The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
To build back better, start with families
Halfway through another difficult school year is a good time to look for practices that are working well and ask why. Our research identifies a number of school systems in Connecticut where students are learning well and reveals the reason why — a fundamental shift in how school systems think about public education, putting families at the heart of learning.
Expanding learning beyond the school building and into the home has forced schools to rethink long-held assumptions. Pre-pandemic, schools accelerated student learning by focusing on the interaction of three focal points of what educators call the “instructional core”: the student, the teacher and educational materials. The pandemic has revealed the importance of a fourth point: families.
So what does addition of families to the “instructional core” mean in practice?
It means two-way dialogue around student and family strengths and coordinated efforts to meet basic needs. It means helping families understand the skills their children are expected to learn and creating communication channels to help both schools and families track progress and identify and address learning gaps. It includes tech-enabled instructional materials that make it possible to support learning at home.
Adding families to the instructional core requires schools to create a strong sense of community and celebrate families’ diverse cultures, making all families feel welcome and hearing and addressing their concerns.
Most importantly, it means empowering parents and caretakers to become agents of change with a real voice in decisions affecting their children. Families must be provided the tools and opportunities to help craft solutions with long-term impacts on students, including decisions about how schools are organized and how students will learn best.
Discussions with more than 150 families, community organizers, family engagement leaders and education experts in Connecticut and nationwide — culminating in a family guide to support children in hybrid and remote learning — reveal that schools must build upon practices that engage families as full, equal and equitable partners not only now, but post-pandemic, as well.
With many Americans fearful that the country’s democratic institutions are under existential threat, the move from passive family engagement to active and supported family participation provides reason for optimism. At its core, family participation is a powerful catalyst for “microdemocracy” — the idea that effective democratic participation takes root when individuals,
Now more than ever, schools must stop thinking of student learning and family engagement as separate endeavors.
especially from traditionally marginalized communities, contribute to decisions affecting them through their ordinary encounters with public institutions like schools.
When done right — when, for example, families work with schools to design, apply and improve learning models or to develop plans addressing children’s special education needs — family engagement becomes a fundamental act of democratic participation, building families’ faith in the public institutions that shape their children’s futures.
Even more important than that, authentic family engagement is necessary to transform schools into places that meet the needs of our diverse public school children, especially as students of color outpace teachers of color in nearly every one of the nation’s 13,000 school districts. Done right, enhanced family engagement and authentic participation can become a powerful tool for advancing a more equitable, racially just society.
A number of school systems in Connecticut are already implementing innovative and culturally sustaining family engagement practices, which state agencies should celebrate and promote as learning opportunities for other systems. One Connecticut district invited families to co-design a series of YouTube videos on remote learning and other education topics based on families’ ongoing challenges and questions. Another charter school network created community support teams to help families advocate for and meet their basic needs and ready families to support their children in remote learning. A third reserves one day a week for meetings with families, teachers and children to discuss how the school year is going and determine next steps.
A key starting place for other districts in bringing families into their instructional core and into the decision making that shapes that core is family engagement itself — inviting families to work with educators to reimagine and try out what family participation can and will look like in the system going forward.
Now more than ever, schools must stop thinking of student learning and family engagement as separate endeavors. Instead, they must empower teachers and staff to approach family participation as an essential pillar of student growth and democratic participation. When this happens, we truly can “build back better” and create an education system where all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, native language, socioeconomic status or ability, can achieve their full potential.