engagement, including strategies for fostering partnerships between schools and communities.

On the Same Team: High-Leverage School-Family Partnership Practices

In our first spotlight of a popular session from Connections, we are proud to feature Ari Gerzon-Kessler’s presentation – On the Same Team: High-Leverage School-Family Partnership Practices. This session took a close look at family partnership best practices and highlighted several impactful initiatives that are easily replicable, relationship-centered, and culturally responsive to transform school communities.

Resource #1: Which strategies have the highest impact on student learning?

Schools can connect with families in so many ways: hosting fundraisers, making phone calls home, leading parent training events. But what strategies really help students?

Leveraging research from the Flamboyan Foundation, Ari describes how all family engagement strategies can have a huge impact on student learning if educators and families truly work together. Watch this video (1 minute 22 seconds) to learn more.

Resource #2: “We don’t want to talk about these [issues].”

Sometimes, school teams think they’re doing well by the families of their students…until a brave parent speaks up. In his personal example, Ari describes how his school’s priorities shifted once his team actually started listening to parent needs. Watch this video (1 minute 13 seconds) to learn more.

Resource #3: 5 communications strategies for principals to practice relational and meaningful family engagement

As a former principal himself, Ari identified effective strategies for principals to build strong family engagement at school by working with staff and families. The one-pager below identifies five of the strategies that Ari shared in his session. Click on the one-pager to download as a PDF.

Interested in more of Ari’s work? His recent book, On the Same Team: Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together, offers further guidance to nurture strong family-school partnerships. Learn more about his new book here.