Engage Families in Learning Practices
Get Started with Engaging Families in Learning Practices:
Encouraging authentic family engagement practices has a positive impact on educators, families, and learners themselves. Districts have the opportunity to support educators to involve families in the learning process and to provide resources to help children and youth continue to learn outside of school.
An action to include families in the learning process:
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Provide supplemental resources: The district provides families with supplemental resources to take part in learning at home including options for accommodations.
- Webinar: Partnering with Families in the Digital Learning Process, Center for Parent Information and Resources
- Webinar Series: Learning with the Authors of Inclusive Learning 365, Center on Inclusive Technology in Education Systems (CITES) at CAST
- Case Story: BISD ⎜ Clute, TX
- Case Story: CCA ⎜ Harrisburn, PA
- Case Story: BCSP ⎜ Baltimore, MD
Resources
- 5 Ways Educators Can Help Families Make Better Use of Tech Outside the Classroom, EdSurge, 2018
- Strategies to Support Families in Promoting Self-Directed, Engaged Learning, Common Sense Education, 2020
- Family Guide to At-Home Learning, CEEDAR Center
- Building parent capacity to support student success, ISTE
- Parents Workshops Tackle 21st Century Learning, Los Asngeles Unified School District
Aki's Story
Aki is a ninth-grade history teacher at a high school in a South Central state. Spanish is the first language for a third of the students at Aki’s school. Aki uses Google Classroom to share learning materials and assignments with his students. He set up his virtual classroom to send parents weekly emails in their preferred langauge about their student’s progress and missing assignments.
Paz was a student in Aki’s class who was fluent in both English and Spanish. Paz lives with mother and grandmother who only speak Spanish. In the middle of the school year, Paz learned from home for eight weeks due to an illness. Aki enabled Paz’s family to support his learning at home by sharing Spanish versions of the assignments with them and links to history websites related to the content in Spanish.
When Paz returned to school, Paz’s mother suggested that Aki send home resources regularly to all Spanish speaking families. Aki was concerned about the amount of time required to support this request. So, he started a quarterly workshop for families, hosted in-person and shared online, that reviewed the topics that would be covered that quarter in English and Spanish. He also started a shared document with a list of internet resources related to topics covered in his class that his students and their families could add to.
References
- Borup, J., Chambers, C. B., & Stimson, R. (2019). Online teacher and on-site facilitator perceptions of parental engagement at a supplemental virtual high school. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 20(2). https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/irrodl/2019-v20-n2-irrodl04703/1061332ar/
- Mac Iver, M.A., Sheldon, S., & Clark, E. (2021) Widening the portal: How schools can help more families access and use the parent portal to support student success, Middle School Journal, 52:1, 14-22, https://doi.org/10.1080/00940771.2020.1840269
- Michaelson, K. J., Matz, L., & Morgan, D. (2015). Using a new electronic brailler to improve Braille learning at the Florida School for the deaf and blind. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 109(3), 226–231. https://doi.org/10.1177/0145482x1510900308