Ten years ago, we started Family Engagement Lab with a belief that felt simple, but wasn’t widely held at the time: families aren’t just supporters of their children’s education—they are co-creating learning experiences.
Early on, we were motivated by a shared frustration and a lot of curiosity. Family engagement was often reduced to on-site volunteering, event attendance, or one-way communication from schools. We believed it could be more meaningful—and more impactful—if families had clear, timely, accessible information about what their children were learning and how to support it.
What we couldn’t have fully imagined then is how much we would learn along the way. Over the past decade, we’ve had the privilege of working alongside educators, district leaders, researchers, community partners, and—most importantly—families. Together, we’ve partnered with more than 50 school districts, reached over 70,000 students, and contributed research showing that when families receive relevant and actionable guidance, their children make an additional 1.6 to 2.8 months of literacy growth—outcomes comparable to high-intensity tutoring.
We’re proud of those results, but even more grateful for what they represent. They reflect a shift in how we think about family engagement: not as something schools do to families, but something that happens with them. Not as a set of programs or events, but as the everyday connection between classroom learning and the ways it is supported, reinforced, and brought to life at home.
Reaching our tenth year feels both celebratory, yet grounded. This work has never happened in isolation. It has been shaped by the generosity of families who trusted us, educators who pushed us to be better, partners who challenged our thinking, and funders who believed in the importance of doing this work thoughtfully and with rigor. As we mark this milestone, we’ll be sharing monthly reflections drawn from a decade of learning alongside families and educators. Each month, we’ll revisit lessons that shaped our work, share what we’re learning now, and explore questions that matter for the future of family engagement—how learning can feel coherent across home and school, and what is takes to build systems that truly partner with families.
The urgency of our work hasn’t let up. As we enter our second decade, we’re holding onto that same sense of humility and curiosity that guided us at the start. We’re committed to finding new ways for research-backed family engagement to reach more classrooms—through the systems educators already use—while honoring both the complexity of teaching and the deep expertise families bring to their children’s learning every day. Thank you for being part of this journey. We’re deeply grateful to continue learning alongside you
Vidya Sundaram and Elisabeth O’Bryon
Family Engagement Lab Co-founders
Exploring Family Engagement: A New Blog Series
Family engagement is a core driver of student success, equity, attendance, and well-being, not just a “nice to have.” When schools and families share responsibility for learning and give caregivers clear, concrete ways to support grade-level goals at home, students thrive.
Family Engagement Lab’s work, including FASTalk.AI, turns this vision into everyday practice by sending short, curriculum-aligned tips via text in families’ home languages, right when students are learning those skills in class. FASTalk.AI also offers an AI Coach, a 24/7 conversational guide families can turn to for clear, practical advice on how to support their children’s learning at home.
Our new blogis part one of a monthly series exploring family engagement in today’s school environment, with a focus on research, equity, and practical strategies for districts and schools.
Based in New Orleans, Bricolage Academy is partnering with Family Engagement Lab to strengthen home–school connections through FASTalk.AI. The platform delivers short, multilingual text messages that help families reinforce classroom learning at home in English and Spanish.
Earlier this month, Elisabeth O’Bryon joined Bricolage’s Family Literacy Night, which welcomed over 100 families from PreK–8th grade. She met with caregivers to demonstrate how FASTalk.AI supports student learning through simple, curriculum-aligned tips and its AI Learning Coach that provides families with personalized at-home learning support.
Serving 636 PK–5 students and 951 parents and caregivers, Bricolage integrates FASTalk.AI into its literacy and math programs, including Illustrative Mathematics and a hybrid ELA curriculum blending EL Education and Wit & Wisdom. The school’s goal: increase family engagement around academics, especially for its growing number of English learner families, through low-lift, high-impact communication that keeps everyone connected to student success.
Parent Engagement Is About More Than Who Shows Up to Family Night
In this powerful new column for principals, education coach and former school leader Kate Carroll-Outten challenges the idea that family engagement can be measured by who shows up to family night. She argues that most families are deeply committed to their children’s learning, but schools often misread low event attendance as low interest, overlooking the very real barriers many caregivers face.
Carroll-Outten urges principals to move from a “bake sale” mindset to a partnership mindset, in which families are recognized as co-educators and culture-shapers in the school community. She shares seven concrete strategies, from home and community visits to multilingual, multi-channel communication, simple learning tasks families can actually use, and proactive check-ins that don’t wait for a problem.
Throughout the piece, she shows how small shifts in language, roles, and decision-making can transform trust and belonging for multilingual, working-class, and historically marginalized families. For principals looking to build equitable, culturally responsive relationships with families, this article offers a concise roadmap to treating parents as partners, not spectators.
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