Family Engagement Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
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Every administrator and teacher knows that family involvement goes a long way to ensure the success of students. But despite pouring money, effort, and the best intentions into planning family engagement nights, there’s always a chance for a misstep.
During our conversation about family engagement, Dr. Marcia Russell shared what she’s learned about family engagement planning through trial and error, including mistakes made by well-intentioned education leaders. These family engagement examples highlight how even the best intentions can go left when family engagement activities aren’t planned with families and communities in center focus. Find out some common family engagement mistakes that Russell encountered, and how to avoid them as you map out ways to strengthen the school-home connection in your community.
Not Knowing Your Community
Sometimes, the root of the problem is simply not knowing enough about the people you want to engage with.
Russell describes how while working with a school district, they found an app that could streamline the process of crowdsourcing ideas from the parent community and voting on them. The team held a face-to-face family engagement event to share the app and help parents create accounts, offering all of the accommodations (dinner, on-site childcare, tech support, and translators) they assumed they’d need. The team was humbled and needed to pivot when they realized many parents didn’t have a required email address.
“We had to acknowledge our own biases and really recognize that we didn't exactly understand our full community. We thought we were doing right and we weren't.”
They changed course and formed small groups of parents, shared ideas, asked questions, and connected. This in-person collaboration generated new solutions and gave the families an opportunity to amplify their feedback and ideas to the school administration.
Instead, Know Before You Go
Make it a top priority to deeply understand the population of students and families at your school. Take the time for outreach prior to any event planning. Talk to parents at drop-off, invite discussions with office hours (virtual or in-person), and send out surveys to learn more about families, their backgrounds, their challenges, and more to learn how to make school feel like a welcoming place.
“Know and understand your community, especially if you don't live in the community. Recognize who the key people are, get to know them.”
Using Academic Acronyms and Jargon
Formal educational language that parents may not know or understand can be a barrier to connection. Most parents work outside of the education sector, and don’t understand the acronyms and jargon that have become a second language for educators. They may feel too embarrassed or ashamed to ask clarifying questions, pushing them further away from involvement.
Instead, Be Conversational
Many parents already feel intimidated at school. Address everyone warmly, and prioritize approachability during events and in communications early in the year. Build a rapport with the community to lay the groundwork for initiatives throughout the year. Prepare succinct handouts or signs that provide clear information and directions.
Missing People in Outreach
There will always be parents that you’re not reaching with your outreach efforts. Going into event planning with this expectation helps you think outside the box to find the parents who are disengaged from school.
Instead, Cast a Wide Net
Be flexible! Utilize all official school communication channels to reach as much of your parent population as possible. Emails, calls, text messages, backpack flyers, social media, and being present at drop-off and pick-up times are all great avenues to connect with families.
Invest in culturally responsive communication—translation tools, texting, video, flexible scheduling, in-person and virtual office hours—to prioritize communication that works best for every family.
Plan for potential barriers, then create backup plans for the backup plans. Acknowledging your biases and blind spots is a critical step here; we all have them, and they need to be recognized to be accounted for.
Russell also strongly recommends home visits, which she calls “extremely beneficial” to do. “I learned so much with my families when actually visiting with them and being invited into their homes.”
Ignoring Community Resources
Many families, teachers, and administrators may feel overwhelmed by the task of bringing the school community together—and don’t always know where to turn for help. This can lead to event planning in a vacuum, only to realize that your annual Harvest Fair is competing with the local Family Fall Festival.
“Involving the community as much as possible is really important, and the community will be involved if there’s a benefit for them.” –Dr. Marcia Russell
Instead, Partner Up
Find local clubs and organizations who will team up with you to drum up attendance at your next family engagement event. Russell recalls one school who brought the public library to campus during a book fair, signing people up for free library cards while sharing information about free public resources, such as their lending library and computer workshop classes.
Another school invited the local low rider club to do a car show during Back to School night. Families attended in droves, checking out the cars on the field while chatting with teachers and administrators, who invited them into classrooms. These initiatives not only boosted the number of parents at Back to School night, it celebrated a local club and forged bonds between members of the community.
Russell recommends keeping a calendar with school, community, and professional development events clearly labeled, to avoid overlap. This will also highlight opportunities to partner with local organizations and clubs.
Family Engagement: Key Takeaways
As you plan family engagement events in the future, plan ahead to account for any hiccups that may arise. By knowing how and when to pivot in the moment, getting to know your community before planning events, being flexible and inclusive, challenging your biases, and getting creative, you’ll create community events that resonate with all families, making them feel welcome and supported—fostering a sense of community and belonging for everyone.