2021 MD Family Engagement Summit: Centering Family Voice to Create Effective Partnerships

Sherri Wilson:

So today we have a fantastic crew behind the scenes also. We are joined by Julie Dobies. I hope I said that right, Julie. I don’t think I ever really heard your last name out loud, but she’s the coordinator for our session. And we have Mira and Claire on technical support. So if you need any assistance with that, just mention them in the chat and they can help you. We are at the Building Back Together: Re-imagining Family Engagement Summit. It’s a one day virtual event sponsored by the Maryland State Department of Education, the Maryland Family Engagement Coalition, the Collaborative Action for Family Engagement or CAFE at the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium.

Sherri Wilson:

Each year, this summit engages district leaders, administrators, teachers, early childhood educators and providers, parents, families, communities and non-profit partners from school districts throughout the state of Maryland. This year’s summit, we’re focusing on providing providers and educators with preparations to help them build effective partnerships with families and parents and to meet children’s ongoing academic and social and emotional needs.

Sherri Wilson:

It’s an opportunity to reestablish trust and deepen an appreciation for one another while we ensure a welcoming and nurturing learning environment. Few logistics for us today, you can click on the CC button to view the closed caption controls at the bottom of your screen. We also have two beautiful and talented ASL interpreters who are going to be signing everything we’re saying as we go. We’re also encouraging everyone to use the chat box for any questions or comments. And please turn your camera off and remain muted during the presentation. If you want to come on camera and ask questions at the end when we get to the Q&A portion, I think we’re okay with that, but while we present, it might be distracting to others if everybody has their cameras and microphones on. So here is our agenda for today. We’re going to have a few welcoming remarks, which we’re doing right now.

Sherri Wilson:

And then we’re going to talk about centering family voice to create effective partnerships featuring me, Sherri Wilson, and my dear friend and colleague Karmen Rouland, who is a genius which she has a lot to share with us. We’ll have some Q&A and then we’ll have a short wrap up. As we start, Karmen and I just wanted to introduce ourselves to you. I am Sherri Wilson. I am the Director of Engagement and State Partnerships at the National Association for Family, School and Community Engagement. In my role there, I develop training and curriculums. I present a lot of training in curriculums. I work on our programs and membership teams and I do a lot of work on our national webinars. We just finished one yesterday about middle school. We have another one coming up two weeks from yesterday as part of our middle school series and I hope you guys can join us for that. Also, I would like to introduce my friend, Karmen. Karmen, tell us about yourself.

Karmen Rouland:

Awesome. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Sherri. I’ve never been called a genius before. That’s awesome. Thanks. My name is Karmen Rouland. I’m the Director of Programs and Delivery at the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium. In my role there, I oversee all of our programs and technical assistance work. We are a capacity building organization that works with state education agencies, school districts, early childhood programs, schools, families, educators, students, all of the above to really ensure that everyone is involved and engaged in a child’s education and that families have what they need to be involved and that educators in school districts and schools create culturally responsive environments to ensure that families want to be involved. And so we do a lot of work in that arena of family, school, community engagement. So thank you for joining us today. And I guess we’ll get started. Well, we’ve already started, we’ll move on.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. I would also encourage everyone if you haven’t already, visit the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium’s website. They have so many amazing resources on there. It’s like a treasure trove. The NAFSCE website has some good stuff as well too. So today we’re going to talk about centering family voice to create effective partnerships which is so important. I have been doing family engagement work for more than 25 years now. And the period of time when I did that work and I didn’t ask families to co-create with me or didn’t ask them what they thought they needed or how they needed information delivered to them were wildly ineffective. And one thing I’ve learned over the years is the more you engage families in helping you to plan and design and deliver the information that you’re sharing with them, the more successful you’ll be.

Sherri Wilson:

And that’s really what centering family voice is all about. So let’s get started. First of all, I want to tell everyone that at NAFSCE, we think that family engagement is a bit like a rocket launch. It really takes a team of people working together to ensure that every child has every opportunity for success. And the sooner we start working together as a team, the more likely kids are going to be successful. And we know this from all of the research that’s been done over the years. Successful academics and learning and development starts when the whole team is working together to identify student goals and then helping them achieve those goals. Next slide, please.

 

Sherri Wilson:

So I want to talk a little bit about the impact that family engagement has on student outcomes. It is really critical. First of all, we know that when families are engaged, kids have faster rates of literacy acquisition. This is really important because literacy is the ability to read and write and even communicate. And the sooner kids acquire literacy, the sooner they’re going to be more successful in school. You really need to be literate to be able to be successful, right? So we want kids to begin to develop those literacy skills very early on. And the sooner we engage families, the sooner that will start.

Sherri Wilson:

Also, we know that when families are engaged, kids get higher grades and test scores. This is important because we’re using that to measure how well our schools are doing. So we really want kids to be successful so we can show that our schools are doing the right thing too. They also tend to enroll in more higher level programs. That’s another thing that we use to measure the success of our schools. So another thing that’s really important to get families engaged in.

Sherri Wilson:

We know that when families are engaged, kids get promoted more and they earn more credits. So one of the biggest indicators of kids being at risk to drop out is if they’re not earning enough credits on time to keep up with their peers. And while that happens more often in middle and high school, if we can get families engaged at a very early age, kids are more likely to be promoted and earn those credits on time and keep up with their peers. And that means they’re less likely to drop out. We also know that they’re more likely to adapt better to school and attend more regularly. So the number one thing that kids need to be successful in school is actually high quality instruction. Family engagement is a really important thing, but if they don’t have high quality instruction, kids are not very likely to learn. And we know that when families are engaged and kids adapt better to school, they’re less likely to miss days and then they do have access to that high quality instruction in the classroom.

Sherri Wilson:

They also have better social skills and behavior. And that means they’re less likely to be suspended or expelled, which again means they’re more likely to be in the classroom and they’re able to access that high quality instruction. And then finally, when families are engaged, kids are more likely to graduate and go on to higher education if that’s what they want to do. They have options that they don’t have if they’re unable to graduate. So we really need families to be engaged to have this impact on students. We also know that when families are engaged, there’s a better impact on educators. And that’s something we don’t talk about as often. We know that in elementary schools, teacher perceptions of parents as partners are strongly related to their decisions to remain in school.

Sherri Wilson:

In fact, at every level, there’s higher teacher retention when they have better family engagement. We also know students have better behavior in school as we just mentioned. And that means there’s fewer disruptions in class and teachers are better able to continue their instruction and follow their lesson plans. They have increased trustful relationships with families. And that’s another thing that makes them feel so much better about their jobs. They also have increased communication with families. So that’s a huge challenge.

Sherri Wilson:

If families are struggling and there are things that are happening that get in the way of children being successful, if they have that trusting, respectful relationship with teachers and they’re able to communicate with teachers about the challenges they face, teachers are able to address that in their own instruction and in the way that they interact with those students. So it just makes things better for everyone. And then finally, when families are engaged, there’s just higher overall job satisfaction among teachers. They’re much happier with the work that they do. So one thing we know though is not all family engagement programs have the same impact. And so I wanted to share with you one of the newest NAFSCE tools that really shows what high impact family engagement looks like in practice.

Sherri Wilson:

There are a lot of things that we currently do that are very low impact. And oh, sorry. Before we get to that, I want to talk about the impact on families. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. First of all, there is a researcher named Kathy Hoover-Dempsey who says families need three things to be engaged. The first thing they need is a sense of a job description. Sense that they have a really important role to play in their children’s education. Somebody has to help them understand what their job description is. And especially as kids get to middle and high school, that job description shifts and families are often very confused about what it is they’re supposed to be doing to support their kids when they get into those later or higher grade levels.

Sherri Wilson:

Also, according to Kathy Hoover-Dempsey’s research, families need a sense of self-efficacy to do whatever it is you want them to do to support their children’s learning. That’s the second thing they need. They have to believe that when you tell them they can do something and it’s going to help their kids do better, they can do it. That confidence in their ability is really important. So when we bring families together and we talk about how they can support what their kids are learning, we have to remember that it’s more than just telling them, it’s also building their confidence in their ability to do it.

Sherri Wilson:

They also need a sense of increased accountability to their school or their neighborhood. And that makes them shift from just advocating on behalf of their own child to advocating on behalf of all children. And that’s when we start to see communities that really support what’s happening in their children’s school. Families who are engaged also have an increased empowerment to take on new and exciting challenges in terms of their own education and careers. It reminds me of the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters program or HIPPY.

Sherri Wilson:

And I don’t know if any of you are familiar with HIPPY, but in the HIPPY program, they’ve researched this and they found that families who participate in the HIPPY program when their children are three, four or five years old, actually go on more often to finish their own high school diplomas if they hadn’t already and to sometimes get college diplomas as well and complete their own education and go on to much better jobs and careers that allow them to support their families in even better ways. And also we know that families link that personal growth to their civic and political action because again, they feel this overwhelming sense of community when it comes to their schools. So not all types of engagement look the same.

Sherri Wilson:

And now I want to share with you what our team has come up with in terms of identifying those high impact family engagement practices that really help you to help families develop that sense of self efficacy and develop their own role construction so they understand the way that they can support what their children are doing in school. And we know that some of these things that are on the lower impact levels are the things that schools have been doing for years and years and years. And there’s nothing wrong with them. But if those are the only things you’re doing to really empower your families to support their children’s learning, you’re not having the biggest impact that you could have.

Sherri Wilson:

Some of those things that are moderate and higher impact take a lot more time and a lot more planning, but you get a lot more bang for your buck with those things, because they really do go a lot farther to building that sense of self-efficacy that families need to really support what their children are learning in the classroom. Okay. I’m going to turn it over to you, Karmen now, who’s going to talk to you about what she knows.

 

Karmen Rouland:

Thank you, Sherri. That was wonderful. And so building on what Sherri just shared with us in terms of family engagement and high impact, how do we get there? And so the first is really realizing that at the center of effective family engagement is relationships. And relationships start with developing and becoming a community. And so I wanted to offer this definition of what we think a community is and what we use for that definition. So a community is both a feeling and a set of relationships among people. People form and maintain communities to meet common needs and experience. Members of a community have a sense of trust, belonging, safety, and caring for each other.

Karmen Rouland:

They have an individual and collective sense that they can as part of their community influence their environments and each other. And so when we think about how this is connected to the different levels of family engagement and how it impacts students, families and educators, we see that a lot of those things around empowering each other, being at the table, centering families voices, all kind of can go back to the foundation of building community and equitable collaboration. So with that, I would like to go to the next slide, please.

Karmen Rouland:

So in a recent book that came out last year of Just Schools: Building Equitable Collaborations for Families and Communities, Dr. Ishimaru set forth four guiding principles for equitable collaboration. The first is around beginning with families and communities, as we’ve been talking about. Starting with the family and community priorities, interests, concerns and resources. The second was around transforming power and what does it mean to have power, who holds power, so on and so forth. And typical power dynamics in schools is where we see educators and families are often influenced by race, class, gender, language and so shifting those power dynamics requires that we reflect on who gets to decide what matters and what are the aims of education, who plays what roles and what counts as engagement.

Karmen Rouland:

And that third bullet up there or third item, building reciprocity and agency. So reciprocal relationships require both two way communication and an assumption of expertise and capacity from families and educators. And then the fourth bullet is around undertaking change as collective inquiry. And that’s where equitable collaborations comes from. And that’s how we get to equitable collaboration together as the purpose. Next slide. So I’d like to ask you, please leave this slide up here for a moment to give folks a chance to get this QR code or the link that I can pop in the chat box. But I’d like to ask you to consider in your own context, what do equitable collaboration with families look like? In your own context, in your schools, early childhood programs, what do equitable collaboration with families look like?

Karmen Rouland:

You can either use the QR code here and hold your phone up to the screen and it should using your photo either a QR code app or your picture app on your photo app, or I’m going to drop this link in the chat box and you can go to the voting link there so I can grab it here. So here’s the link in case you need it. All right. So can you please… Thank you. I’m going to share my screen now so I can show all of the items that are coming in. Okay. So hopefully you can see the screen here and I’m just going to read a few. I saw listening before it scrolled up, having open communication and good relationship with all families and communities, very diverse, all voices being heard, all families are heard and included in this work, active participation in school and family council and FCE committees, parents knowing their rights and coming to the table empowered to support their children. Absolutely. Having the knowledge definitely is power. Let’s see here.

Karmen Rouland:

I didn’t mean to do that, but all voices being heard, helping families with physical needs in terms of food and clothes. An important one here, meeting families where they are and then empowering them. Different forms of communication. So I’m seeing a lot around communication and how we reach families. Monthly home visits. We also have a family support team that focuses on collaborating with our families. Currently, we have a family support group that allows parents to talk to us and each other. Offer and encourage opportunity for parents to define programs. That’s yes. If I could star that one, that’s what we’re talking about, right? Like how do we actually hear the voice of families? Right? It’s great to say we hear the voice and we believe in equity, but what are we doing? What action are we taking to do that?

Karmen Rouland:

This is beautiful. This is great. I’m going to make sure that everyone that we… Someone is drawing on this page. That’s wonderful, but I’m going to make sure that somehow we download this and get this to attendees so you can have this because I think there are a lot of good ideas in here, again, about action that you can take to make sure that families’ voices are heard. All right. So I’m going to stop sharing my screen. And then is it clear that it’s going to put back up the PowerPoint there. And please keep your items coming. I see them still coming in.

Julie Dobies:

Is that me unmuted? They can hear me.

Karmen Rouland:

All right. So again, you all have answered this question in terms of the items there in the Mentimeter, but how might we build relationships with young people and their families and communities in a way that recognizes their expertise and prioritizes their collective wellbeing, self-determination and dignity. Again, that comes from Ishimaru. And I’ll just say that in her book, the Just Schools book, she argues that for families and communities of color, schools have historically been and often continue to be places that are not welcoming and ones that reinforce racialized assumptions about what families can and should do in schools.

Karmen Rouland:

She argues that addressing barriers like translation, interpretation, transportation, and childcare, flexibility, and scheduling to accommodate parents’ work schedules, policies and procedures sometimes are not enough and even technology, right? And so we have to figure out ways that we can prioritize families expertise. And so can we go to the next slide. As we reflect and think about what… Before we hear from our families today that are on our panel, I wanted to ask you in the chat box, please answer that first question about what’s happening at your school? What’s happening in the context where you work or live or engage with families or as a parent or family member, what do you know about how the families in your school are situated right now?

Karmen Rouland:

What do you know about how the families in your school are situated right now? I saw someone put up funds of knowledge. And if you could put that in the chat box or if you would like to take yourself off of mute, we can do that as well. Right now, parents are unknown due to COVID job security situated. Yes, there are definitely a lot of uncertainties because of the last year of the pandemic and COVID and how we did schooling. And so that means knowing that means that we’ll have to figure out innovative ways and creative ways to meet those families and find out what they need, how they like to be involved, again, going to them and asking. And I see that there’s a lot of needs around the pandemic. We’ve been disconnected. The biggest barriers right now are language support.

Karmen Rouland:

And again, I think disconnection is a huge problem. So hopefully with this year re-imagining family engagement, we can figure out how we want to get families back in the fold in a way that honors their language because I see a lot of issues here around language and honors, how they want to be involved. So I’m going to move to the next question then. If we can go to that next slide. So what culturally responsive family engagement efforts have been implemented again in your school? And as a parent, what are those culturally responsive family engagement efforts that you’re putting in place? We saw in the last question a lot of uncertainties, a lot of we don’t know yet or it was difficult last year. I see training for staff, making sure that we’re providing interpreters, using inclusive language, translating newsletters into several languages.

Karmen Rouland:

So again, a lot around language access, which is important. I see staff training, ensuring asset based beliefs and language. And Shea said something here, we’re doing a lot of things to check the box, but it’s not really intentional engagement. So that’s another important thing to make a mental note of, right? Because how are we going to move and get our colleagues and our staff members to move in that direction. So that might be where the work begins with you in your school. Books addressing the culture, bilingual support, being flexible as possible with families. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Karmen Rouland:

Again, this is all about meeting people where they are, meeting families where they are. All right. And then we’ve already talked about the biggest challenges, but if you want for the next slide, what are some of the biggest challenges or barriers faced? I think, again, there’ve been a number of challenges listed here in the chat box. And I think that’s great because once we know what the challenges are, we can work together as a community and in our equitable collaboration’s to resolve those challenges and meet people where they are again and never assuming what people need, what families need, asking, “Well, how can I help you? How can I serve you?” And again, COVID is one big one and using technology, of course, yes. Capacity is always an ongoing effort to balance while prioritizing what is important. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Karmen Rouland:

Buy-in from all stakeholders. Challenge schools putting up a wall in terms of welcoming parents as true partners. Absolutely. And so hope our panelists today are family members who are here today with us. They’ll be talking to us about what they need and what they think what’s positive, what works for them in terms of being at the table and what did the schools do to ensure that they were at the table. And families are worn out from this year. Absolutely. Yes. As a mother myself, I can say that as well. Absolutely, families are worn out. Access and communication. Yes, Shea. Yes. And then in the last question here, what are some of the greatest successes? Last year again was tough and Sherri I’m not bearing anymore. Well, what are some of the greatest for working with families? What’s happening at your school?

 

Karmen Rouland:

I know it’s not all negative, not all barriers. Even though the barriers are great and deserve the weight that they need in order to be resolved, I know there’s some successes out there. Use of virtual tools for families, being able to build supportive relationships with other parents through social media, absolutely. I think given this past year having families come together on Facebook or different parent groups to connect and just talk about their experiences has been a beautiful, one of the things that even though it happened under an unfortunate circumstance, it’s beautiful that we now have those support groups and channels to communicate with each other as families. Parents again building relationships, building capacity of educators to truly understand authentic engagement. And the parent that called us asked me for help two years after a child left the program. That shows that you all created a relationship with that parent. And they knew that they could come to you for support. That is beautiful.

Karmen Rouland:

And I’ll just do a few more. Despite the challenges, programs are being intentional and connecting in virtual ways. Some have created virtual support groups and the importance of family and community engagement and involvement is recognized among stakeholders. Teamwork. I mean, these are all beautiful. We should definitely try to copy this chat box to get some of these ideas in here that you all are sharing. So wealth of knowledge here in the chat box and then that Mentimeter. And I think with that, we want to jump into and hear from the parents, our family members who are here today.

Karmen Rouland:

And we’re joined today by Deborah Terry, who was a grandparent in Charles County, Maryland and Raquel Tucker, who was a PTA President at Candlewood Elementary School and PTA Delegate at Shady Grove Middle School in Montgomery County, Maryland. So welcome to Raquel and Deborah. Thank you so much for joining us today. And Sherri and I are going to take turns asking you questions. So hold on. There we go. So first, would you like to introduce yourselves? Can we start there? And maybe Raquel, you can go first and then we’ll have Deborah go.

Raquel Tucker:

Sure. I’m Raquel Tucker. I have a fourth grader, Christopher and I have an incoming seventh grader, Robert. I’m very glad to be here and very excited about everything going on today.

Deborah Terry:

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Deborah Terry. I’m a grandparent of an incoming fourth grader in Charles County and also I have an almost four year old granddaughter.

Karmen Rouland:

Thank you. Thank you both again for being here today. I’m going to start off with our first question for the panel and also for our participants who are joining us today. If you have questions for Raquel or Deborah, please place them in the chat box, I believe, and we’ll make sure we ask those as well. So the first question for our panel and either one of you can answer the question first and take turns. How did you become involved in family engagement? How did you become involved in family engagement work?

Deborah Terry:

I’ll take that one first, I guess. I think that I didn’t even realize that I’ve always been a proponent for education and its importance. And I think long ago my parents when I was in school, they met the teacher, they went to different activities that were within the school and they were known. And I don’t think it was called family engagement then. And I think it just carried forward. And I did that with my children. I always met the teachers, always stayed as involved as possible, and really wanted the teachers to know that we cared and were concerned about her education and we wanted to just be a part of that.

Raquel Tucker:

I have a little opposite situation. My parents were immigrants. They didn’t speak any English, they speak Spanish when I started school, so they had no idea. But I went to drop off my little guy in kindergarten and I could not stop crying. I was a helicopter mom. I was home with him all day, every day. And I cried and the teacher said to me, “You’re going to be okay.” And I assume she was giving me advice on how to walk out the door, but she did the opposite. She brought me in and she’s like, “Come on Tuesday, you could read to the class and come on Thursday and you could do manipulatives math.” And I didn’t realize I was doing family engagement. I was involved. So I was very lucky to have the opposite situation.

Karmen Rouland:

Thank you.

Sherri Wilson:

Awesome. You guys are inspirational to me, both of you. I think you’re doing amazing things. So I would like to know if you have advice to families who are new to family engagement, who haven’t had as many opportunities or haven’t yet gotten engaged in what their children are learning. Do you want to start with maybe some barriers that you encountered when you first began working in your children or grandchildren’s education?

 

Raquel Tucker:

Go ahead, Debbie, if you want.

Deborah Terry:

Well, the only advice I can think of is I know that a lot of the schools and I think it was mentioned in one of the slides that there’s the opportunity to meet the teachers. I know at the elementary school that my granddaughter attends there is a meet the teacher evening that’s already been established. And even though my daughter works long hours, I let her know when that was and she’s definitely already set her schedule aside to be able to be a part of that. So I think that’s one way. And also just to volunteer, I think you said that Raquel to be able to go in and read to the class or help in different ways like that, because some of the barriers that I think have been across and more so for my daughter because I just assist is just a busy work schedule.

Raquel Tucker:

Yeah. Availability I think is a big one for both, not just for parents who need to come in in the evening, but for teachers to be available in the evening. They have their own kids. The principal has her own life. So I think the balance there is a big barrier of finding the availability. I think for everyone, language is a big barrier. There’s parents who just don’t speak English or just don’t understand the culture of a classroom in that sense and in a language sense. I think having the knowledge, like I said, just to know that you can go in there, the knowledge of what’s going on is also a big barrier because you don’t know. I didn’t know to ask. All I knew is I was crying because I wasn’t going to let him go. So I think those are barriers.

Sherri Wilson:

And have you discovered any workarounds to the barriers that might’ve prevented you from being more engaged or might prevent other families from being more engaged?

Deborah Terry:

I think for our small village, the workaround that we have is myself and my husband are very involved. Whenever my daughter’s work schedule doesn’t allow her to be where she’d liked to be and then we just pass on that information to her. That’s a workaround that we had to implement within our family unit.

 

 

Raquel Tucker:

Yeah. From our side, workaround has been the school sending newsletters out in different languages or the teachers. For example, there used to be a Halloween party and it’s not anymore, it’s a fall harvest because everyone doesn’t necessarily celebrate Halloween. So there’s those small workarounds. Sending out automated messages. For me through the PTA, we do try to have the meeting in two languages when possible. There’s a reading night and they had four different languages so everyone can be involved. So those are little workarounds that sometimes work from a school standpoint and then the parents participating in these things is a small workaround.

Karmen Rouland:

Thank you. So our next question is what are some short term and long term outcomes you have noticed as a result of your family engagement work?

Raquel Tucker:

Sorry, Debbie, you want to go?

Deborah Terry:

No, you go ahead, Raquel. I need to think a bit more of that.

Raquel Tucker:

I think and this is awful to say, but I’m a parent and I’m in there. My kids know that I’m there. There is nothing going on that I don’t know about, so there’s no misbehaving. There is no not getting a good grade because I am there and I know. And that’s probably one of the more negative aspects of family engagement, but for us, it’s also a very positive one because they know that they can rely on mom. They know that dad is going to be there for anything going on. So that’s what I think.

Deborah Terry:

I think some of the short-term and long-term outcomes with this pandemic, one of the things that happened was that we just had to shift a lot of roles. And the positive, even though the pandemic is such a hardship on everyone, was to really be able to see where the children stood as far as where their confidence levels were in learning and in the education. And the long-term was the teachers and the educators also, even though you were behind the camera, knew who was there and who was assisting and you were able to form more relationships where you could get a more one-on-one feel for what your child or your grandchildren or whoever you support what they needed. And the school was very, very helpful in doing that.

Deborah Terry:

And math is not as strong seat for my granddaughter. She’s good at it, but not confident in it. And the help with that and building a competence has been great and that is a longterm outcome. She’ll be able to manage better understanding now that we’ve got a tutor. And that was because we were able to see that she was not as competent as she was in all about other subjects.

Karmen Rouland:

I love how you both, without even doing so, you kind of circled back to Sherri’s first slides around the impact of family engagement on educators, students, and families. That was great. Thank you.

Deborah Terry:

You’re welcome.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. So I just want to know what you guys think schools could do to support parents and better facilitate partnerships between families and schools. Do you have any suggestions for our participants who are out there in schools themselves?

Raquel Tucker:

I’m sorry, Debbie, I’ll go first. Our prime example is Debbie. I think sometimes schools look for mom or dad, and it’s not always mom or dad. It’s grandma, it’s an uncle, it’s a guardian. There’s different people in a child’s life that are important. And I think schools and administrators can’t forget that.

Deborah Terry:

And thank you Raquel for saying that because we do run into some issues because sometimes people say, “Oh, it’s so nice to meet you. You’re the parent.” And I’m like, “No, we’re the grandparent.” And so it’s nice to be able to have people understand that it may not necessarily be the parent. I think that Jennifer’s doing a great job and that is the elementary school. And in having different committees, I know they have the dad advisory, which is built up of the different fathers or grandfathers or a parental role in a male figure that is out there for engagement. And they’ve had a lot of things over the past year virtually. That was… They were just wonderful. And the parents, teachers associations, there’s a lot of information out there if people know about it and become active in it. And that’s just getting the word out.

 

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. Thank you for mentioning that Deborah too because I actually used to work at National PTA before I came to NAFSCE. And if you have PTA’s in your local schools, then there are a lot of opportunities to be involved that way. And if you’re a member of a local PTA, you’re also a member of your state PTA and your national PTA as well. And those are opportunities for you to really access more resources and network with a broader community of people who are also engaged in what their children are doing as well. So I want to ask everybody in the chat, if you have questions of your own, please put them in the chat now. Karmen and I will also chime in and share a little bit about what we know and respond to those. And lucky for us, we already have one from Shea.

Sherri Wilson:

Shea says, “I appreciate you all for hosting the panel. And I understand these ladies are very engaged in their schools. My question is, did they have any challenges with starting to build those partnerships with the school? If so, how or what did they do to overcome those challenges?” And I think she’s referencing specifically people who haven’t been engaged in the past, or felt disengaged in some ways from their schools or if you’re in a school where they haven’t made any efforts to extend that hand out to start those partnerships with families themselves. And how do you reach those families, or how do they have opportunities to engage if they don’t really already know what those opportunities are? So Karmen, if you want to chime in on this one too, I think this is a really important question.

Sherri Wilson:

I’ll start. I’ll just say for one thing and Deborah has made this point really, really well too, it’s important that schools expand their own thinking about who is a family. Because often they get very hung up on biological parents and a lot of their communications that they send out to families might say things like dear mom and dad or dear parents. And that language automatically excludes a larger number of people because often families are engaged, but they don’t have the time because of work schedules or whatever to come and participate in events at school. And it may be other family members who are stepping up and filling those roles. So when we use more inclusive language like families and caregivers, we are automatically making more people feel like we’re talking to them. So that’s a really good first step. Anybody want to add anything to that?

Karmen Rouland:

I think we talked a lot about communication earlier and I don’t know this last year schools might’ve been going above and beyond to communicate with families and all the different channels, but I know I heard from a lot of people that it was probably too much communication and too many different places to try to find information that what ended up happening is you couldn’t find the information that was needed.

Karmen Rouland:

So I think in terms of partnerships and thinking about working with families figuring out what is going to be that channel, how are you going to reach your families and is it through an app like ClassDojo or some other type of app? Is it the website? Is it social media? Is it email, text message, carrier pigeon? What is the method that’s going to be used? And then in terms of partnership, make sure that parents know where to find the information so that they know where to go to look for if school is closed one day or if the child needs to bring this the next day, they need to know that because it got to be like with seven different avenues of communication that became a bit challenging for families to keep up.

Sherri Wilson:

Raquel, Deborah, do you guys want to chime in on this one about how to reach the families who haven’t had those opportunities?

Deborah Terry:

I think not having the opportunities, there’s always that opportunity to start that at your school, because there’s so many things already out there. And I think the key thing is if you go in positively knowing that you’re there to advocate for your child or your children, it’s an easier task because your goal is to advocate for them as much as possible and then people see your interest. And there’s people on the other side that are looking, people at the school that are looking for those parents who would like to volunteer and help and be a part of probably developing something at a school that maybe they don’t have those things as of yet.

Raquel Tucker:

I think I hate to say a lot of it falls on the school. There’s so many parents who don’t know what to ask or how to ask it or who to ask it to. So the schools need to add something else to their plate and really find a way to reach their families. I agree with Karmen, it’s such an overload. I didn’t know what I was going to do this summer with the child in elementary and a child in middle school and it was so much, but once the schools really bring in the families and they combine that to one form of communication, perhaps a couple of languages, a couple different understandings, I think it’s a better way.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. I think also this reminds me a lot of those four core beliefs that Dr. Karen Mapp talks about in her book Beyond The Bake Sale, Karen MAPP and Anne Henderson and a couple of other authors. But one of those four core beliefs is that the responsibility for building and sustaining homeschool partnerships rest primarily on the school, especially school leaders. And I think Shea for your question, that’s really important because school leaders have to create a culture and a climate in their building so that everybody feels like families. All families have a really important role to play. And it’s important that the school extends that invitation to them and helps them understand what those pathways to partnership are.

Sherri Wilson:

If that doesn’t happen and you have random teachers that are doing really good work to engage families in their classrooms, it’s hard for families because next year they don’t have that random teacher and the teacher they do get might be somebody who doesn’t or isn’t familiar with how to engage families or why. It’s important to also remember that most educators have never had any formal training on how to build and sustain homeschool partnerships. And so a lot of them are just figuring it out as they go along, which is tough. And they have a lot of important work to do.

Sherri Wilson:

So, as Raquel said, that’s a challenge. But once they figure it out and administrators help create and sustain those pathways to partnership, it actually makes everybody’s jobs so much easier and everybody enjoys their jobs so much more, which is why all of this is so important. So we’ve had a couple other questions come in. There’s a really, really good question from Dr. Goudling, I hope I said that right. He said, “What suggestions do you have to engage a parent that’s incarcerated? How do you engage them in the life of their child?” I’m wondering if anybody has any suggestions we can share.

Raquel Tucker:

Oh no, correspondence.

Karmen Rouland:

I’m wondering if like depending on what the limitations are or rules are at the facility, if some type of virtual, if the school can somehow with community partners engage in some type of virtual meetings or setting up virtual visits with the child. And again, that would have to be worked out with this facility.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. I think that’s a great suggestion, Karmen. Any of the work that I’ve done in the past… So I ran a statewide family engagement center in Alabama for about 15 years and the work that we did there was with families who had family members who were incarcerated parents. We often worked with other community organizations that were already doing work with incarcerated parents and so we could share the information and materials we had with them. And then they used that with the community that they served. So I don’t know, Dr. Goudling, if I have any better advice for you than to maybe try and connect with other people who are already connected. And Karmen suggestions are spot on. One thing that’s been sort of a silver lining in the pandemic has been our ability to innovate with technology. And so there may be ways that you could continue to engage families who have incarcerated parents through the use of technology. I wish I had better answers for that.

Karmen Rouland:

I see some in the chat box.

Sherri Wilson:

Oh, good.

Karmen Rouland:

Yeah. It’s not a lot. Can I just read? I’ll just read a few. Shannon says some facilities will allow the incarcerated family member to read books and then send the video to the child. Parents express to me their gratitude in sharing and having a consistent school for our evening community events. Maybe with the new world of visual or virtual, even parents could do the parent-teacher conferences, classroom virtual visits to see what their children are working on at the time, et cetera. And please keep those ideas coming, those are all great ideas.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. Everybody needs to download this chat box before you leave today because it’s got some really good stuff in it. Here’s a question from Don Ray. She says it’s a challenge right now due to COVID-19, so how can we engage with our families while staying safe? I think that’s a very timely question Don. One thing that I have spent much of my career talking about is creating welcoming environments in the school and making sure that schools look more like a place that welcomes families. And I think that, again, because of technology, we have to be able to translate some of that to virtual meetings instead, virtual home visits and things like that. I think Amanda Ensor is in this meeting. She is fantastic and she has done an amazing job over the past year in doing I think she called them Porch Visits where they would drop off materials and visit with families on their porch, so nobody has to go indoors and see each other.

Sherri Wilson:

And Amanda, if I got that completely wrong, I’m sorry. But there are a lot of ways you could think about how can you connect with families outside of the school building so that we don’t have a bunch of different people coming into a small space because I’m not sure that’s something we want to do yet. Anybody have other ideas?

Karmen Rouland:

No. I thought those are great, Sherri.

Sherri Wilson:

Oh, good. Excellent. Do we have other questions in the chat? Has anybody posted any that I missed?

Karmen Rouland:

I don’t see any others after the COVID question.

Sherri Wilson:

Oh, Amanda clarified also driveway chats and bus outreach. Bus outreach is a great strategy. One thing I would encourage schools to do, if you’re not already, is maybe thinking about having PD for all of your staff and that includes librarians, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, so that everybody is on the same page when it comes to how you guys feel as a school community about engaging your families. And if you haven’t already, you can do that work and work together to create a definition of family engagement that works for your school or your school community. Because often people define family engagement in very different ways, and that makes it harder to do this work to you. Because if I think family engagement is the number of families who sign off on the homework sheets I sent home, but Bob teaches next door and he thinks it’s the number of families that answer his calls when he calls them and Betty across the hall thinks that it’s the number of families who show up when she has an event, we’re all looking at it in completely different ways and it becomes harder to work together to create a school-wide program to engage families in the work that we do.

Sherri Wilson:

And again, it’s tough on families when they change teachers year after year and each teacher is doing something different. That also reminds me back to what Karmen said about the use of third-party apps to communicate with families. Those apps are amazing. ClassDojo, Remind, Peachjar, they’re all really, really good, but if teachers use different apps and families change teachers year after year, they have to learn a whole new app every single year and it gets hard.

Sherri Wilson:

And if you have multiple children in multiple classes or grade levels, you’re using five or six different apps for all of them. So if you can work as a school community and try and get on board with doing something that’s consistent and having consistent policies, it makes it a lot easier for families. Here’s a question from Stephanie. Stephanie, I’m not even going to try and pronounce your last name, sorry. How do you navigate decision-making and adjusting engagement methods for families that have expressed they have diminished capacity to engage or they disengage over time? That is a really interesting question. Anybody want to take a stab at this one?

Sherri Wilson:

So I actually did some work in… When I was in Alabama, I worked with a school that was trying to engage families. They wanted to have family voice when they rewrote their parent teacher compacts. As part of their Title I program, they were required to have these parent-teacher compacts and they were required to get families voice in developing them, but they had just taken one. The district had given them and used it year after year. They would send home a note to families and say, “Is this okay with you?” And when they never heard back from anyone, they would assume that it was. And so we started working with them and we decided as a group that we wanted to rewrite those parent teacher compacts so that it really included what parents thought were important rather than being those cookie cutter ones.

Sherri Wilson:

So what we did was we ended up organizing sort of like town halls. We had a couple of them in the school and we also did a couple of them in the local housing project where most of the families from the school lived. And the housing project had a meeting room that they let us use for free. And we went in and we just had these conversations about what are your expectations for your school, what are your expectations of your child and what are your own expectations of your role?

Sherri Wilson:

And we were able to take all of the information from those town halls and synthesize it and then create brand new parent, teacher conferences that were much, much closer to what families thought were important. So thinking about how you engage those families, how you reach out to them and making sure that not everything you do is in your school building is a really important step. Often we arrange conferences and meetings and events when it’s convenient for the school and we don’t always do it when it’s convenient for families. So thinking about asking families, what are the days of the week that work for you? What are the times of days that work for you? And if you have any days or times that are completely off limits, not including those as options, it’s a really good place to start. Anybody else want to add to that? Do you have any other suggestions? Karmen.

Karmen Rouland:

Well, Sherri, I was just about to say that in the chat box, Amanda Angel from Clean Ads put that it’s important to also understand what’s the root cause of the disengagement. That’ll help in determining how we move forward and what steps to take to move forward with getting the parents engaged. There could be something happening personally in their lives or professionally something with the careers or whatever that keeps them from being engaged how they used to. So figuring out what the reason is for the disengagement or the limited engagement could help to what you were saying, what you were speaking about.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. Amanda’s not just gorgeous, she’s also a genius. So smart. That’s really good advice. I remember when I first started my career, I lived in Mobile, Alabama. And I actually decided to have a literacy event for families at Orange Grove Community Housing Project, because I thought they all need to learn strategies that they can use at home to help their kids become more proficient readers. And so I sent out an invitation to them and it was marketed as Help Your Children Learn to Read Better. And I didn’t get a good turnout. And when I went back to the community and I asked them why, a lot of families said, “I think my kid reads okay right now. I didn’t need that, so why would I go? Because that’s a waste of my time.” Which also reminds me, because I’m very stream of consciousness today, there was a study that came out from Learning Heroes a few years ago where they surveyed families all over the country and they asked them, “Do you think your child is performing at or above grade level?”

Sherri Wilson:

They had thousands and thousands of surveys that went out. And what they found was 90% of all families think their child is performing at or above grade level. And when we look at national testing data, it’s actually closer to 40% and it’s only 20% if you dis-aggregate that and you look at some specific subgroups. So the lesson there is also that if families don’t think that they need to be engaged in what their children are learning because they think their kids are doing okay, they’re not going to come to anything you offer. You might have an open house. An open house is another problem, because they’re always exactly the same. But if you are able to really share with families data that shows where their kid is and where they need to be, it goes a long way to helping families feel like they need to get more engaged and they need to do more to support what their children are learning. Okay. Do we have other questions in the chat? I kind of went off on a tangent.

Karmen Rouland:

I don’t see any others. I’m just scrolling again to look. Well, actually, there was a question I think around how can we engage school board members so they allocate funds to support families and professional training? And that was from Louisa. She said usually the most common answer is there’s no money, but then surprise, surprise, administrative positions are open and with virtual learning and new COVID variant and numbers of sick people increasing, it is possible for a second shutdown. We, as teachers, need to be readily and available to support our families. Can there be support engagement in the community? So how do we reach our school board members?

Karmen Rouland:

So there are a lot of different organizations out there that do parent advocacy, a lot of parent groups themselves that have formed to advocate. And a part of this is building that coalition of families and parents, getting the support from doing some community mapping, asset mapping, finding agencies or community-based organizations that can get behind the work that you’re doing or want to do in terms of advocating for funds for family engagement and professional training around family engagement and showing up to those school board meetings. There’s probably different ways you do that in different jurisdictions and counties in Maryland, but showing up to those meetings with your data in hand and ready to go and trying to get on the agenda to actually present your information for why the funding is necessary.

Karmen Rouland:

So some of the same statistics that Sherri has been sharing today, some of the information from Raquel and Deborah, you can use that same data in sharing why it might be important to increase funds or allocate more funds or funds to family engagement efforts and professional development efforts around family engagement.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. Also, there’s a really, really interesting comment from Shea in the chat. Shea, you are on fire today. I love it. Shea says, “I believe it’s also worth considering using the current involved parents to engage and recruit other parents.” So Shea, one thing we know from the research that NAFSCE did a few years ago on reframing the way we talk about family engagement is that when we are trying to talk about the benefits of family engagement to families, using families as a messenger is the most effective way to do that. So when you’re talking about family engagement to teachers, it’s really important that we highlight that this is built on a sense of interdependence, that we all need each other to be successful.

Sherri Wilson:

Teachers respond really well to that. They totally get it. Also, if we foreground the benefits to teachers and the benefits to students, teachers respond really well to that. But with families, when we’re talking about the benefits to families, it has to come from other families. And so if you have engaged families in your school now using those families or asking those families to partner with you, to do that outreach to other families is going to be really successful. That’s the best way for families in terms of hearing about the benefits of family engagement. Do we have other questions? Karmen, have you seen any others roll in?

Karmen Rouland:

I haven’t seen other questions, but I have seen just the conversation going around making sure that we use less jargon language, especially when we’re talking about data with families, but I haven’t seen any more questions.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. No, I think that’s a really, really good point. The jargon can be a huge problem because families need to understand what you’re talking about, but we also don’t want to do things like dumb down our language or water it down so much that we’re talking about something families won’t understand. A better practice would be to use those educational terms and define them. So if you’re going to talk about a DIBELS score when you’re talking with families about their children’s literacy explaining to them what a DIBELS is so that they understand what you’re talking about is way better than just saying, “Well, we did this reading test and these are the scores we got.” That’s a great way to get at it. Louisa said Sherri made reference to research data where 90% of the families feel their children are doing well. It’s actually 40%. Can you send this resource? I think this is good data. Yeah. That’s from Learning Heroes. I’ll see if I can find the website really quick and drop it in the chat. While, I do that-

Karmen Rouland:

I was going to say Deborah and Raquel, do you have any responses to any of the questions and do you want to share anything else maybe that the questions have sparked that you haven’t shared already?

Raquel Tucker:

I mean, I just wanted to reiterate what someone said and I thought it was such a good point. You learn from the parent next to you or the guardian or the caretaker next to you. And I’ve learned so much and that’s how I ended up PTA president. I don’t know if I like this lady so much anymore, but she helped my kids and she already had one in middle school, so she was able to help me. She already had one through kindergarten, so she was able to help me. And it’s a community that you make and it’s so important. You grow that community and eventually your principal and your librarian and your counselor’s part of it, but the place to start it is like she said, with families, with parents, with the people next to you who are going through the same thing, your neighbor, the one I pick up or someone in the school.

Karmen Rouland:

Thank you, Raquel.

Deborah Terry:

I’m in total agreement with Raquel and nothing to add. That’s just a great point.

Karmen Rouland:

Deborah, that is totally fine too. So Sherri did put that link to Learning Heroes and the chat to that research. And thank you Sherri for that. We do have another question here from Rebecca about how do we get faculty more involved? How do we get faculty more involved in parent and family engagement? Well, I think telling them… I think one of the ways to shift mindsets is saying here are all the benefits of you engaging in family engagement, right? And sharing some of those bullet points about how engaging with families can make their lives easier and how it more so can help them reach optimal outcomes with the children and students that they teach, that’s the one thing that comes to my mind.

Karmen Rouland:

And I think the other thing is more spaces and opportunities for faculty and educators to share and administrators to talk and share amongst themselves the challenges that they have or what they may not know about family engagement and provide those spaces for training and conversation and discussion and also providing spaces for them to hear from families like today. I think if you can hear directly from a parent or a family member about how family engagement really has been positive and really life changing, it’s very hard to turn the other way and not get involved and not do more to be engaged. Sherri, you want to add?

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. I would add to that too. I think all of those are exactly right. Remind educators and administrators that when families are more engaged in what their children are learning, kids have better outcomes, like better behavior. So there’s fewer classroom disruptions, fewer suspensions and expulsions, better attendance, which is a measure that schools are always concerned about. I would also say, look to your school data. So if you have data that shows you have a particular group of kids who are struggling with a particular learning goal, then you should be structuring your family engagement around how do we help families better understand how they can help their kids meet that learning goal? Right? Instead of doing those random acts of family engagement, where you just plan a literacy night, so you can do a family engagement thing, really structuring your programs so you’re targeting your efforts to reach families around the areas where your kids are really struggling.

Sherri Wilson:

If you know you’ve got kids in third grade that are really struggling with reading comprehension, you’d be better off bringing in just the third grade parents and modeling for them a strategy they could use at home and then having them practice it on each other before they do it with their kids. And when you do events like that, make sure the children aren’t in the room, because first of all, children ruin everything. If they’re in the room, it’s going to become all about them. I know when I used to attend trainings with my kids, I would spend half the time just looking at them and thinking my God, they’re so beautiful. And they’re so smart, but why won’t they sit still and why are they still talking and why aren’t they paying attention? And I don’t get anything from the speaker.

Sherri Wilson:

So being really strategic about structuring your family engagement programs around specific learning goals, inviting the families in who have kids who are struggling with those learning goals and then modeling for them those strategies they can use at home to support those learning goals will get you to where you need to be. And as my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Sheila Jackson just mentioned, very much like academic parent teacher teams. If you’re not familiar with those, you should Google it because those are amazing as well. They’re not inexpensive, but they are definitely really, really good.

Sherri Wilson:

I think we had another question actually for… Sorry. It’s a comment from Nicole for staff buy-in. In the past, I conducted a role-play where staff took the role of students and parents and I used feedback from focus groups and family interviews as the script. I love that. That’s genius. Very good, Nicole. And here’s a question from Brittany. How do you engage families who may be undocumented and afraid of becoming involved? Really important question. Anybody have any suggestions for engaging undocumented families? So one thing I would say about that is remember that not everything you do needs to be in the school building. So if can partner with community organizations that are already working with undocumented families, you can share with them information that you want those families to have or even go to events and activities that they offer and do your training there.

Sherri Wilson:

Most of those groups have already built relationships with families and they have trust. And remember always schools are institutions and it is not likely that families who have documentation issues or other types of legal issues are going to be very trusting of an institution. So leveraging those partnerships and relationships that Shannon and Dr. Jackson just mentioned, really important strategies. Here’s a question from Fannie Ochoa. Fannie says, “How can school support and engage families of students with disabilities who may already feel isolated from the school community because their children may not be included with their non-disabled peers?”

 

Sherri Wilson:

One thing I would say is if you’re working with families who have children with disabilities and you’re struggling with engaging them in some of the things that you’re doing, first of all, make sure that the invitations that you make to families are very targeted and strategic so you’re inviting the families that you really, really need to be there. And some families are going to require more invitation than others. Some families will just get a flyer and see there’s the school event, and they’ll just show up, but some families may need like additional phone calls or even personal visits to really get them to participate in any events or activities that you offer.

Sherri Wilson:

So that’s one thing. And then also, again, consider partnering with other organizations that are already working with those communities. In Maryland, you have parents place who they’re a federally funded parent training and information center who do work with families that have children with special needs. So they have a lot of information and resources on their website and they may already be doing some work in your community. Anybody have other suggestions on the disabilities question?

Raquel Tucker:

We have an extensions program at our school. So it’s not an IEP, but it’s a little more, I hate to say, severe. And we as the PTA try to do an activity completely focused on these students so they’re not left out. We try to do like a picnic kind of a thing in the field, so the kids can ride tricycles and they can play and throw a ball around. So it doesn’t include the whole school, but it does include them. We also do a yearly restaurant night where the funds all go to these classrooms for a teacher to buy crayons or whatever the teacher chooses to buy in. So it’s difficult to incorporate some students in everything, but as long as you don’t forget them, I think that’s a step forward.

Sherri Wilson:

Excellent. Here’s a comment from Neorita. I apologize if I’m saying that wrong. Also I think this is related to the immigrant families, also target the churches and grocery stores that immigrant families frequent and blanket it with flyers for registration or enrollment drives, which is a really good suggestion. And Louisa said families who do not have papers share the same content and curriculum engage them in community services they can reach and would help them technology support and mostly let them know their kids and make it. Thank you for that. Are there other questions from anyone?

Karmen Rouland:

There’s an interesting question here in the chat box. What can you do if parents want to be engaged? You do activities for the parents to participate, but the administrators do not like that because they do not want the families to know… I lost myself please. Not want the families to know. Oh no. [inaudible 01:18:51] Where did it go? I guess want the families know about this is the school reality that happened to me in one of my school experiences? So what can you do if parents want to be engaged and you want to engage them, but I guess there’s a barrier with the administrator wanting, I guess, certain activities or families to be engaged.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. That’s tough because often administrators are like gatekeepers, right? And if they don’t support something, it’s not usually very likely it’s going to be successful or last long-term. My suggestion would be don’t try and go it alone, try and engage others. If there are other educators in your school that feel the same way you do and if you have active and engaged families, then it’s much harder for an administrator to shoot these ideas down when they’re coming from a broader group of constituents, right? If it’s one teacher saying we need to do these programs and have these events and engage all our families, it’s easier for an administrator say, “Nope.” But if it’s 10 or 12 teachers and it’s a handful of parents or a whole group of parents saying it, that’s much harder. There’s strength in numbers. So think about your grassroots organizing as you’re thinking about how you can advocate for the programs or practices that you think will really help the families in your school. Raquel, Deborah, do you have any advice for how to work with an administrator that is not as supportive of family engagement?

Raquel Tucker:

I would personally say, start with the teacher. I think most teachers want to be a part of a child’s life and encourage a child. So I would just say, just start with the teacher.

Deborah Terry:

Absolutely. It would be with the teacher.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. Thank you.

Chavelle Mobiley:

Hi, my name is Chevelle Mobiley, I would like to share with the-

Sherri Wilson:

Minerva said start small, show progress, and administrators will be on board. Minerva, that’s a great point. If you can point to… Especially if you can point to changes in like student attendance or student behavior or even student academics and you can link that to the work that you’re doing with families, it’s hard for administrators to naysay that.

Karmen Rouland:

I think that goes-

Sherri Wilson:

And Shea who is rockstar said, as a parent, I position myself to be the administrator, teacher, parent and student advocate, which has been helpful to advocate even for teachers in board meetings without stating the teacher’s name or speaking directly to the specifics of the situation. Really good advice, Shea. Thank you.

Karmen Rouland:

Sherri, I just want to add too just from that last, the start small and show progress that in terms of admin being on board, that goes back to the other question about school boards and funding and allocation of funds. If you can show evidence that this is working again and starting small, then that goes a long ways with getting the funding and the professional development that folks want.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah. And that’s also a great reminder for me too that remember a lot of professionals, a lot of educators, and a lot of administrators have never had any formal training on how to do this work. So also advocating for professional development to help them strengthen their family engagement approach is really important. Well, I think we have reached about the end of our time and we are done with our questions. So I want to say thank you to Deborah and Raquel who are amazing and beautiful and talented women who shared this time with us to talk about things that have worked in their own schools and communities. It has been really informative. And I really appreciate you both.

Karmen Rouland:

Yes. I want to just echo Sherri, thank you both for joining us today and taking your time out and sharing your wisdom. This has been truly amazing and thank you to all of our participants. I think we do want to… Okay. Thank you to whoever, Claire or Mira, who shared. We do want to share our screen because we have a few resources to share with you and also the evaluation for today.

Claire Ruhlman:

Yeah. Karmen, if it’s okay if I just step in for a moment.

Karmen Rouland:

Oh, sure. Thank you.

Claire Ruhlman:

Yup. Let’s give a big thank you to our presenters, panelists and interpreters again. That was awesome. Thank you guys so much for the workshop. And as Karmen said, if you would like any more materials or resources on some of the subjects presented on today, feel free to connect with the larger Maryland family engagement community using the handle MDEngage [inaudible 01:23:59]. And then I don’t know if you were planning to attend some of our afternoon sessions, but I just wanted to make you all aware of some of our upcoming presentations. [inaudible 01:24:09].

Claire Ruhlman:

Hello. Okay. So we’ll have this afternoon, Returning To School: Listening and Learning from Immigrant Parents, Introduction to Language-Focused Family Engagement, and How To Build a Village: Why Partnerships Matter? And these will all be taking place from 2:15 to 3:45 PM. You can find the information on Hoover. And then just lastly, as Karmen said, we have a brief evaluation for you, which we would greatly appreciate if you would take the time to fill out. Here’s the QR code and I’ll put the link of the chat shortly. Please be sure to select this centering family voice option for the first question. Thanks again, and enjoy the rest of your summit guys. I’m going to leave this up for just a moment.