Beyond A Seat at the Table: How Do Out-of-School Time Providers Incorporate and Amplify Family Voice in Programs?

Nikevia Thomas:

Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us for the second session in our Complementing the School Day: Tools and Resources for Out-of-School Time Providers webinar series. This session is titled Beyond A Seat at the Table: How Do Out-of-School Time Providers Incorporate and Amplify Family Voice in Programs? Thank you. So let’s just dive right in. So we consider ourselves to be a champion of innovation at MAEC. We are a champion of innovation, collaboration, and equity. And today’s session and the entire series was made possible through our two of our federally funded centers. That is the Collaborative Action for Family Engagement or CAFE and the Center for Education Equity or CEE.

Learn a little bit more about us and what we do later, but first we’d like to know a little bit more about you. So with that, can you share in the chat your name, your state you’re from, and the entity you are with and the role that you have there? I should go first. My name is Nikevia Thomas and I’m the senior education and communications specialist at MAEC. And so we have… Welcome. We have someone here from Baltimore County. Welcome, a community school facilitator. Awesome. Wicomico County. Welcome. Welcome. Oh, wow. More coming in. I can’t keep up. We have someone here from Maine today, the Maine Department of Ed. Dorchester County. Welcome everybody. Pennsylvania site coordinator.

An OST site coordinator from Pennsylvania. Thank you. Welcome. And then an educational consultant from Pennsylvania. Thank you. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Please feel free to continue typing in the chat where you’re from. In the interest of time, we will move on. Next slide please. Thank you. So here’s a webinar etiquette. We use the chat box as you are now to engage with others. We recommend that you click on the chat icon on the bottom or top toolbar of your screen, and we will have our Q&A period toward the end of the webinar. So please feel free to direct all of your questions in the Q&A section. We will not be using the raise hand function for our webinar. Next slide please. Thank you.

So to enable or disable live caption, first, the live auto captions should show up on your screen already, but to turn them off on your webinar controls at the bottom of your zoom window, select “Live Transcript” or “Closed Caption.” And to hide the subtitles, you select “Hide,” and then repeat step two, and select “Show Subtitle” instead. Next. Thank you. So it takes many hands to put on a webinar and here are the webinar support that are behind the scenes or in front of the scene. There is Allegra. Allegra is a Senior Communications Associate at MAEC. Allegra will be providing operation and tech support as well as post-webinar support.

So you will be receiving… The resources that you’ll receive after this webinar is Allegra, who is doing it, and then there’s me, as I said before, my name is Nikevia and I am a Senior Events and Communications Specialist with MAEC and I serve as the virtual event planner and I will be responding to you all in the chat box. And I would like to now then introduce you to your facilitators for today, Jessica and Kailanya.

Jessica Webster:

Good morning everyone. We’re so happy to have you with us today. I am Jessica Webster. I am a Senior Family Engagement Specialist with CAFE and we are so excited to share the conversation with you all today about family voice in the OST environment. Kailanya.

Kailanya Brailey:

Thank you Jessica. Hello everyone. I am Kailanya Brailey. I’m a Senior Education Equity Specialist with MAEC’s Center for Education Equity and I’m truly excited to engage with you all today. We can move to our next slide. We will continue with our welcome and introductory information and then we’ll move into a presentation with Afterschool Alliance. So excited to engage with that today as well. And then we’ll move into closing out our webinar. Next slide, please. Again, with our introductory information, I would like to give you some background information about who we are and what we do, which will help us understand why we strive to connect and support all communities.

MAEC was founded in 1992 as an education nonprofit dedicated to increasing access to a high quality education for culturally, linguistically and economically diverse learners. MAEC envisions a day when all students have equitable opportunities to learn and achieve at high levels. And our mission is to promote excellence in equity and education to achieve social justice. We believe that all students deserve to feel welcomed, respected, and safe at school and provided with the opportunities to thrive. Next slide, please. This webinar is brought to you through both CEE and CAFE. CEE, our Center for Education Equity and the Region One Equity Assistance Center operates in 15 states and territories through support from the Department of Ed.

And CAFE, the Collaborative Action for Family Engagement is the Statewide Family Engagement Center for Pennsylvania and Maryland. Next slide please. And this image is an overview of the region covered by the Center for Education Equity. As you can see, we reach all the way from Maine down to Maryland, over to Kentucky, and also including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. And again, CAFE serves Maryland and Pennsylvania. Now I happily pass it over to Jessica to review today’s objectives.

Jessica Webster:

Thank you Kailanya. So today we are so excited to dive into our presentation. Today we hope that you leave with the ability to identify strategies that will help amplify family voice, that you’ll gain some tools for culturally responsive family engagement, and that you will learn some practical ways to promote advocacy among families. And in order to meet all these objectives today, we are so pleased, so thrilled to be joined by Tiyana Glenn today from Afterschool Alliance. The Afterschool Alliance itself works to ensure that all youth have access to affordable quality afterschool programs by engaging the public will to increase public and private investment in afterschool program initiatives at the national, state and local levels.

Tiyana joined the Afterschool Alliance in April 2021 and she is a Project Manager who provides support for their national AmeriCorps VISTA project and the National Field Building Initiatives. Before coming to Alliance, she worked as a program director for an afterschool program and for an out-of-school time intermediary. Her work also includes being a White-Riley-Peterson OST policy fellow, a board member for a few afterschool OST organizations and a grant reviewer in the field. Tiyana holds a bachelor’s degree in communication studies from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a master’s degree in Family and Human Development from Arizona State University.

Tiyana, we are so excited to have you joining us today in supporting OST work. And so with that, I’ll turn it over to you. Thanks for being here.

Tiyana Glenn:

Perfect, thank you so much Jessica. And thank you so much to my MAEC family. We’re family at this point. Thank you all so much for having me and I’m so glad to be here to talk to you all about OST and how we can incorporate some family voice. So in just a second you’ll see the slides pop up on the screen. Perfect. Thank you so much, Allegra, behind the scenes. All right, so in today’s session you’ll learn more about that school alliance, the importance of parent advocacy for the field and ways you can engage parents within your afterschool program. Next slide. So as Jessica mentioned and she did a great job providing an introduction to myself, my name is Tiyana Glenn. I serve as our project manager on our innovation outreach team.

As Jessica mentioned throughout my bio, you name it, I’ve done it in the world of out-of-school time field. I tell folks this is my jam. So I am totally passionate about the work of out-of-school time and hopefully you’ll be able to see that throughout my presentation today. So again, I’m so grateful and glad to be here with you all today. Next slide. So this is our mission at that school alliance. As you can see, we are really focused on making sure that all youth have access to affordable and quality afterschool programs. We do focus on expanding afterschool and summer learning opportunities no matter where the child lives, whatever their background is, whatever their needs are, that is our core mission. Next slide.

So as a nonprofit public awareness and advocacy organization, our goal is to expand investments in afterschool so programs will be there for children, families, and communities that need them. So in a nutshell, as you can see here on this slide, this is a couple of buckets that we focus on within our work. So one, we do research on needs and issues, we have national research, we have state focused research. I tell folks all the time if you do not know us for anything else, we have research for you and it’s all free and you can access it on our website. So please make sure if you’re looking for data points, or you’re looking for any research on various topics. Go to our website afterschoolalliance.org and it’s on there for you. The second area that we focus on is messaging and advocacy tools.

So hence why I’m here today. We’ll go over those tools in just a little bit. While I tell folks I wish I had dollars to give to all these great programs, we do not have money to give, but we will help you find money and we’ll help you sustain it. So one way that we do help with the funding area is that we help administer a grant through the New York Life Foundation called the Aim High Grant. And these are dedicated dollars for the middle school out of school time field. So if that is something of interest, please make sure… At the end I’ll make sure I share our contact, this slide, so that way you can subscribe to our newsletter so you can learn more about that funding streaming. We also work with state and local partners.

So I think I did see in the chat that we do have an after school network here. I think it was the main after school network. Essentially, there’s an after school network in every state and we work with those state partners and making sure that we are disseminating information down to them so that way they can disseminate it down to OST partners within their community. Then on a broader scale, we do work with national allies and coalitions. You might be familiar with the National Afterschool Association, the National Summer Learning Association. Those are our allies in the field that we work with. And then last but certainly not least, something that I think we are well known for as well is Lights On Afterschool.

So this is our national celebration we hold every year, it’s actually coming up this month on October 24th. And this is a way that we ask providers, this is shining a light on the great work that you all do each and every day. So that way we can have that support, we can have that funding, we can have high attendance and things of that nature to support your program. And we’ll go over Lights On just a little bit as well throughout my presentation today. So as a organization, we act as a voice to expand opportunities for youth to access affordable quality afterschool programs. And we collect data on the status of afterschool programs, which we’ll go over in just a little bit through our America advocacy report.

And we work to provide training and professional development for those who run afterschool programs. Again, while we’re here today. So let’s go ahead and start getting really into the advocacy talk of the presentation. Next slide please. So I’m just curious to know, here on the call, what challenges have you or your organization faced when it comes to parent engagement or parent advocacy? So are there any barriers that are preventing your organization from engaging your parents just in general or engaging your parents in advocacy? So you could drop that in the chat. Just curious to know if there are any challenges or barriers that you are facing. And if there aren’t any barriers, then that’s awesome because I want to know what you are doing in your programs.

I know as my previous experience as a program director, a lot of my challenges was timing for our parents. So trying to make sure that our parents had time to come to our program or even interact with the program. I see some things coming in. Facilitator [inaudible 00:14:19] no longer out. You’re introducing yourself, Markeisha. Let’s see here. We have parents that want to attend all fun stuff and not anything to do with academic. Caregivers live outside of our school area, attendance, balance just being able to show up, starting from scratch, drop off and pick up times can be very rushed. Parents are coming in and out quickly and it is a hard time to connect with them. Language barriers, scheduling issues, language barriers.

All these I can relate to as a past program director. So totally relatable. I get it, I get it. So hopefully we’ll be able to touch on some of these topics and help you all when it comes to parent engagement and advocacy. So feel free to keep throwing your answers in the chat because we’ll definitely circle back to those later on throughout our presentation today. Great. Next slide. So now we’re going to go over the importance of advocacy and why parents should engage in advocacy. Next slide. So more voices are better than one and who better to help tell or share their importance of after school than the parents of the children who are in your programs. So parents can be your champions, they can tell personal stories about how important after school is to their children.

They can help motivate other parents or help motivate others to support your program. So just in a little bit we’re going to go over some important facts and stats around that access and awareness of after school to help prepare you and your parents to advocate. So if you think you’ll need information to share with your parents to help them understand the importance of advocacy to support their child’s program, then you can definitely use this data on these next couple slides to help prove your case. Next slide. So as I mentioned before, our America After 3:00 PM survey is a nationwide household survey that we conduct every five years and have been administering to parents across the country since 2004. And this is where we pulled this data from here that you can see on the slide.

If after school programs were available to them, half of all non-participants or nearly 25 million children will take advantage of those programs. So that’s up 60% since America After 3:00 PM started back in 2004. And this is the highest unmet demand in the history of our America After 3:00 PM report. Next slide. This is one key data point that we share all the time at the Afterschool Alliance and we tell folks whenever you’re doing advocacy work or you’re trying to make the case as far as why is it really important for kids to be in after school programs or just the overall importance of after school programs, this is a really easy memorable stat that you can share with anybody that you’re talking to.

So for every one child in a program, there are four more who would be in after school program if one were made available to them. And we actually have this data point specific for statewide data as well. So again, if you go to our website, you could click on your state and you will see what this data point looked like specifically for your state. But on a national level, for every child there’s four more waiting for a program. Next slide. So barriers like program costs, lack of available programs and transportation issues are even bigger now amongst our low income families. As a result of those barriers, the unmet demand for after school has increased and is greater among low income families. Next slide.

So cost is a major driver behind the decline in participation among low income families and points to a lack of available affordable programs nationwide. The decline comes as a public investments and after school programs have largely stalled and they have not kept up with the growing demand. So the 21st Century Community Learning Center Program is the only federally funded stream dedicated to out-of-school time. So that is before, after school learning and summer learning. However, adjusted for inflation, 21st century funding in 2023, excuse me, is almost 80 million below the 2013 level. So I just looked at thinking this is the only federally funded stream that we have dedicated to out of school time and you see where we are with that, right? Next slide.

But the good news is there is good news. I didn’t want to bring us down too much. The good news is that voters want more funding for after school. So I believe you all will have access to this later, but feel free to pull out your phones if you want to scan this QR code so that way you can learn more about the survey that we did with our voters in 2022. But support for funding for after school programs is at an all time high with voters across political affiliations, community types, race, ethnicity groups, age groups, all of that. They’re all in agreement that elected officials should invest more resources in programs. Next slide. So when we do have funding, as you can see there are positive points to it.

So nationally, nearly one in two students in 21st Century programs who have been chronically absent during the previous school year have improved their school day attendance. So again, this is why it’s necessary to not only fund through this funding stream, but hopefully we can get some more funding streams so that way we can have great data sets just like this one. Next slide. So now let’s take a minute to talk about some more research when it comes to messaging that we did through our voter survey. Next slide. So the first big takeaway is that like I mentioned before, voter support is at a high for after school. Another thing that resonated with voters is connecting tangible problems with solutions.

When presented with a problem of the pandemic paired with the ways after school programs can address the challenges, intensity of support for school goes up. And that is really particular with our parents. So we also saw that the concerns remaining around how young people spend their time after school, but the biggest focus is around expanding the definition of safety to think about more holistic approaches that meets the children’s core needs. So finally, brag on your afterschool program, share all the academic and social impacts of your afterschool for young people and all the wonderful things that you are doing in your program each and every day. Next slide. So again, incorporating our parents.

In a recent parent survey we asked how important were each of the following reasons in selecting your child’s primary afterschool program. What we found is parents are looking for these holistic supports for kids. Academics are a part, but not the whole story. So physical activity, life skills, STREAM. So you got your science, technology, reading, engineering, arts and math. I feel like the acronym is getting bigger. And connecting with peers. That’s all the important areas when it comes to parents when they focus on afterschool programming. Next slide. So now that you have the research and the data that’s highlighting the importance of advocacy, this can be used to influence and encourage your parents to become more involved with your program.

And one way at Afterschool Alliance we love to get our parents engaged in advocacy is through our Lights On Afterschool. So I will go over briefly what Lights On Afterschool is and why advocating for afterschool is so crucial, especially in its current policy environment. Next slide. So on October 24th, more than 8,000 afterschool programs around the country will join together to hold the annual Lights On Afterschool. So Lights On Afterschool is a chance for afterschool programs to celebrate and showcase exactly what they do each and every day and make that case to their community, to their parents, to policymakers and to the media that afterschool programs are essential for students and their families.

It’s also an opportunity to highlight the changing face of what afterschool really looks like. As we’ve heard before, afterschool can be known as daycare and we all know on this call that afterschool and summer learning programs are not just daycare. You are out there providing engaging hands-on enrichment opportunities for kids that enhance and build upon school time learning in really unique ways. Some people may already be aware of what you do, but then others may not be aware of what you do. So that’s why hosting a Lights On Afterschool event is really a great opportunity to educate your community and create brand new advocates and hopefully those brand new advocates can be your parents. Next slide.

So Lights On Afterschool allows you to bring attention to the need for more afterschool programs and resources in your community and it gives you the freedom to create an event that does this in a way that you feel works best for your area and for your program. Partners of Lights On Afterschool include 4-H Afterschool, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCA and 21st Century Community Learning Center Programs. So Lights On Afterschool events generate thousands of newspaper, radio and TV stories across the country every year, including every major media market and targeted congressional district. So just curious on a call by a show of throwing your answers in the chat. If you are familiar with Lights On, if you’ve been participating with Lights On, how long have you been participating in Lights On Afterschool?

And if you have not participated, I would love to know that too. So just tell us how many years or if you are new or this is your first time you learning about Lights On, curious to know who we have here on this call that is familiar with Lights On Afterschool. Awesome. I was hoping we had some first timers, so this is great. Perfect. Great. No worries. Someone is familiar with Lights On. Great. Great. I love that we have folks who either have heard of it, maybe haven’t participated yet or haven’t heard of it at all. That’s great. I love that. Just as much as I love folks that have participated in it for years, I also love those that have not participated in years, so that way we can go over the nitty-gritty of Lights On.

Awesome. Perfect. All right, next slide. So the point of hosting a Lights On event is to build long-term support for your program and for similar programs within your community and in your state. So if you’re just curious, how can Lights On really help sustain and promote my program? So Lights On is more than just a one-day thing. Through the course of planning your Lights On event, you’ll strengthen relationships, build new relationships with partners in your area. When you think about why you should host a Lights On Event, as you can see here on our slide, there’s various reasons why you should. So it really just depends on whatever your needs are. I know as a past program director years ago, I won’t say how long, but years ago, my goal was to simply get kids in a program because we were a new program within the Charlotte area.

So I just wanted to let folks know we are here, we’re in the community, we’re ready to serve your children, please sign your kids up. So a lot of my goals were focused on just awareness and getting the media to come out so the media can highlight our program and contacting community leaders within the area to bring them into our program so that way they can share out about our program within the area. So it’s really just focused on whatever your goals are or whatever your needs are. So just keep that in mind when it comes to a Lights On Afterschool event. And if you are curious to know more about Lights On because we have a whole session that goes over Lights On, what the planning looks like, the step-by-step and all that good stuff.

I could definitely share that with our friends here at MAEC and they can send it out over to you in the follow-up email as well. Next slide. So when it comes to hosting your Lights On event, it can be anything from an open house, a fall festival, an activity that you’re already doing during your program, et cetera. I tell folks it can be as small as you want it to be. It can be as big as you want it to be. It’s really about whatever you can manage. If you already have things planned for your fall time of the year, just integrate that within your schedule. I tell folks do not feel like you need to blow your budget. Don’t feel like you need to go all the way out the box to just celebrate and highlight Lights On Afterschool.

We have templates that we have kids draw on and color and you can even take it a step further and have kids write why they are glad to be in that school program or why they feel like being at school programs are important. Have them take a picture with it. As you can kind of see here in the images on this slide, put hashtag Lights On Afterschool and that could be a Lights On Afterschool event. Being that it is around the fall time of the year, we have some folks, especially if your program is associated with a school. I think I did see a lot of school district folks here on our call today, you could tie it in with a fall festival. I know a lot of schools do the trunk or treat thing, open house, of course orientations. That can be your Lights On Afterschool event too.

So it doesn’t have to be anything that you have to go out your way and create. We do have some folks that do create a whole program focused on Lights On, but if you already have something that’s in the works around this time, there’s different ways that you can highlight and represent for Lights On Afterschool. So these are just different ways right here on this slide where you can just… If you’re doing a more simple approach, you can leverage your social media. So you can post videos or photos of your students, activities on social media just to showcase your program. You can recognize staff members, especially in this climate of where we’re trying to recruit and retain staff members, especially quality staff members. Recognize your staff, especially those that are doing really, really good in your program.

I think that definitely can help when it comes to retaining staff. Doing little testimonies, sharing stories of students and families could definitely help when it comes to not only highlighting Lights On Afterschool, but building up those future advocates. Next slide. Like I said, Lights On is just one big way that we at Afterschool Alliance definitely tell folks to think about when it comes to incorporating parent advocacy, but I’m just curious to know on our call today, anyone that wants to share any parent engagement events around advocacy that maybe you’ve done before or just thinking about different parent events that maybe you’ve hosted before or that you’re planning to host.

Can you see how you can incorporate advocacy within those events? So just curious to know, after we talked about all this advocacy data points and research, have you had any parent engagement events around advocacy within your program? And if you haven’t had any parent engagement events around advocacy, are there current parent events that you’re planning or that you will have later on in school year. That now looking back at it, you’re like, “You know what? Maybe we can incorporate advocacy in this event.” [inaudible 00:30:27] pop up. “Our school is planning a fall festival and a community resource fair.” Perfect example of how you can incorporate not only Lights On if you want to focus on Lights On, but you can incorporate advocacy within that.

Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing that. I feel like fall time is really a great time to focus on advocacy because kids are just back in school, that’s when they’re most engaged and active, especially our parents. There’s so many different opportunities for breaks or events that you can plan throughout the year. I feel like in the fall time. Though definitely a key time in the year that you can try to incorporate not only just parent engagement in general, but trying to tie in that advocacy and family voice. Family bingo night as a fall festival, planning a community resource fair. All right. “Right now I just wanted to do focus groups meeting with parents to see what their needs are.”

Great job, Michelle. Trunk or Treat. It’s also an informal way to connect with parents outside the academics. Yes. Perfect, perfect. So along the lines of what we talked about already, but just kind of getting those wheels turning, it really can be as easy as something that you have going on and just tying in a couple of things and that’s how you can look into tying in advocacy or parent engagement just in general throughout your school year. So awesome. Perfect. So before we wrap up, we’re going to go over some parent engagement tips where you can use this to support advocacy as well. So I say when it comes to parents talking and interacting with your parents throughout the program year could lead to more support when it comes to engaging your parents in advocacy.

So refrain from only interacting with your parents when it comes to mandatory events such as an open house orientation or only talking to your parents when their child is misbehaving in the program. I know it’s easier said and done to call little Johnny’s mom to tell them how little Johnny’s behaving, but also find different ways to interact with little Johnny’s mom outside of just calling her or him whenever little Johnny’s misbehaving. So make events or activities around the parent’s interest or availability. This is something that we talked about a little earlier, right? So create a way to get to know your parents, their interests so that way you can plan events around that. So are your parents looking for a more relaxing event?

Are you looking for something more active? This could be having an event within your community or maybe a remote location that’s easy for families to attend. I know someone in the chat has said something about access being a problem. Make sure that you’re remembering to respect parents’ time and their schedule. Keeping meetings short. If you are sending information to parents, creating a straightforward email with quick facts or information. So you want your parents to take away from that, even if they do a quick glance at that email. Creating events during specific times of day. So are your parents more active or engaged in the morning time versus the evening time? It depends on your working parents’ schedule.

If parents know that they can bring their whole family to an event or if they know that their babies are going to be putting on a show or leading their event, you might have a higher attendance rate. So that’s something to keep in mind as well. And also just like the kids, just like our students, parents love free things as well. So having food, having raffle prizes if you can afford those things could be ways that you could draw parents into attending. So we know we build opportunities for leadership with the kids in the programs, but what about those parents who are ready to serve, ready to go above and beyond for their child and ready to support your program. Create a parent council or a committee that can help relegate some of those advocacy efforts too. Parents talk and listen to other parents.

As someone that’s a fairly new parent of a two-year-old, I am definitely that parent that is inside that school, outside that school, talking to parents, seeing what they’re talking about, finding ways that we could support the school. So think about that as well. And this is also a great way to get feedback on improvements for your program. So parents might not be comfortable talking to you as a program lead or program staff, but they might be comfortable talking to little Johnny’s mom outside of school. So if you build up that trust and that rapport with your parents and maybe you are able to create a parent council or parent committee, you can have those trusted key parents where, “Okay, the parents were outside talking and this is what they’re concerned about or this is what they want to see from the program.”

That’s something to keep in mind as well. So parents may be unaware about advocacy just in general. They may not know exactly what it means or what it entails. So when you provide them with resources around advocacy and how advocacy can help their child in OST programs, that is something that can really help to your benefit. So that can be something as small as having handouts at the sign-out table, especially for our parents who are running in signing out their kids and taking them out, having a quick handout that you can just give them on their way in and out. If you’re not able to do that, sending some handouts home. So put it in their book bags before they go home. And then you could also partner with local orgs that may be focused on advocacy.

So collaboration is key, especially when it comes to working with our children. So maybe there might be some community organizations that are really experts in the field when it comes to advocacy and you can partner and collaborate with them to see how you can really engage family voice and advocacy. Maybe turning it into a Lights On Afterschool event, right? So maybe having a collaboration program within your community focus on advocacy could definitely help. Again, lastly, maybe creating a training on advocacy. So if you know that parents aren’t really aware of what advocacy looks like, taking these resources that we shared today and creating a small little training not only maybe for your parents but for your staff, so that way they can talk that down to your parents as well.

That’s something to keep in mind as well. Next slide. So our friends at the Flamboyan Foundation sent over resources on family engagement to share with you all. One is the Five Roles in Action, one is Quick Guide to Building Strong Relationships, and the last one is Challenging Assumptions Reflection Tool. So the Five Roles in Actions discuss five essential roles families play in their children’s education. It can help educators reflect on where their students’ families are currently playing in these roles and where they can provide guidance. The second one, using the Quick Guide to Building Strong Relationships will help educators foster meaningful connections with students and their families.

And then the last one, the Challenging Assumptions Reflection Tool can help educators examine ways that they can question themselves or others when biased or negative beliefs about family surface. You can find additional resources around family engagement from the Flamboyan Foundation at their website, which is FlamboyanFoundation.org/resources. Again, this all will be shared with you, so you can definitely take a look after our conversation today, but I definitely want to make sure that we have this in your back pocket. Next slide. So before I leave you today, I want to share over some of our top tools and resources just in general at the Afterschool Alliance. So as you can see in this first column, like I said, we do a lot of research.

We do a lot of research. So these are some top research points that we just want to highlight that we have. Again, the American After 3 report, we have an Afterschool Impact Database, we have overview of the 21st Century Program as well on our website. And the other resources I want to highlight to you too is our Program Toolbox. I say that no matter if you are a novice when it comes to the afterschool field, whether you are a veteran in that afterschool field, this is our Program Toolbox. They have all types of guides and resources for you, whether it is learning how to sustain your program, whether you’re looking for marketing tools for your program. If you’re looking for curriculum for your program, that first link right there to Program Toolbox, we have a whole bunch of information in it for you.

Speaking about staffing recruitment and retainment, we do have a recruitment toolkit that’s on our website as well. So please feel free to look at that at your leisure. As I mentioned before, early on our call as well, we partner with State Afterschool Networks. So if you are not familiar with your State Afterschool Network, please get in contact with them. Please connect with them. They have great resources and things for you. So if you’re unaware of who your state network is or what that will look like, you can go to our website to learn more about your State Afterschool Network. And then as I mentioned before, the Aim High grant, that is linked on here so that way you can learn more about that funding stream. And then we do a lot of blogs and program spotlights as well.

So that again is on our website. And before we go to the next slide, I forgot to mention that we have Afterschool Ambassadors. So we have Afterschool Ambassadors throughout the nation that we train when it comes to advocacy. So that way there are boots on the ground, folks within your community ready to support your afterschool program. So to learn more about our Afterschool Ambassadors, you can click on that link. And we also have youth ambassadors as well. So essentially what I just mentioned, but just for our young folks. So again, that is on our website if you want to learn more about our youth ambassadors program. Next slide. So I’ll be remiss to not mention all of our social media handles as we talked about social media and messaging. So feel free to follow us.

We post a lot of things on our social media channels. I say follow us friend desk, we follow back if there’s anything that you need for us to help you support, especially when it comes to maybe awareness about your program, we definitely repost, we share, we do all those things. And if there’s anything that you see that we share, you are more than welcome to repost it on your social media as well. And this last link that’s right here on this slide, you can subscribe to get our emails. We send a lot of emails out. But the great thing about this link is you can curate whatever newsletters you want or whatever emails you want.

So if you’re focused on S [inaudible 00:40:41] if you’re focused on policy, focused on research, you can go to this link right here and you can click on and check the boxes of what type of emails or what type of newsletters you want to get from us. So I say this is probably the best way to stay connected with us just on a broader scale, is by subscribing to get our emails. Next slide. So right here is my contact email, feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the presentation today. If you have things maybe you want to connect offline about. Definitely reach out to me. I am a resource. I tell folks do not hesitate if there’s any questions or anything just in general, it doesn’t even have to be about the presentation today.

If there’s anything that you want to connect about, talk about, I’m a resource. Again, this is my jam. I’m passionate about it. I get after school, I get summer learning, I get it all. You name it, I’ve done it. So if there’s anything that you want to connect about regardless of our presentation today, feel free to reach out to me. And I just want to thank you all for my time today and for your time today for joining the call. And I’m going to pass it over to my friends at MAEC to see if we have any questions.

Jessica Webster:

Wow, thank you so much for all that information, Tiyana. My head is spinning with, I know some questions that I have and we’ll give people a minute to put some questions in the chat if they haven’t done so already. We do have one. Ty would like to know, what are some uncommon obstacles that you have seen to family engagement that I think people can do kind of the default ones, but are there ones that you have come across that you think people should be aware of that may not be common in their environment yet?

Tiyana Glenn:

Yet? That’s a good question.

Jessica Webster:

That is a great question. Being proactive.

Tiyana Glenn:

Right? And I’m putting back on my program director hat of when I was a program director to see what were my common obstacles. I feel like we kind of touched on this a little bit, but I think the common obstacle I met was trying to meet everyone’s needs and everyone’s timing. So you will have a parent that say, “Oh, well I can do it evening time.” And then you have something in the evening time and that one parent that said they can do it in the evening time, they don’t show up. So you’re like, “Okay, well let me do something earlier in the day.” And then you have it earlier in the day and then you don’t have the attendance.

So I think sometimes it does take more than asking parents when are you available? Because the same person that can say they’re available might not even show up. So just trying to find different creative ways of really pushing beyond word or face value can definitely help. But let me see if I can think about another uncommon obstacle when it comes to family engagement.

Jessica Webster:

While you’re thinking about that. I think you touched on this a little bit, especially in the social media posts, but I think one of the things that we talk to educators about when we do the work is if you are doing an event that you’re telling people, “It’s so important for you to be here, we need you to be here. Or we’re having our staff stay after, our teachers stay after. We’re asking you to come and change your evening plans or your work scheduled to come and be there.” One of the things I think we want to try to do is distill what information is so important that they needed to be there and are there other ways that we can provide that information for those parents who yes, they said they could be there, maybe something came up, maybe there are other barriers we’re not aware of.

But making sure if it’s so important that we’re getting that information in multiple ways to our families, not just with the in-person physical event is something to really think about. And even if everybody does show up following up with, “Here’s what we really wanted you to get out of this event.” It’s not a bad thing to do. So just something to think about there.

Tiyana Glenn:

And another one that came to mind too, especially as we kind of touched on media, having media presence, you can definitely plan to have media show up, but sometimes they might not show up. So when it comes to thinking about planning your event, you want to be cautious about what time of the day you might plan it. As we know, especially folks on this call, three to six time PM a lot of things can happen. If you’re planning events around that three to six time, just be mindful that there might be a breaking story or breaking news that might happen. The planned media that you are planning to show up, they have to go to that breaking news station or breaking news area.

So having a backup or just being prepared to know that yes, you might have planned media and they might literally call you an hour before saying that they’re on the way and then something happens and they might not show up. So making sure that you have a plan around that so that way you’re not just depending on, “Oh, well we had this new station plan to come out and they’re not here so we don’t know what to do.” And I’m saying this from a personal story because I definitely had a situation where I planned a Lights On event. It was a grand opening of one of our sites and the new station was supposed to come out to highlight it and something happened that day in Charlotte and they did not show up, But we kept the show rolling.

We had some community leaders that came out to speak and things of that nature and we didn’t let that stop our show. So just know that when it comes to media, sometimes if you can plan things earlier in the day, you will have a greater chance of having media presence versus having something later on in the day. There could be anything that could happen within your city and they might go to that.

Jessica Webster:

It sounds like there’s some questions, and I know there was a comment in the chat earlier about obstacles around kind of that balance between… You had talked about funding not keeping pace with inflation. And so in that term, at least we’re underfunded and we probably… Obviously knowing that what we needed a number of years ago may not even be enough, even if it was inflation adjusted. But we also have, I think in that afterschool space, I got a sense that there were some people that felt that there might be some perpetuated inequities because sometimes the families with the most resources are able to access these programs and they have a lot of demands to the program.

One of the questions that came through is how do you suggest balancing the demands for OST services for over-resourced families or resourced families, I suppose, that contribute to then further inequitable access that impacts our more under resourced and more vulnerable families?

Tiyana Glenn:

That’s a great question. That’s definitely common. I know one thing that we do Afterschool Alliance is we teach folks or tell folks about braiding or weaving different funding streams that help support your program. And I believe we actually have a webinar coming up talking more about that. So I’ll definitely make sure I share it with you all so that way you can share it here with audience.

But we definitely have, I would say, more expert folks on our team they can definitely talk to when it comes to policy about how we can… Of course we have the 21st Century, that’s the only federally funded stream, but there are other streams where we can kind of get creative when it comes to learning more about how to sustain your program so that way it can hopefully level out the playing field when it comes to those overly resource programs.

Kailanya Brailey:

I see that we have another question that’s going to be added to the Q&A box, but we have another of what are your suggestions on engaging students with special needs?

Tiyana Glenn:

Another great question. I would say if you’re based in a school, definitely reaching out to your school resource office, they might have some tools or resources that they do within a school day that you can definitely use within your afterschool program. I tell folks all the time, I feel like school and afterschool time can kind of operate in silos, but those are the best partnerships. So there might be things that your schools are already doing or thinking of that you can definitely implement as well.

So definitely I would say check into your schools and then collaboration is key as well. So there might be community organizations that provide programming or provide resources to help equip you when it comes to working with students that might have special needs. So definitely collaborating with other community organizations could be key.

Kailanya Brailey:

Well thank you for that.

Jessica Webster:

And the question in the chat was… Here we go. Best ways. What are some great ways to involve our high school parents? Because oftentimes, especially juniors and seniors, they’re driving to school. High school parents should not be involved in the same ways that elementary parents are. That would be inappropriate. So what suggestions do you have?

Tiyana Glenn:

That’s a really great question. And I’m putting on another hat because my husband actually works with high school students. So I’m like, “What does he do?” Because that’s something that he always come home talking about, the struggle of trying to get those parents to be engaged and interactive. So I’m not sure the background of the person that asks this question. I can speak from personal experience of usually working with high school students, maybe you’re offering internships or apprenticeships or things of that nature. So that way those are probably tied to those jobs or other obligations that they have. I know another thing that parents are really big on high school is sports as well.

So they are trying to send their babies off to a football scholarship, baseball scholarship. So maybe finding ways that you can go to the football games or whatever games that they have. So connecting maybe with the athletic department of the school, because I know parents are really big on high school events. If they’re not coming to anything else, they come to the football game, they either come to the soccer games. So maybe thinking about how you can tie into the athletic department at the high schools or whatever their job is, or if they’re doing internships or apprenticeships to see if there’s ways that you can entice them that way. I mean, at the end of the day, sometimes our parents got to sign the kids up to even be in these programs or they have to have some type of permission or things of that nature.

So maybe whatever that looks like for you, whether it’s like an orientation meeting that you already had planned before they start this internship or apprenticeship, trying to go ahead and lock their attention in now. And I’m not sure if we can create maybe some guidelines in order for your child to stay in this internship or apprenticeship. We have to have touch points throughout the year. An X amount of touch points throughout the year. That can be something where they know that they’re signing off on it. Like, “Okay, my baby is getting a great job and they’re getting this experience, but I know in order to play my part or for them to keep this, I have to show up or make these touch points with the advisor.”

Jessica Webster:

Tiyana, that makes me think we do a lot of work on transitions and Kailanya and I are former middle school principals.

Tiyana Glenn:

I know that.

Jessica Webster:

So secondary education is really, really important for us. And in addition, I also have a high school senior right now. And so one of the things that a lot of her teachers do, not so much after school activities, but oftentimes they send their communication directly to the student, but they include parents on it. So the email isn’t dear parent, right? It’s dear student, but I see it. And so I’m kind of still in that background and I can intervene or hopefully not intervene, but support at home and say, “Hey, I saw that email from your teacher. Don’t forget, you have to be at your internship today at three o’clock.” I think sometimes it’s really thinking first about what we need parents to do.

I love your idea of the orientation meeting and being really thoughtful about just sharing out as a parent, your role is to support your child’s learning. And so the research really talks a lot about that academic socialization as being the key factor for secondary parents in helping their child. And that’s all invisible, right? That’s not something that we know, we can necessarily measure because we can’t see it. But talking to your student about the importance of being on time for things, the importance of dressing appropriately for your job or making sure that you’re communicating to your boss if you need to be late or all of these things.

The importance of, “Hey, we have a vision for you that the expectation is you will get a career or you will go to college after school.” It really is more of those pieces that we want parents to do. And so we’re really clear about that and then we express it in an orientation meeting and give them the tips and tricks. Here’s an example of how to do that. And then along the way, we’re giving them the updates so that they can continue to those conversations, I think would be a really powerful role when we’re thinking about those high school students.

Tiyana Glenn:

I definitely agree. Those workforce development skills are definitely key, especially in that high school age as they transition to whatever they decide to do post-secondary.

Kailanya Brailey:

And so they’re still getting that level of independence, but you have strengthened parents’ ability and caregivers’ ability to offer that additional support.

Tiyana Glenn:

And then sometimes you have parents who want those skills themselves. So I know even when I ran the at school program, I had a parent one time come up to me and was like, “I need a job, but I don’t know how to get that job. Is there some type of program that you can help set up for parents like me to learn about job interview etiquette and resume and things of that nature?” And I collaborated with our local Goodwill.

Because they had an office that focused just on those things, and I had them come to the program to talk to our parents about what does it look like dressing up for an interview and resume building and things of that nature. So don’t underestimate the needs of your parents either. I would say that as well.

Jessica Webster:

Yes, definitely.

Tiyana Glenn:

[inaudible 00:54:56] But for your parents as well.

Kailanya Brailey:

Yes. How you can serve the entire family.

Jessica Webster:

Yes, yes. But one way you do that is going back to what you were talking about in your reflection piece about even those leadership opportunities for parents, teaching them about advocacy, giving them the skills that they need, potentially having an advisory board and making those cultural connectors who are going to go out and hear it and bring it back to you in a trustworthy way so that you’re constantly getting those feedback loops of what do you need in our community and how can we be part of the solution for you or connect you with the solution.

You may not be able to do the ESL classes, but you should know probably who in your community is doing that and help with the warm handoff.

Kailanya Brailey:

Exactly.

Jessica Webster:

So it doesn’t look like we have much else in the way of questions. Anything else, Tiyana, that you would like to share with the group?

Tiyana Glenn:

This was just a great discussion, so I thank you for the platform and opportunity. I know I did promise to send some resources, so I’ll make sure I send those your way so that way you can share it out with anybody on the call. But again, I’m here as a resource, so if you have any questions or want to talk offline, please do not hesitate to contact me. And I really do thank you for offering me this time. This is a great session. I’m so glad that we were all… See, collaboration. I mentioned collaboration and this is collaboration at its finest. So thank you all so much for having me here today.

Jessica Webster:

It absolutely is. And I think it’s great if you are connected with Afterschool Alliance already and all the resources they have, that’s wonderful. But if you’re not, this is a great opportunity for you to have that network of support to add to your programming and bolster your programming. Kailanya, any other thoughts for us?

Kailanya Brailey:

No, this was great. Just a wealth of information. I have a feeling we’re going to have lots more Lights On Afterschool participants, so really thankful for you sharing this information. We do want to make a note before we start logging off that we do have our survey link shared in the chat. So we welcome and encourage you to please give us some feedback on our session today.

This helps us shape more effective and meaningful resources for you all. So thank you for completing that. And also a reminder that we have three sessions left in our Complementing the School Day series. So if you haven’t registered for session three and beyond, we welcome you to do that as well. Tiyana, thank you so much.

Jessica Webster:

Yes, thank you. All right. And while everyone is filling out their survey links. We also wanted to share a really exciting event that we will be hosting in the spring. So we will be sending out information on registration and also opportunities for session presentations for our first ever MAEC Family Engagement Event. This will be virtual. We are planning on having a parent directed or parent spotlight sessions that are more for parents, but this is also for practitioners. And so we’re really excited. That will be Tuesday, May 6th and more information to come. Look for a call for proposals and an opportunity to register in the near future.

And with that we’ll just put up our contact information so you have that if you would like to get in touch with us. In addition to… We have our project program managers from both CAFE and CEE available and we are eager and willing to help make afterschool time great for all of you. So if you have any questions, need to connect on resources, want to talk about some training opportunities, we are absolutely here for that for you.