The Idaho State Department of Education and the Idaho Commission for Libraries shared their partnership story, including sharing about an exciting training they developed for school and public library staff.
Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools is a strategy to promote social inclusion, providing students, educators and families with the tools, skills and dispositions to create schools of acceptance and positive school climate. Evidence and evaluation shows that SOUCS is a contributing factor to student success, and positive academic and social emotional outcomes. This session will explore how the impact can extend to family wellbeing.
A Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) offers an alternative approach to family engagement. A tiered approach to family engagement helps teachers and administrators adapt to the contexts, needs, and preferences of every family in the school so that ALL families are engaged in their children’s education. In this session, Georgia’s MTSS Communications and Family Engagement Specialist Carole Carr discusses the importance of helping families understand their role within the framework and how uplifting student voices strengthens engagement and improves student success.
This self-assessment tool is designed to provide regional support systems for family engagement with a means of reflecting on their work for supporting family and community engagement and to set priorities for strengthening and expanding this work in the future.
The Parent-Teacher Partnership Model brings together a small group of family members and school staff a few times per year to discuss such topics as respect, communication, equality, and supporting student learning using a set of 8 suggested modules. Families and schools implement this model for an opportunity for honest and open, two-way communication towards school improvement and family well-being. Parents and teachers co-facilitate meetings, to model to the group that families are equal partners.
Global Family Research Project
Parents not only need access to data, but they need to know how to act on what the data might be telling them. These Parent–Teacher Conference Tip Sheets provide key strategies that both parents and teachers can use to support students both in and out of the classroom. A tip sheet aimed at school principals also outlines how school administrators can support parents and teachers to that end. (English and Spanish)
Boone, B. J., Cunningham, P. D., Bachman, H. F., & Wellman, M. E. (2021). Partnering with Families for Early Language and Literacy: Research-based Strategies for Early Childhood Educators.
National Education Association. (2010). Minority parent and community engagement: Best practices and policy recommendations for closing the gaps in student achievement. Washington, DC: National Education Association of the United States Office of Minority Community Outreach.
The tools featured on this website of The Ohio State University include rubrics for school PBIS teams to assess their level of famiy engagement through PBIS at Tiers I, II and III. Additional tools for communicating about PBIS to families are also available.
Use this checklist to review and rate school policies and practices, then complete the reflection questions at the end of the survey to help you design a plan for bridging racial, class and cultural differences.