Fact: When families are engaged in the academic lives of their children, those children almost always improve at whatever it is we want them to improve.
These are words of Engage Every Family and 5 Simple Principles creator Dr. Steve Constantino.
A former instrumental music teacher, turned school leader, now one of the world’s most respected voices on the power of family engagement in school, Dr. Constantino has sought to shift the conversation around family engagement in America’s schools, from the obvious benefits of theory, which almost everyone agrees on, to the daily challenges of practice.
Done right, Constantino and his writing partner Dr. Peggie Constantino, says family engagement can be used as a tool to help confront some of our most stubborn K-12 challenges, from chronic absenteeism, to student discipline and mental health to MTSS, to learning gaps, and everything in between.
While many parents (and caretakers) are sufficiently engaged in school, others are less so. But not for the reasons that you might think. To move the needle in a meaningful way, Drs. Constantino says school leaders must focus their efforts on specific strategies to engage the disengaged.
Says Dr. Constantino: “I’ve read a number of strategic plans in my life. When I get to the family engagement section, they mostly all say the same thing: We want to engage more parents. We want more parents to come to this event, or come to that event. We want to increase the number of people involved in our parent-teacher association, or our home-school association. These are wonderful goals. But, it’s important to remember that family engagement is a process, not an event. That’s a shift that we have to make in our thinking. Just because somebody doesn’t come to something, or cannot come to something, doesn’t mean that they’re apathetic. It doesn’t mean that they don’t want to come. We have to find different ways to engage them.”
So, why are some families disengaged? In a short video course on the topic, Constantino points to two reasons:
- Lack of meaning or relevance. Often parents, especially those who don’t speak English as a first language, don’t understand why the communication or event you are planning is important. It’s not that they don’t care. More likely, it’s that they don’t understand what it is you’re trying to achieve for their child in reaching out.
. - Lack of understanding. As kids get older, understanding becomes harder. Adolescents naturally push their parents away, which makes communication between the home and school more difficult. Additionally, parents find it harder to understand what students are learning in school. Either they don’t understand the concepts, or can’t fully remember them. Taken together, these two challenges create a gap in understanding.
While the perception might be that parents are disengaged, Constantino says the reality is that these individuals are focused on self-preservation, both for themselves and for their kids. It’s a basic flight or flight response. And disengaged families “often take flight.”
So, how do we engage the disengaged? Constantino offers up three ideas:
- Recognize implicit bias. Ask yourself a question: Do you believe that all families want their children to succeed in school? If you answered no, this may reveal an implicit bias. Just because you have bias, doesn’t make you a bad person, says Constantino. Do you use the phrases: “Those kids,” “that school,” “that neighborhood?” Truth is, we all harbor bias. Recognizing that bias can help you to meet parents and other caretakers where they are. “What we think and what we believe and the biases that we all hold are a significant barrier to family engagement,” says Constantino. That’s because disengaged families perceive that we make it difficult for them on purpose. They perceive that we don’t want them there.
. - Focus on positives, not negatives. When it comes to engagement, we tend to focus on the negative. Most parents cringe when they get a call from their child’s school. That’s because they assume, before they even pick up the phone, that bad news is waiting on the other side. What can you do to change that perception — to nurture a culture of shared enthusiasm, where you’re contacting parents about positive developments and encouraging positive dialogue between the school and the home and back?
. - Don’t let it get to boiling point. There’s this threshold in family engagement that Dr. Constantino refers to as “the boiling point.” Here’s an example: Several school grading policies say that, if you’re going to issue a student a grade of “D” or an “F,” that you have to first notify the parent. Of course, tf you’re going to issue that grade, you’re likely already past the point of intervention. What if, instead of waiting to make that call at the end of the grading period, you had made it earlier? And, what if on that call you gave the parent some strategies and ideas that they could help deploy at home to support interventions taking place in school? Would you still have to make that call? Better, would that conversation be different?
Looking for ways to activate family engagement to solve systemic challenges in your schools?
Here are three ways The RocketPD Learning Community can help you dig deeper on this topic today:
- Watch Corey’s interview with Dr. Steve Constanino on The RocketPD Podcast.
- Download our free guide on K-12 family engagement.
- Consider sending a team to join Drs. Steve & Pegging Constantino as part of a special multi-session cohort-based learning opportunity on using family engagement to address critical K-12 challenges.
