Families of English Learners (ELs)
Challenge/Scenario
William Jefferson is beginning his fifth year as principal of Metropolis Middle School. Principal Jefferson has been moderately successful in actively engaging families in the school community and student learning. However, in the last two school years he has noticed a significant decline in parent and family participation, particularly among families of English Learners (ELs). There has also been a slight, yet noticeable dip, in reading and math scores. Principal Jefferson knows that family, school, and community (FSCE) engagement are important factors in student achievement. He also recognizes that families of ELs face barriers that make their interactions with schools particularly challenging. He is eager to re-engage families so together they can support student learning. Mr. Jefferson spent the summer working to re-establish relationships with the families of ELs, but without much success. In meeting with his Leadership Team, they agreed to focus on broadening family engagement to include parents who have not been typically involved with the school.
They feel that the participation of families of ELs could be much higher, including having representation on the Leadership Team. They also want to work to reshape the perceptions that families of ELs might have about the school. When they surveyed families of ELs to determine the greatest barriers to their participation in school, the top reasons were:
- Language barriers
- Time and transportation—parents often work multiple jobs and transportation to the school is a challenge
- Lack of knowledge about how to be engaged in their children’s school.
- Meetings aren’t structured in family friendly ways, including not taking into account a lack of prior knowledge or cultural assets and norms of EL families.
- What initial consideration does the Leadership Team need to keep in mind to effectively engage families of ELs in the school?
- What is the school doing to build a positive relationship with families of ELs? What can they do?
- What are some district services that can help support efforts of Metropolis?
- Are there immediate steps that the Leadership Team can take to create a more welcoming school environment by the first day of classes?
- Is the school providing a variety of ways for parents to be involved, including some that do not require families to actually come to the school?
Step 1: Needs assessment and collaborative inquiry.. Data collection is always the first step. A solid assessment of strengths and areas of need is essential for growth and change. The school Leadership Team should use SMART objectives and a collaborative inquiry process to achieve anticipated outcomes.
Tools:
- Family-Friendly Walk Through. Creating a school culture that is inviting and engaging for families is essential for a positive school climate. The first step is to take an inventory of whether the school is welcoming to families whose first language is not English. The information gathered from a Family-Friendly walk through enables the Leadership Team to identify what is working well or needs improvement to create a welcoming environment for EL families.
- Building Parent Bridges. Getting to know the families that the school is serving takes some effort and intentionality, and is important for addressing barriers to create bridges to fully engage families. The information gathered from this activity can help the Leadership Team identify particular barriers to engagement as it relates to EL families, and generate some creative solutions to breaking down those barriers.
- Community Asset Mapping. A school community, both inside and outside of the building walls, must be identified in order to assess resources. Community asset mapping offers a method to capture the resources available and gaps from a strengths-based, community-driven perspective. 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 impede the strengths-based approach.
- 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.
Step 2: Goal setting and action planning. Now that you have selected best practices to meet your needs and have set an attainable goal, you need a plan. The action plan is the process by which you implement the best practices using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Phased) goals. Then prioritize them for each action plan based on need.
Tools:
- How to Achieve Our Goal 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 (e.g. Goals, SMART Objectives, Theory of Action, etc.) as well as a place to record roles and responsibilities for implementation and accountability.
* A Guide for Engaging ELL Families: Twenty Strategies for School Leaders, listed in additional resources, may serve as a good starting point for actionable strategies that contribute to goal setting and planning for the attainment of SMART goals.
Step 3: Implementation and monitoring. It is vital to review the action plan activities and track progress. Thinking through the potential outcomes of the action plan will help set some guidelines for progress. The Leadership Team needs to make sure that they are on target. At follow-up team meetings, it will be important to check that all members know their roles and tasks and are still willing to support the action plan. Identify and select two-five FSCE best practices that will support your efforts. The best practices serve as tools to achieve the overall goal of engaging all families and having a more welcoming school environment, particularly for EL families. Use SMART goals to help select the best practices and monitor progress for implementation.
Tools:
- FSCE Best Practices Checklist. This tool is designed to help Leadership Teams determine areas of strength or need in FSCE.
- Let’s Create Our Implementation and Monitoring Plan Worksheet. An implementation and monitoring plan is an efficient way to track action plan activities. It describes the progress indicators linked to achieving the action steps, and indicates whether the action steps have 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 a student’s first and lifelong teachers. Families must be engaged as partners to improve school climates and increase academic achievement. As schools and families develop a mutual trust for one another, the level of engagement and, in turn, student achievement will begin to increase.
Additional Resources
A Guide for Engaging ELL Families: Twenty Strategies for School Leaders
http://www.colorincolorado.org/pdfs/guides/Engaging-ELL-Families.pdf
The Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships
http://www2.ed.gov/documents/family-community/partners-education.pdf
Additional Readings
Best Practice Issue #2: Engaging Families of English Learners.
http://www.maec.org/equity/origin-issue2.html
Increasing ELL Parental Involvement in Our Schools: Learning from the Parents
http://suzannepanferov.faculty.arizona.edu/sites/suzannepanferov.faculty.arizona.edu/files/Increasing%20ELL_0.pdf
