Engage Families in Leadership Practices
Get Started with Family Engagement in Leadership:
Effective family engagement requires building trusting partnerships through strong communication.
Practice: The district partners with families to plan and improve technology planning efforts, and provides ongoing updates.
Actions that lead to partnering with families include:
- Collaborate with family engagement networks: The district partners with established family engagement networks (e.g. Parent-teacher organizations) to engage family voices, experiences, and perceptions in technology planning.
- Gather family feedback: The district gathers feedback from families regularly on technology implementation, and uses those data points to improve implementation.
- Offer accessible communications: The district ensures communications are accessible to connect with the widest audience possible.
Family engagement is essential. Check out all of the CITES Family Engagement practices.
Learn from Our Partners
- Webinar: Partnering with Families in the Digital Learning Process (Center for Parent Information and Resources)
- Publication: A Family’s Guide to Accessible Educational Materials (AEM at CAST)
- Panel Discussion: Empowering Families in the Digital Age: Building Inclusive Tech Partnerships (CITES at CAST)
- Podcast: Family Engagement & Inclusive Technology Practices (The AEM Center)
- Case Story: TISD | Tomball, TX
Resources
- Family Engagement Resources for Leadership, Center for Parent Information & Resources
- Reframing the Conversation around Family and Community Engagement, National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement
- Strategies for Equitable Family Engagement, State Support Network
- Involving Families During Distance Learning, The IRIS Center
- Creating Accessible Documents, The National Center on Accessible Educational Materials
Jenks' Story
Jenks Public School District (Jenks, Oklahoma)
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The Jenks Public School District in Oklahoma serves about 12,000 students at its ten school sites. The Jenks Technology Leadership Team includes parents of neurotypical students and students with disabilities in planning meetings. The team also provides district-wide professional development to teachers on using technology tools, such as SeeSaw, for family engagement.
Jenks recently updated its Technology Plan to include family engagement goals for increasing the availability and use of technology. The new goals include:
- developing/planing communications and feedback for parent leadership.
- contacting parent organizaitons to strategize/plan communications with parents
- developing multiple means of engagement to share data in communications for parent input/feedback.
- reviewing data from parent engagement communications.
- developing programming as appropriate in response to data findings.
Supporting Research
- Cunningham, S. D., Kreider, H., & Ocón, J. (2012). Influence of a parent leadership program on participants’ leadership capacity and actions. School Community Journal, 22(1), 111.
- MacCormack, J., FitzGerald, C., Whitley, J., & Sider, S. (2022). Lessons learned: Home-school collaboration for students with Sen during emergency remote teaching. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 118. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2022.2081217
- Shiffman, C.D. (2019). Learning to communicate across language and culture: Demographic change, schools, and parents in adult ESL classes. School Community Journal, 29, 9-38.
- Weiss, H., Bouffard, S., Bridglall B., & Gordon, E. (2009). Reframing family involvement in education: Supporting families to support educational equity. Campaign for Educational Equity, Teachers College, Columbia University. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED523994