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Family/Community Engagement

" " As an educational community seeks to examine its strengths and weaknesses as they pertain to equity throughout, it is critical to involve the family and the local community. The student body is representative and a part of the surrounding community, and thus their families and communities have direct interest in the practices of their children's school.

The resources set forth in this section provide guidance and starting points for the engagement of family and community in conversations of equity in their schools. This section is categorized by the standards established by the Pennsylvania Family Engagement Birth through College, Career, and Community Ready Framework (2019).

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School/District Resources

U.S. Department of Education English Learner Toolkit (PDF)
Chapter 10 of this toolkit, Tools and Resources for Ensuring Meaningful Communication with Limited English Proficient Parents, describes the requirements for districts to communicate with families of English learners, as updated in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The chapter also includes strategies for school leaders to integrate English learner families into school culture, along with interpretation and translation resources for districts.

Bringing Attendance Home Toolkit Attendance Works
This toolkit includes research on engaging families with attendance issues, materials to share with families, and interactive exercises to facilitate conversations about attendance.

PA Resources for Immigrants
This guide will connect you with information and resources for Pennsylvania immigrants.

Engaging ELL Families through Community Partnerships
How can schools develop strategic relationships with community partners? Which issues are best addressed through a community partnership? Learn more from the strategies below. These strategies appear in Engaging ELL Families: Twenty Strategies for School Leaders.

How to Provide Social-Emotional Support for ELL Students
Learn more about strategies that individual educators and schools can use to support immigrant students, help address stress and anxiety, and create a respectful classroom environment discussions related to immigration. These strategies are part of the Colorín Colorado resource guide, How to Support Immigrant Students and Families: Strategies for Schools and Early Childhood Programs.

Family-School Partnerships: An Essential Component of Student Achievement (PDF)
Sandra Christenson et.al. detail the importance of family-school partnerships and its impact on the overall school community and academic achievement.

Supporting Students from Military Families (PDF)
Eric Rossen and Courtney D. Carter describe methods to support students who come from military families. This covers stages of military deployment as well as recommendations specifically for schools.

Supporting Students with Incarcerated Parents (PDF)
Eric Rossen describes recommendations for educators in supporting children of incarcerated parents. It discusses methods of engaging, as well as consideration of re-entry of the parent to the family following release.

Children and Families of the Incarcerated Fact Sheet (PDF)
The growing number of children with an incarcerated parent represents one of the most significant collateral consequences of the record prison population in the U.S.

Incarcerated Fathers Library and Biblioteca sobre hijos de padres encarcelados – En castellano
This Library contains a number of pamphlets that contain helpful information for incarcerated fathers and those that serve them. Topics include how to prepare a child for a prison visit to how to tell a child that their father is incarcerated.

The Challenges of Homelessness (PDF)
Tory Cox describes methods of supporting children from homeless families. For example, you can contact your child's teacher if you have questions, or you may be invited to events at the school. These resources describe how you can build a relationship with your child's school.

Raising Bilingual Kids
One of the greatest gifts you can give your child is the gift of two (or more!) languages. Being bilingual is good for your child's brain, makes communication with grandparents and relatives easier, and is an advantage for finding jobs in the future. To learn more, see our resources for ideas on raising bilingual children at www.colorincolorado.org.

Family Guides: Supporting Learning in 2020-21
These guides provide information on the most important things students should be learning, and how to reinforce learning with everyday activities, tips for talking to teachers, and online resources.

Partnerships with Families and Communities (PDF)
In order to provide the best possible education, schools must partner with families and communities. True partnerships are based on mutual respect. Teachers respect and value parents' knowledge and insights about their children. Parents respect and value teachers' knowledge and insights about the learning process and understanding children's educational needs. In a school-family-community partnership, all members of the community recognize changing family needs in order to raise children in an environment that provides the conditions for health, safety, and learning.

Encouraging and Sustaining ELL Parent Engagement | Colorín Colorado
How can schools (and school leaders) "think outside the box" when it comes to the family engagement of ELLs? What has worked for other schools? These strategies appear in Engaging ELL Families: Twenty Strategies for School Leaders. The following strategies offer tips for thinking creatively about how to engage families around topics or activities that are important to them and their children.

How to Support Immigrant Students and Families: Strategies for Schools and Early Childhood Programs
Across the country educators are looking for ways to support immigrant students and families facing great uncertainty. This comprehensive guide includes more than 50 strategies that educators, staff, and administrators can use to ensure that schools and early childhood settings remain safe, welcoming places for immigrant students and their families.

Beginning Again With Marginalized Parents
The article discusses how U.S. teachers and schools can deal with the parents of high school students in alternative-learning programs, and it mentions how these types of parents often feel marginalized due to the educational failures of their children. Psycho-social issues and at-risk students are addressed, along with individualized education plans and communication in education involving parents and teachers. Student disciplinary hearings and problem-solving conferences are assessed.

Can We Talk? Using Community–Based Participatory Action Research to Build Family and School Partnerships with Families of Color (PDF) - School Community Journal
The discussion centers on the school district's strategic plan and the community–university partnership used as a vehicle for responding to these critical concerns.

PTA National Standards for Family-School Partnerships Assessment Guide: The Framework for your School District's Local Control and Accountability Plan (2016)
This resource includes rubrics for the six PTA national standards for family-school partnerships. Available in English and Spanish.

Partners in Education - A Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family–School Partnerships (PDF)
This publication provides a framework for family–school partnerships, three case studies, and recommendations.

Building Partnerships Series for Early Childhood Professionals (PDF)
Explore the importance of family engagement and practice strategies for building relationships with families. Use this resource to review the following: description of family engagement, benefits of relationships with families, strengths-based attitudes and relationship-based practices, practical examples, and additional resources and related references. This guide is intended for professionals in the early childhood field. Individuals, groups of staff, and supervisors can use this tool as part of training and reflective practice and supervision.

Administrators: ELL Resources
Administrators play a crucial role in creating an environment in which ELLs can succeed. This section offers school leaders — particularly those with growing ELL populations — ideas and strategies to make that happen. Resources include articles, recommended reports, professional books, and expert interviews.

Communicating Important Information with ELL Families: Strategies for Success
It is critical for schools to understand the rights that English language learners (ELLs), immigrant students, and their families have regarding access to schooling and information in their home languages. Learn more about those rights below, as well as some best practices for not only meeting those obligations but building positive partnerships with ELL families in support of their children.

Finding Answers for Our Immigrant Students and Families: An ELL District Leader's Perspective
As news reports about the future of DACA dominate the headlines, schools and individual educators can play an important role in helping to inform and support immigrant students and families during uncertain times. The attached article was written by Bright Ideas for Teaching ELLs contributor Kristina Robertson about her efforts to create a supportive community for immigrant students and families, as well as staff, throughout her district.

Partners in Education: A Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships (PDF)
For schools and districts across the U.S., family engagement is rapidly shifting from a low-priority recommendation to an integral part of education reform efforts. Family engagement has long been enshrined in policy at the federal level through Title I of ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act), which requires that Title I schools develop parental involvement policies and "school– family compacts" that outline how the two stakeholder groups will work together to boost student achievement.

How Districts Can Lay the Groundwork for Lasting Family Engagement
Family engagement in a student's education can lead to improved student academic achievement, attendance, and behavior. Yet many districts and schools still struggle to form strong partnerships with the families they serve. Having a supportive district-level infrastructure is key to the success and sustainability of family engagement initiatives. This issue of SEDL Insights outlines district supports that can lay the foundation for high-impact family engagement.

U.S. Department of Education Newcomer Toolkit (PDF)
Newcomers to the United States are a highly heterogeneous group. This chapter of the toolkit discusses diverse situations and circumstances among newcomers; the assets they bring; and ways schools can support newcomer students and their families as they adapt to U.S. schools, society, and culture.

How to Support ELL Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFEs)
While educating students with interrupted education may seem overwhelming at first glance, they can indeed obtain a high school diploma with the right kind of support and go on to future academic and professional success. This article provides a profile of SIFEs and their needs, recommendations of best practices, and examples of the kinds of quality support that will accelerate their academic achievement.

Taking Action on Attendance: How Parents Can Make a Difference at Home - Exercise (PDF)
The purpose of this activity is to help parents see how their choices affect whether their children are in school on time, every day for the entire day (what educators call "time on task"). Time on task matters for a child's learning and success. Through this activity, parents will know what they can do to support their children in getting to school on time, every day.

Count Us In: Advancing Equity in Rural Schools and Communities | MAEC, Inc.
The Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium (MAEC) compiled a series of essays, articles, and research to tackle the question: how do we, as a society, value and support rural students and families? Users will benefit from accessing current information around equity in rural spaces.

ParentCamp - ParentCamp is THE transformational Family-School-Community Engagement Model designed to build a connected school ecosystem of caring and supportive adults surrounding our kids. ParentCamps are not the traditional stand and deliver sessions but facilitated dialogue where the entire room is the expert and everyone brings important and unique perspectives to the table.

Parent Teacher Home Visits (PTHV) - PTHV connects the family’s expertise on their child with the classroom expertise of teachers. These voluntary visits to a cross-section of the school community focus on building relationships and discovering hopes and dreams. Research demonstrates that PTHV interrupts assumptions and biases families and educators have about each other, positive relationships are built, chronic absenteeism decreases, and English Language Arts and math proficiency rates increase.

Understanding Family Engagement Outcomes: Research to Practice Series (PDF)
Families rely on other families and the support of their communities to celebrate the joys and face the responsibilities and challenges of raising children.

Partnering with Families and Communities (PDF)
A well-organized program of family and community partnerships yields many benefits for schools and their students.

Critical Practices for Anti-bias Education Family and Community Engagement
Teaching Tolerance shares five practices to increase the connection between families.

Events During the School Year
During the school year, there are several events that help build the foundation for partnerships with families of English language learners (ELLs). Look at these ideas for engaging families throughout the year, with special tips about reaching out to families in their home languages.

Evidence-Based Strategies for Supporting and Enhancing Family Engagement
Family engagement should be a vital component of any strategy to expand learning opportunities for children and youth after school and during the summertime—whether at the organizational, community, state, or national level. Under current federal guidelines for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers initiative, "family engagement" takes the form of activities to support parental involvement and family literacy.

Equity-Based Family Engagement Boosts Education
Providing equity-based opportunities for family engagement can help parents and caretakers become effective advocates and culture-bearers in schools, which in turn improves educational quality and relevance.

Race, power, and minority parent participation
Articles such as these highlight the importance of moving away from White middle-class ethnocentric notions of parent participation to recognize the nuanced ways in which families from different cultures define and practice parent participation.

Families as Advocates and Leaders – Preschool and Beyond (PDF)
This resource presents a summary of selected research, promising practices, proven interventions, and program strategies intended to be useful for Head Start, Early Head Start, and other early childhood programs. Much of this content is also applicable beyond the early childhood levels.

Parent-Teacher Conferences: Strategies for Principals, Teachers, and Parents (PDF)
Reuniones entre padres y maestros: estrategias para directores, maestros y padres (Spanish) (PDF)
Global Family Research Project views parent-teacher conferences in terms of the 5Rs: reach out, raise up, reinforce, relate, and reimagine. Applying these approaches can lead to innovative ways to partner with families to ensure that they receive the information they need to help their children, and that teachers understand their students' strengths and needs.

Family Agency and Voice: Designing the Next Generation of Family Engagement (PDF)
Three family-staff activities to develop agency and voice.

National Alliance of Children's Trust and Prevention Funds
The National Alliance of Children's Trust and Preventions Funds (Alliance) has a diverse portfolio of training resources to support parent partnership and continues to develop these through the relationships we have been building with our parent partners. The Alliance also works with membership and with other mission-related organizations to develop customized TA. The TA is designed to address the developmental needs of organizations who wish to be more effective at partnering with parents in their work. This can vary in scope – from recommending excellent parent speakers from our network of parent partners – to designing a plan for creating a Parent Advisory Group or Council to meet an organization's specific needs.

Parent Cafes - Be Strong
Parent Cafés are physically and emotionally safe spaces where parents and caregivers talk about the challenges and victories of raising a family. Through individual deep self-reflection and peer-to-peer learning, participants explore their strengths, learn about the Protective Factors, and create strategies from their own wisdom and experiences to help strengthen their families. Cafés are structured discussions that use the principles of adult learning and family support. They are highly sustainable with training reinforcement, institutional support, and a commitment to an approach that engages and affirms parents as leaders. Participants leave Parent Cafés feeling inspired, energized, and excited to put into practice what they've learned.

Strategies for Engaging Latino Parents in Assessment Advocacy (PDF)
One in four students in classrooms today are Latino, and this number will increase to one in three by 2050. With these changing demographics, education policies are being debated and implemented that affect millions of Latino children—and more state leaders, educators and education advocates are looking for ways to effectively engage Latino parents. In particular, as states have raised expectations for student learning in recent years to better ensure students are being taught skills and knowledge they need for success—and put in place higher quality tests aligned to these expectations—Latino parents have both embraced these changes and sometimes been unsure how to use these new tools to advocate for their children.

Racism

Racial Justice Resource Guide
This comprehensive National Education Association resource guide includes tools and resources for talking about race, conducting racial equity assessments, strategic planning, ideas for capacity building and action, FAQs, and a directory of web pages, documents and allied organizations focused on racial justice in education.

Housing and Schools: The Importance of Engagement for Educators and Education Advocates (PDF)
Housing and school policies have a strong reciprocal effect on patterns of racial and economic segregation, which makes it especially important for educators and education advocates who understand the benefits of school integration1 to become involved in housing and land use policy. This policy brief aims to enhance educator, school leader, parent, and education advocate understanding of the dynamics of the housing-schools relationship and their effectiveness as advocates in their local communities.

ESL and Immigrant Students and Families (PDF)
Newcomers to the United States are a highly heterogeneous group. This chapter of the toolkit discusses diverse situations and circumstances among newcomers; the assets they bring; and ways schools can support newcomer students and their families as they adapt to U.S. schools, society, and culture.

State and Local Task Force – Special Education
The State Task Force serves as an advocate for students with Intellectual Disabilities, but actions, decisions and initiatives often affect all students with disabilities. The State Task Force has the responsibility to call upon the Commonwealth's resources for resolution of needs and problems through administrative and policy making means. Meeting at least five times a year, the State Task Force is comprised of four members, representing the following:

The Arc of Pennsylvania
PA Department of Human Services
PA Department of Education
Governor's Office

Additionally, each Intermediate Unit across Pennsylvania is responsible for providing support to a Local Task Force. Sometimes known as a Local Parent Task Force or Right to Education Local Task Force, they were formed to represent the needs and interests of students with Intellectual Disabilities and their families on a local level. Today, Local Task Forces have expanded their efforts to include all students with Disabilities. All Local Task Force meetings are open to parents, agency providers, and school professionals who are concerned about the education of students with disabilities. It is especially important that families of a child with a Disability who is transitioning from Early Intervention Services to School Age Services receive information on the State and Local Task Force. Access more information on the State Task Force.

How to Support Immigrant Students and Families: Strategies for Schools and Early Childhood Programs
Across the country, educators are looking for ways to support immigrant students and families facing great uncertainty. This comprehensive guide includes more than 50 strategies that educators, staff, and administrators can use to ensure that schools and early childhood settings remain safe, welcoming places for immigrant students and their families.

Classroom Resources

Connecting with ELL Families: Strategies for Success
How can schools form strong partnerships with ELL and immigrant families? How can school leaders make that happen? This resource provides tips for getting started! These strategies appear in Engaging ELL Families: Twenty Strategies for School Leaders. These strategies offer tips for building relationships with the families of English language learners (ELLs), getting to know their strengths and stories, and creating a welcoming environment.

Engaging Families in Early Childhood Education
Collaborative problem-solving requires that parents, educators, specialists, and administrators work together to determine appropriate resources and supports as well as specific information-sharing practices that facilitate parental engagement.

16 ways parents can be involved in the classroom this school year
When parents are involved in their children's education, children succeed at higher rates. Analysis from the National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools concluded that when schools and parents work together, students earn higher grades, perform better on tests, enroll in more advanced courses, and more often graduate and continue onto post-secondary education.

5 Tips for Engaging Parent Volunteers in the Classroom
Do you find yourself wanting (more) help from parent volunteers, but are either not getting it, or not getting the kind of help that would be truly useful to you and your students? Is managing parent volunteers time-consuming or burdensome? If so, you're not alone, according to a new survey (see infographic) of a thousand educators and parents by WeAreTeachers (PDF) and my organization, VolunteerSpot (PDF). Even though guardians and teachers overwhelmingly agree that parent volunteers in the classroom are an important ingredient in student success, the study also reveals big gaps in expectations and problems with communication. These issues leave teachers feeling unsupported and parents feeling left out!

Menu: Special Today: Attendance (PDF)
Agenda outline for a parent meeting, complete with discussion starters.

ESL and Immigrant Students and Families
Newcomers to the United States are a highly heterogeneous group. This chapter of the toolkit discusses diverse situations and circumstances among newcomers; the assets they bring; and ways schools can support newcomer students and their families as they adapt to U.S. schools, society, and culture.

Family/Community Engagement

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School/District Resources

Racism

Classroom Resources

Individual Resources

Racism

Content Editor

​​​​​Family/Community Engagement

Accordion

​School/District Resources​​

Standard 1: Connect families to community resources that support their goals, interests, and needs

Standard 2: Build partnerships with families that are strengths-based, authentic, reciprocal, and respectful.

​Standard 3: Partner with fa​​milies to identify information, resources, and strategies to support them in their roles as teachers, models, encouragers, monitors, leaders and advocates as they support their child's learning and development.

Standard 4: Provide intentional opportunities for families to connect and engage with each other.

Standard 5: Support families as they develop their leadership and advocacy skills.

Racism

Standard 6: Build partnerships with families during times of transition

​Classroom Resources

Standard 1: Connect families to community resources that support their goals, interests, and needs.

Standard 2: Build partnerships with families that are strengths-based, authentic, reciprocal, and respectful.

Standard 3: Partner with families to identify information, resources, and strategies to support them in their roles as teachers, models, encouragers, monitors, leaders, and advocates as they support their child's learning and development.

Standard 4: Provide intentional opportunities for families to connect and engage with each other.

Standard 5: Support families as they develop their leadership and advocacy skills.

Standard 6: Build partnerships with families during times of transition

​Individual Resources​​

Standard 1: Connect families to community resources that support their goals, interests, and needs.

Standard 2: Build partnerships with families that are strengths-based, authentic, reciprocal, and respectful.

Standard 3: Partner with families to identify information, resources, and strategies to support them in their roles as teachers, models, encouragers, monitors, leaders and advocates as they support their child's learning and development.

Standard 4: Provide intentional opportunities for families to connect and engage with each other.

Standard 5: Support families as they develop their leadership and advocacy skills.

Racism​​​

Standard 6: Build partnerships with families during times of transition

Content Editor

Family/Community Engagement

School/District Resources

Classroom Resources

Individual Resources

Racism