A key consideration for schools as they seek to increase family engagement must be how to truly connect families. In order to make family engagement meaningful and lasting, the goal must be to create a systemic culture of collaboration that can grow and evolve with the needs of students, parents, and teachers.
In today's episode, Drs. Lisa Dieker and Rebecca Hines discuss how to build a culture of collaborative family engagement and provide some practical tips. Tune in to learn more about useful communication tools and how to collaborate better with families related to helping students learn more and support their learning.
Don'tforget we love to hear from our listeners! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We look forward to receiving your questions on our Google Phone (407) 900- 9305, Facebook (Practical Access), Twitter (@AccessPractical), or Instagram (@Practical_Access).
A key consideration for schools as they seek to increase family engagement must be how to truly connect families. In order to make family engagement meaningful and lasting, the goal must be to create a systemic culture of collaboration that can grow and evolve with the needs of students, parents, and teachers.
In today's episode, Drs. Lisa Dieker and Rebecca Hines discuss how to build a culture of collaborative family engagement and provide some practical tips. Tune in to learn more about useful communication tools and how to collaborate better with families related to helping students learn more and support their learning.
Don'tforget we love to hear from our listeners! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We look forward to receiving your questions on our Google Phone (407) 900- 9305, Facebook (Practical Access), Twitter (@AccessPractical), or Instagram (@Practical_Access).
Lisa Dieker 0:09
Welcome to Practical Access. I am Lisa Dieker.
Rebecca Hines 0:12
And Rebecca Hines and Lisa, today, I think we are responding to another question from a practitioner out there. What do we have?
Lisa Dieker 0:20
Yeah, so this practitioner said, a first year teacher who, congrats, thanks for being in our field, we need you desperately. And the question is, how do we collaborate better with families related to helping kids learn more to support student learning? So, you know, I took this question, and I'll kind of kick it off with a quick thought here. And I think, you know, having some clear communication tool, is it going to be a notebook home? Is it going to be goalkeeper? Is it going to be Class Dojo? Is it going to be a Google Doc? Is it going to be, you know, pick one, and make sure you pick one that is respectful of the diversity of the community that you might work in? Does everybody have internet access? You know, what would families like maybe want to have a menu UDL kind of menu of two options, but make sure that especially those families, like, if my son were in your class, he would communicate with me a lot. So what what is the best tool? What's the most efficient way? And again, if you're worried about in that communication process, giving out your personal phone, don't forget the beauty of Google Voice and saying, you know, maybe we want it, you want to leave me a message or whatever. But pick something that works is easy for you as a first year teacher. You know, I think our podcast leader Anna said, you know, shield you from things you don't need to do one more thing of, I think it's a perfect thing. Don't don't make it more complicated. But pick something that's simple, but respectful to families in your community. What he got back?
Rebecca Hines 1:45
Yeah, well, actually, you mentioned Google Voice, I will just say, for any listeners who aren't familiar, that's a way that you can go in and set up a phone number that's associated with yours, but it's not your actual number. So it's a good way to stay anonymous in your private life, but also to give people a way to contact you quickly and personally. So I think responsiveness is important. I think no one needs one more thing to do. But being able to respond in a timely manner. And then more easily is it the first way to support families, as a as a family member of a child with a disability? I know that sometimes you need an answer much faster than, you know, three, three weeks out from someone. So if you are in a position that you can be responsive, find a good anonymous way to do so. The other the other thing that jumps to my mind, Lisa, is when it comes to learning, the thing that that we could communicate to families is that we want all of their at home experiences, to be positive ones with learning. And if you think about it so often, the at home conversations with our children as a parent or negative, it's been me nagging them to do something me talking to them about, oh, but you've got to do this. And this is late, and this is due. And we focus so much on all of the other things that we don't demonstrate a joy for the actual content. So it might be that we could help kids learn at home by giving parents the skills to have more joyful conversations about the content, asking specific questions. When you ask a child, what did you learn today? What did they all say?
Lisa Dieker 3:40
No, I don't know. Yeah, I've never heard that before.
Rebecca Hines 3:43
They literally say nothing. So if we could cue the parents with some key words, you know, instead of saying what did you learn? A better thing a parent could say is, tell me about, you know, solving quadratic equations. You're welcome. That's the worst.
Lisa Dieker 4:05
I did. We'll talk about that on our next bypass. Becky's gonna solve some for you just so you know
Rebecca Hines 4:11
This idea of giving feeding parents some meaningful questions, that's going to support learning because if I perceive that the people around me care about a topic, I might also care more.
Lisa Dieker 4:23
Yeah, you know, and I love that you know, that positive joyful. I actually like a site when I'm looking for like to de escalate something is called the good trade.com And she has these I believe there's 99 or something 99 topics for deeper connections, you know, so I think when you're trying to really connect on student learning, sometimes it's like, I'm calling you to tell you this kid has failed the test. It's like, okay, you know, that's probably not the best opening. But you know, you know, asking really strange things this seems like you know, but you know, what color do you see your world and with your child right now? Oh, it's read. Okay, well, what could I do to help it be, you know, more more calming and, and reminding families of those conversations in their home having that kind of analysis? And I'm really big in if I'm going to focus on student learning, and I'm meeting with communicating with parents is, what can the kid tell the parent? You know, can I have the kid on the phone with me not, I'm going to call your mother and you're going to tell them, You're bad. Hey, let's call your mother and tell them you just pass the science test and what you're going to do next to do even better on that test, and really make that a celebration, doing simple things like could you go home tonight and tell your family behaviorally today was a plus? Academically was a check? What can you do tomorrow to make it a plus or thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs in the middle, really simple, depending on the age of the kid. But to me student learning, as you mentioned, Becky, oh, is about social emotional learning. But also, we know kids really need that more executive functioning skills. Right now, we believe the pandemic really created this time for kids to either play outside all the time, or have a lot of structure. And now they're back in the classroom going where you want me to sit, or somebody's not going to do it for me. And so helping kids have that conversation. That's what families really want is their student to learn. But they want them to learn to do it for themselves. I don't think any parent wants to put the socks on the feet of their kid for the rest of their life. But that may be something that that child has to have somebody do for them the rest of life. But if that's not something they can do, what can they do? We don't want to separate and what kids can't do, but what can they do it? How do we celebrate that and help families see the strength of kids learning to do that for themselves.
Rebecca Hines 6:36
And I know that we, we're always directing it back to being positive, I'm going to direct it back to being practical. So let's just think about as a as a school, or school system. One thing that the pandemic caused me to do was to shift my student teachers and all these people online, and we have been doing something that's called an online learning lab, where we have volunteers who sit in and do a drop in basis, helping kids. Now, sure, we're at a big university that's easy to organize. But I think any school or school district could offer an hour to hour after school drop in open Zoom meeting where you have somebody who volunteers to help answer those questions for kids. That immediacy really matters. And it matters for the families too, because they sometimes need a very specific resource. We don't have a whole society of educators at home trying to support their kids, what they need is somebody who can also help them. So maybe Lisa, we need to start thinking more broadly about what we can do we offer after school programs already, can we offer something online as a school as a classroom? As a school district? Can we offer something online where there's a drop in model for kids and parents, they can drop into a Zoom meeting, they're all used to zoom now, they can ask a question. And if whoever's volunteering cannot help solve it, they're well prepared to lead people to the solution.
Lisa Dieker 8:13
Yeah, and I love that leading. And I always say, you know, we always do talk about positives. But I think often, when the call comes in your new teacher, it often doesn't come with Hi, I'm calling to tell you, your teacher of the year, and things are going well, usually that phone call is. And so let me just remind you, when someone is stressed, the best response is to not be stressed. I hear you listened silence, because I think sometimes we need to feel that silence to protect. Well, you don't understand the whole but minute, no, no, no, just pause, listen, go read some things on, you know, five ways to effectively communicate. There's like a bazillion websites out there. But think about you bringing down the stress, being very respectful. And I always laugh and say think about the best customer service you've ever gotten. And this is a true experience. This past week, I got my fingerprints done to go out in the schools again. And it's something required, and I am going to tell you, this is a prop to Orange County Public Schools fingerprint services. Those people have the best customer service I have ever experienced in my life. But it's a great model that everybody comes in going I have to get my fear. You know, they're joyful, they're happy. And when families call you normally, they're not calling you for that moment. When somebody come in and get their fingerprints, they've driven across town, you know, I'm not walking in that door going, you know, go into the DMV, and the fingerprint place can be the same experience. They didn't make it that experience. So think about that. As a new teacher. whoever walks in the door no matter what's going on, oh, I don't have my card. I need to get there like bring it later. We'll do this for you. Like, bring that calm, bring that effective communication when I hear you need, how can I help you? Oh, your student doesn't have that. Let me see what I can do for you tomorrow. And then always, always, always in that conversation with a short summary of what you're going to do and what the parent is going to do in a very calm, respectful way. That's my last tip there.
Rebecca Hines 10:14
Well, my last tip is going to be to organize a little toolset for parents. So for example, lots of math teachers know this tool. But parents, you should know, there's an app called Photomath. Dangerous, dangerous, it's I tell math teachers all the time, don't give, don't just give problems to solve out of a pocket, all student has to do now is hold their phone over a math problem, and Photomath is going to solve it for them. And it's also going to show them the step by step of how the problem was solved. And it's free, and it's free. So if I'm a parent, I'm not going to use Photomath to answer the problems for my child, but you know what, it's a tool and it's available. So I'm definitely going to use it so that we can both look at together. How is this problem solved? Let's look at it. Let's look at this together. There's tools out there. Photomath is one of you know, millions at this point. But as a teacher, if I can give my parents of all kids a little toolset, especially those things that we're using in the actual classroom, but also a few extras, then those parents are going to be ready to help their kids learn it.
Lisa Dieker 11:30
Great. Well, thank you for joining us and thanks for that great question and supporting families to make their students more effective learners. If you have questions, please send them to our Facebook page or you can also tweet us @accesspractical