Improving
Outreach and Collaboration with Families and Community
Karen
Ciotta
George
Mason University
EDPD
502
Dr.
Kimberly Sheridan
July
23, 2014
This
paper will describe the importance of establishing and maintaining effective family-school
partnerships to include the community. Family involvement is critical to
education and helps close the educational achievement gap between children from
different racial groups and socioeconomic backgrounds. All schools need
parents, and parents want to feel welcome and valued in the decision making
process of their child’s education. In order to improve teacher outreach and
school collaboration with families and community, schools must take action to
build relationships.
Statement
of the Problem
How
can we connect and reinforce children’s learning at home, school, and in the
community? The Harvard Family Research Project titled Redefining Family
Engagement in Education (Dearing, Kreider, & Weiss, 2008) reflects research
showing that families play significant roles in supporting their children’s
learning, in guiding their children successfully through a complex school
system, and in strongly advocating for their children and for effective public
schools. According to Dearing, Kreider & Weiss, family engagement is
defined as, “a shared responsibility in which schools and other community
agencies and organizations are committed to reaching out to engage families in
meaningful ways and in which families are committed to actively supporting
their children’s learning and development.” Educators would agree that family
involvement in a child’s education contributes to student success. How much
family involvement is needed to ensure success? That’s disputable, but
according to the National Network of Partnership Schools
(NNPS) project in Ohio; schools, families, and communities are important factors
for children’s learning and that greater coordination among these benefits
children’s education and development. Furthermore, NNPS suggests that schools
consider the different types of family involvement when planning school
programs and initiatives to include the following; 1) parenting- helping all
families establish supportive home environments for children; 2) communicating-
establishing two-way exchanges about school programs and children’s progress;
3) volunteering- recruiting and organizing parent help at school, home, or
other locations; 4) learning at home- providing information and ideas to
families about how to help students with homework and other curriculum-related
materials; 5) decision making- having family members serve as representatives and
leaders on school committees; and 6) collaborating with the community—identify
and integrate school and community resources. Schools must also be aware of the
extent to which they reach out to families of all their students. For example, schools should provide families
from all racial and ethnic backgrounds with information in understandable
language and offer volunteer opportunities for parents to volunteer at school
and in other locations.
In the early years of schooling, in particular, children with highly
involved parents have better developed pre-reading and mathematical skills than
children with less involved parents. Early parental involvement is also a
positive predictor of children’s motivation, self-efficacy, and pro social
behavior than children with less involved parents (Hill, 2001; Crosnoe &
Cooper). A study of Head Start families resulted in the association of family involvement
and educator outreach in the successful decoding, vocabulary, and positive approaches
to learning among the students. (Hindman & Morrison 2011) This study
clarifies how families and teachers bridge the home-school gap in Head Start
preschool programs and thus contribute to children’s early literacy skills.
Additionally, a study involving kindergarten students in schools with greater
outreach efforts by teachers, resulted in sharper gains in the reading scores. (Jung
& Han 2013)
In order to improve teacher outreach and school collaboration with
families and community, schools must take action to build relationships that
will connect the school with families. One type of recommended action is a
project called Wake Up & Read with
Bagels, Books and Brushstrokes aimed at bridging the gap between many
schools, families and the community to increase student achievement. This
project encourages communication with parents beyond the walls of the school, is very important to the success of individual
teachers, classrooms, the school as a whole, and has shown success each of the
4 times it was hosted in 2 Virginia schools.
Plan of Action
Wake Up & Read with Bagels,
Books and Brushstrokes is a Saturday morning outreach
project where teachers take the initiative to make family and community
connections while building capacity for families to be part of their child’s
literacy and arts development. Teachers and staff will bring specific literacy
and arts activities out into the community for students and their families to
take part in. First, a committee consisting of the principal, parent
involvement specialist and staff representative should discuss and get approval
for the event at least 2.5 months in advance and any school money available to
help fund the event should be known up front. Second, a date and venue must be
carefully selected to ensure availability of school staff members and parents
who will serve as volunteers. The venue should be strategically located in the
most needy and/or accessible location so families have access to the event
regardless of transportation and weather issues. Third, a plan of what the
event will offer needs to be organized to include amount and type of food and
materials needed. Fourth, potential sponsors and donors should be contacted by
email, in writing, by phone or face to face contact to explain the project and
solicit food donations(which from experience, are the most costly) or monetary
donations. Many chain convenience stores will refer you to their website to
request donated items such as bagels, juice, and bottled water. Fifth, form a committee
and meeting dates of teachers, staff and any parents, PTA or community to plan
the activities/stations for the event including who will set up, clean up,
staff the food table, man the stations, and who will be responsible for advertising and writing thank you notes. Sixth,
funding for the book giveaway needs to be locked in. One of the stations is a
new, free book giveaway where students in attendance get to pick two free books
to build or add to their home library. Without appropriate funding, new books
will be difficult to secure. Lastly, PR; notify your local newspaper and
solicit any possible media coverage for the event and extend personal
invitations to the superintendent, the school board, city mayor and any other
local leaders who you think would be interested in attending the October 25,
2014 event.
In
order to become more knowledgeable on policies affecting family engagement in
schools, researching federal legislation is a good starting point. Currently,
the Family Engagement in Education Act of 2013 has been referred to
sub-committee for review and discussion, but suggests authorizing states to
reserve school improvement funds to: “award a grant to a statewide nonprofit
organization to establish a Statewide Family Engagement Center that provides
comprehensive training, technical assistance, and capacity building to local
educational agencies (LEAs), organizations that support family-school
partnerships, and other organizations that carry out parent education and
family engagement in education programs; award grants to nonprofit
organizations or Indian tribes or organizations that partner with LEAs or
schools to establish and operate Local Family Engagement Centers that assist families
in becoming engaged in their children’s' education, and develop and implement a
statewide family engagement in education plan, requiring each state school
improvement plan to include a plan for strengthening family engagement in
education, requiring each LEA and school receiving school improvement funds to
develop policies and practices for family engagement in education that meet
specified principles and standards.” The Family Engagement Act further suggests
increases in the percentage of school improvement funds that LEAs must reserve
for family engagement activities, requiring at least 75% of those reserved
funds to be distributed to schools served under the school improvement program
and directs the Secretary of Education to conduct research on effective family
engagement in education. Local resources would include collaborating with the
school Parent Involvement Specialist who serves as part of the network of
assistance for students and families in Title I schools and is responsible for
coordinating communication and activities among the teachers, parents, community
and school administrators. According to the Newport News Public Schools Job
Postings, Parent Involvement Specialists facilitate successful partnerships
between school and families as shown below and would be a great local resource
for the project.
Knowledge/
Idea Sharing
Wake Up & Read
is a literacy and art project that has proven effective in connecting schools
and families and increasing family involvement in education primarily due to
the outreach aspect. From personal experience, many families are reluctant to
visit the school for a variety of reasons; including lack of transportation,
lack of positive school experiences as a student themselves, socioeconomic
status, language barriers, and work schedules. Wake Up & Read was designed as a teacher outreach project to
meet families “in the middle” or “on their own turf” at an easily accessible location
regardless of family factors.
The project is easily shared informally with fellow
teachers, staff and schools using pictures and video clips shared via social
media, at staff meetings, and word of mouth among professional learning communities.
Formally, a request can be made to the Chairman of the Newport News School
Board, Mr. Carlton Ashby to be placed on the agenda so that a short
presentation at the monthly 7pm school board meeting for Superintendent Dr.
Ashby Kilgore, as well as school board members Jeff Stodghill, Carlton Ashby,
Douglas Brown, Everette Hicks, Darian Scott, Shelly Simonds, Aaliyah Meade, and
Gary Hunter would be an effective means of idea sharing. The next meeting
following the October 2014 Wake Up &
Read is November 18 located in the Auditorium at the NNPS Administration
Building, 12465 Warwick Boulevard, Newport News, VA 23606.
Potential
Obstacles
Potential challenges that have been somewhat problematic
for previous Wake Up events include the availability of staff and parents to
volunteer. Soliciting the help of local PTA’s and high school sports teams or
clubs could potentially be a solution to the volunteer issue. Another challenge
has been local food and drink donation resources. Online or local researching
of companies well ahead of time and establishing contact information of those
companies willing to donate regularly would aid with timely donations of food
and drinks. Lastly, “selling” the idea to other educators into the possibility
of such a teacher outreach is anticipated to be the largest barrier. With cuts
in teacher pay and more paperwork, many teachers feel overworked and
overwhelmed and are very reluctant to take on anymore after hours work
activities. A possible solution would be to somehow work the project into the
instructional day, but that takes the outreach portion of the project off the
table.
There
are many possible obstacles one could encounter with any teacher outreach
program, but you’ll never reap the benefits of possible increased family engagement
in schools and in the words of Dr. Seuss, unless somewhere, “someone like you
cares a whole awful lot; nothing is going to get better, it's not.”
Conclusion
This
paper described the importance of establishing and maintaining effective
family-school partnerships to include the community in a teacher outreach
program called Wake Up & Read with Bagels, Books and Brushstrokes.
The project is a reasonable and effective first step in building relationships
between school, families and the community and plans to continue the project
into the 2014-15 school year are underway for the biggest and best Wake Up on October 25th, 2014
in Newport News, Virginia.
