Equity PLC Libguides: Family Engagement

Family engagement increases student achievement but how do schools connect with families who don’t participate yet? Educators can easily become frustrated trying to reach the disconnected and often fall back to engaging the already engaged. Is it possible to win over everyone? Discover how to move beyond theory to change your culture for better family engagement and student achievement. Through practical steps, reflections, and case studies, you will discover and address: how and where family engagement breaks down, and how to create a truly inviting culture for successful community and family partnerships

This breakthrough book features concrete strategies that foster strong family-school partnerships which, in turn, help guarantee student success. The strategies, which enable teachers to interact with diverse families, include class and school demographic profiles, parenting contracts, parent vision statements, and parent informant literacy groups.

Principals, teachers, and parents offer tips, checklists, and other resources that can build strong collaborative relationships between parents and schools, which in turn improves students' performance in school.

How can low-income, non-English-speaking parents become advocates, leaders, and role models in their children's schools? A Cord of Three Strands offers a close study of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, a grassroots organization on the northwest side of Chicago, whose work on parent engagement has drawn national attention. The author identifies three elements--induction, integration, and investment--that together capture the dynamic and developmental nature of successful parent engagement.

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot has written a wise, useful book about the ways in which parents and teachers can make the most of their essential conversation--the dialogue between the most vital people in a child's life. "The essential conversation" is the crucial exchange that occurs between parents and teachers--a dialogue that takes place more than one hundred million times a year across our country and is both mirror of and metaphor for the larger cultural forces that define family-school relationships and shape the development of our children.

Teachers and administrators will learn how to create the respectful, trusting relationships with families necessary to build the educational partnerships that best support children's learning. The book will cover the mindset and core beliefs required to bond with families, and will provide guidance on how to plan engagement opportunities and events throughout the school year that undergird effective partnerships between families and schools.