Rebuilding Family Engagement

In this video, Antoinette Taylor, Exceptional Needs Consultant, introduces the Illinois Family Engagement Framework and the importance of families being an integral part of any early childhood program. Staff and families from McLean County Unit 5 early childhood programs in Bloomington, Illinois share their thoughts and perspectives on what family engagement means to them and how it impacts the quality of education and outcomes for young children. The goal of this APPLES episode is to encourage early childhood professionals to reflect on ways to build or rebuild family engagement using the Illinois Family Engagement Framework as a guide. It starts out a bit slow, but Hearing from the staff and families is wonderful!

Karen Mapp on Parent and Family Engagement

Introduced by Dr Lisa O’Brien, CEO of the Smith Family, this conference keynote address is from the wonderful Dr Karen Mapp, Senior Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and the Faculty Director of the Education Policy and Management Master’s Program. Over the past twenty years, Dr. Mapp’s research and practice focus has been on the cultivation of partnerships among families, community members, and educators that support student achievement and school improvement. Karen Mapp is the expert on family engagement. She’s entertaining and has great information.

Family Engagement: Jessica Solano

This well produced video shows how this teacher of the year implements family engagement. The student has an IEP, but that’s not what is important. Instead it’s about the impact of the home visit and the importance of family engagement to student progress. I included it because of the student voice!

Wisconsin Department of Public Instructions: Engaging with Families

The introduction and animated video from Wisconsin provides a vision of what family engagement could look like.

We need to shift the way we partner with families to help students learn: from parent involvement to family engagement. To empower families to help schools close gaps and increase student achievement, schools need to:

Build trust with students’ families at every grade level, pre-kindergarten through high school;
Connect families to information and tools that help them support their students’ learning;
Support educators with time and skill building to help them engage families effectively; and
Collaborate consistently with families and community partners to ensure every student is career and college ready.

Effective Family Engagement Could Look Like This (Video)

Promoting Equity in Education Through Family Engagement (Video)

This video is designed for school personnel and families. It offers an overview of education equity and suggests strategies for facilitating greater educational equity through meaningful family engagement school leaders. Strategies are organized by key components of family engagement in multitiered systems of supports. The video has captions available in English and Spanish.

A fact sheet (PDF) accompanies the video.

How to Make Your IEP Process Better with Parent Participation

For educators. When you’re creating an IEP, getting parents involved isn’t just important, it’s the law. So reviewing strategies to increase parent engagement in the process should be part of the IEP best practices special educators review each year. Our blog series by author, consultant and former special education director and teacher Carol Kosnitsky shares five ideas for how you can make it easier for parents to participate in the IEP process:

Make it personal
Help parents get ready for IEP meetings
Level the playing field by sharing information
Try to understand the parent’s interest, not their position
Provide meaningful progress reports.

Check out the 8-part series on writing high quality IEPs from Carol Kosnitsky.

This series of brief animated videos from The ARC explain the 6 principles of IDEA They are just a reminder that parents, by law, should be an integral part of all aspects of implementation of IDEA.)

The IEP Team Process: Chapter 5

In Chapter 5 of this 5 part series, watch an IEP Team meeting in Progress. Meet the team members and go through the IEP process step by step. Created and produced by ECAC, the Exceptional Children’s Assistance Center, North Carolina’s Parent Training and Information Center. This is a really nice example of a family participating in an IEP. The student participates as well.

Rebuilding Family Engagement