Understanding Your Role in Engaging with Families

Family engagement can influence how well children do in school and the overall classroom learning environment, but do you truly understand your role in engaging with families? One of your challenges as a teacher is to create an effective partnership with each of your students' families. There are a variety of obstacles that can prevent that partnership from happening or being effective, but Johnna Darragh Ernst, PhD, identifies a number of ways you can work on fully engaging families in her book The Welcoming Classroom:

1. Know Yourself
   How well you know yourself (your social identities, who you are as a communicator, etc.) impacts your ability to engage families.
2. Build Strong Foundations
   Respect, reciprocity, and responsiveness will help you build a strong family engagement foundation for the children in your classroom. Respecting someone means you are open to his or her individuality, while reciprocity helps everyone feel like they have an equal voice. Supporting children and families by responding to their needs is also an essential part of building a strong family engagement foundation.
3. Adopt a Strengths-Based Approach
   "Many…children and their families are products of a system in which differences are viewed as deficits or are labeled as gaps rather than as potential strengths," explains Dr. Ernst. Focusing on what challenges families need to overcome and understanding each family's unique strengths, concerns, priorities, and resources will ultimately help you create effective support and engagement strategies.
4. Recognize That Families Are Increasingly Diverse
   When engaging with families, always remember that each family is unique. From different races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses to differences in who is included in the family, understanding that each family has different histories and needs will help you build connections and form beneficial partnerships.
5. Create Opportunities to Meaningfully Engage Families
   Inclusion should be a major goal in your family engagement strategy. Focus on creating a unique culture that is based on the children and families you serve. Instead of forcing a family to fit the environment, try coming up with ways to support their participation in your classroom. Make sure you also give families opportunities to offer their input on policies and procedures.
6. Make Your Family Engagement Strategies Comprehensive and Systematic
   Integrating comprehensive and systemic family engagement strategies in your classroom means that families know what is going on in the classroom, have opportunities to offer their input, help plan and evaluate program events, and help shape program or classroom policies. By understanding your role in engaging with families, you can positively impact children and their families in both the short and long term.

For a variety of family engagement materials you can utilize in your classroom, be sure to browse our Family Engagement section.