As the school year gets underway, we have been spending a lot of time with the teacher teams in our fall research project, sitting in on their planning and learning from what they're trying in their classrooms. One idea keeps coming up in those conversations: family engagement lasts when it becomes part of how teachers already plan and teach, and when what families share actually shapes what happens in the classroom.
That idea runs through everything in this issue, starting with this month’s blog, where we share what is helping these teams build learning-focused family engagement into their routines in the first few weeks of school. In the What We’re Reading section,you’ll find new research showing that how a school carries out a strategy matters more than which strategy it picks, as well as a literacy researcher's call for educators to see families as co-educators they can learn from.
We're heading to San Diego next month for the National Assembly for Family Engagement in Education October 28-30, and we hope to see many of you there so we can continue these conversations in person.
Thank you for being part of this work with us.
Vidya Sundaram and Elisabeth O’Bryon
Family Engagement Lab Co-founders
📝 Research & Insights
NEW ON THE BLOG:
"Making Family Engagement Part of the Instructional Routine"
Family engagement practices are most likely to last when they become part of how teachers already plan and teach, rather than one more task added to an already full plate.
In our latest blog post, we check in with the teacher teams in our fall research project as they build learning-focused family engagement into their instructional routines, and we share what is helping those routines take hold in the first weeks of school.
Implementation, not the tactic, is what moves attendance
Adecade-long study from Jeremy Singer (University of Michigan-Flint) and Sarah Winchell Lenhoff (Wayne State University) compared attendance strategies across Michigan and Georgia schools and reached a conclusion many educators already sense: no single strategy worked everywhere. As the researchers put it,"implementation matters." Deep family engagement, including home visits, was among the more promising approaches. Most schools, however, still default to changing parent and student behavior rather than addressing the structural barriers that keep kids home.
For us, this confirms what we see in schools every day. Family engagement works when it's woven into instructional practice, so that when teachers design routines that invite families in and let what they hear shape instruction, engagement becomes part of how learning happens.
Families as co-educators, not occasional volunteers
Drawing on four decades of literacy research, Michigan State University's Patricia Edwards argues that family engagement research has moved past treating parents as helpers on the sidelines. Instead, it now recognizes them as"co-educators whose knowledge, cultural wealth and lived experiences enrich children's educational opportunities."
Edwards also names the shift that makes this real. Engagement can't only flow from school to home. In her words,"Family engagement must also mean creating opportunities for educators to learn from families."
This is the heart of engagement as instructional practice. The strongest routines we see are ones where teachers plan around what families send back. The question shifts from "What do families need to know?" to "What can families teach us about their children?”
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