Family and Community Engagement
Webinar 1: A Walk Through the Handbook
Framing the Discussion
Families and Learning
Center on Innovation & Improvement
Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
U. S. Department of Education
Welcome!
Download the Handbook free from:
www.families-schools.org
Or purchase the published version from:
Information Age Publishing
www.infoagepub.com
How the Handbook is Organized?
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Part I: Framing the Discussion
Part II: Families and Learning
Part III: Families and Schools
Part IV: Checklist of Suggested Practices
Why the Handbook?
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Bring best research together in one place
Add the wisdom of many voices
Present in a straight-forward manner
Provide practical application
Include ample references and resources
Leaven with a dash of reality with vignettes
The Introduction
• Finding the themes that thread through the
Handbook
• Weaving together the varied voices into a
symphony
• Charging the reader with the task of finding
personal meaning and applying it
“The Handbook’s recommendations point to an urgent need to build the capacity of
schools, themselves, to effectively reach out to and engage their community and
their families.” Helen Westmoreland
Part I: Framing the Discussion
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New Directions for Title I
The School Community
Making Data Matter in Family Engagement
Engaging Families and Communities in School
Turnarounds
• Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning
• Engaging the Entire Community
New Directions for Title I Family and Community
Engagement: Expanding Opportunity from a
Tradition of Commitment
Oliver Moles & Arnold Fege
“We need to visualize a much broader concept
of education to move beyond “schooling” and
into areas of child development and parent
empowerment.”
The School Community:
Working Together for Student Success
Sam Redding
“A school community rests upon mutual respect,
strong relationships, shared responsibility, and
focused attention to students’ academic,
personal, social, and emotional learning.”
Making Data Matter in Family Engagement
Heather Weiss & M. Elena Lopez
“Families want to know how their child is doing
in school so that they can help them at home.
They benefit from timely and relevant data on
attendance, behavior, and academic progress
and performance.”
Engaging Families and Communities in School
Turnarounds: When Students Can’t Wait
Lauren Morando Rhim
“Turnaround efforts require a substantive and
long-term engagement of key stakeholders
that influence students and the schools they
attend. Parents and the broader community
are uniquely positioned to advocate for highquality schools.”
Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning:
Complementary Goals for School-Family Partnerships
Amy Mart, Linda Dusenbury, & Roger P. Weissberg
“Social and emotional competencies develop in
dynamic relationship with others as they are
practiced, modeled, and reinforced across
contexts.”
Engaging the Entire Community:
The Community Schools’ Way
Marty Blank
“Partnerships build relationships among schools
and other sectors of the community with a
vested interest in the well-being of children
and families.”
Pause to Reflect
What struck a chord with you in these Part I
chapters? – Jot a couple notes for the
discussion later.
Part II: Families and Learning
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Aspiration and Expectations
Self-Efficacy: Up to the Challenge
Curriculum of the Home
Homework and Study Habits
Engaging Families in Reading
Reading and Literacy
College and Career Readiness
Aspiration and Expectations:
Providing Pathways to Tomorrow
William Jeynes
“Myriad studies now confirm that high parental
expectations of their children as expressed in
their behavior, attitudes, and communication
are associated with higher scholastic
outcomes among children in school. To the
degree that educators foster these
expectations, American children can flourish.”
Self-Efficacy:
Up to the Challenge
Kathleen Hoover-Dempsey
“Self-efficacy is central to understanding how
individuals make decisions about the kinds of
activities they will undertake in various
domains of their lives. For parents, decisions
about the activities they will engage in
supporting their students’ school learning are
among the most important that they make.”
Curriculum of the Home
Herbert J. Walberg
“The first six years of life and the ‘curriculum of the
home’ may be decisive influences on academic
learning. These effects appear pervasive in school
learning, including the development of reading
comprehension and verbal literacy. Therefore,
reaching out to families to encourage
academically constructive child practices is time
well spent.”
Homework and Study Habits
Lee Shumow
“Anecdotal reports regularly appear in mass
media describing homework with war
metaphors. To the contrary, one recent study
found that, when adolescents were doing
homework with their parents, they enjoyed it
more than when alone and concentrated
better than with peers.”
Engaging Families in Reading
Holly Kreider
“Research clearly points to third grade as a
watershed moment in children’s education.
Third grade reading fluency is highly predictive
of children’s long-term school success,
including high school performance and college
enrollment. Parents and other primary
caregivers are instrumental in fostering
language, reading, and literacy skills so
essential for school success”
Reading and Literacy
Diana Hiatt-Michael
“Reading and literacy are the heart of the
educational process. Parents affect children’s
interest and reading ability in a number of ways.
Parental expectations, speaking and reading to
children, number of books in the home, parental
interest in written and oral communication,
parental knowledge of language arts
development, and parental enjoyment of reading
foster student achievement in reading.”
College and Career Readiness
Mary R. Waters and John Mark Williams
“When classroom time has no relevance to the
students’ legitimate aspirations, the resulting
disengagement makes them casualties of the
educational system. “
Pause to Reflect
What struck a chord with you in these Part II
chapters on Families and Learning? – Jot a
couple notes for the discussion later.
The Vignettes
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Jessica, by William Jeynes
Annabelle, by Marilyn Murphy
Tyler, by Lee Shumow
Xiomara, by Georganne Morin and Holly
Kreider
• Alicia, by Diana Hiatt-Michael
Discussion
1. What struck a chord with you in Parts I and II,
and how does it relate to your role?
2. What question do you have that one of the
webinar participants or facilitators might be
able to answer?