Improving Your Family & Community Engagement Efforts with Professional Development

Agenda Engaging Today’s Families -Byron Garrett Shares Successes, Challenges, and Gaps – Share Your Experience Importance of Professional Development 4 Identified Challenges and… Solutions Now What? Next Steps

Today’s Families “ The family dynamic has really changed and evolved over time. I call it a revolution- the revolution of family engagement. “ Byron Garrett Chair of the National Family Engagement Alliance

Why is it so important to engage families? What are the challenges of engaging families? How do we meet the needs of today’s families? How do we get parents and family members engaged in the educational process of young people? How do we provide the right resources to families?

Notes From the Field Byron Garrett shares what is happening across the country What is happening? What is working? What isn’t working?

Group Discussion What is working for you? What is challenging? Where are there gaps?

How Does Professional Development Play a Part in Family Engagement? Improve Learning for Your Team and Your Students Boost Confidence of Staff And Students Ensure Consistency of Messages

Identified Challenges Let’s explore some top challenges... Welcoming Link to Learning Literacy Effectiveness

Making Families Feel Welcome Welcoming Walk-Through Is there space for parents to visit and gather? Do parents know how to navigate the building? Is the space functional for the needs of parents? Building Trust How do teachers and school leaders ensure that the answer to each of the above questions is YES and communicate that to parents?

Linking Engagement to Learning Don’t do more - do better. What do you already do? How can you repurpose those events, and link them to classroom learning? How do you support your teachers to make the connection?

Building Family Partnerships That Instill the Love of Reading Do you host any literacy events for families? How do you link those events to student learning? How do you engage your teachers? How do you encourage the literacy efforts to take root at home?

Monitoring & Evaluating the Effectiveness of Family & Community Engagement But how do you know if it’s working? The value of surveys… if done correctly. Using what you learn… Educating your staff on data Survey Monkey Tool (HFRP)

Next Steps Where are you with… Buy-in Funding Time management Linking to improvement/data Community connections Outcomes and sustainability

Questions?