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Let's redefine family involvement

By Pat Roy

Results, May 2005

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2005. All rights reserved.

Family Involvement:   Staff development that improves the learning of all students provides educators with knowledge and skills to involve families and other stakeholders appropriately.

My mom was a room mother for most of my elementary years. She was a stay-at-home mom who could come to school during the day to help the teacher, baking cupcakes, and help with my 6th-grade party. She also did a lot at home to ensure that my siblings and I valued our education. She didn't allow television during the school week; she quizzed us before tests; she got us library cards and filled the house with books.

That was a nearly a half century ago. Things have changed. Families have changed. Our definition of family involvement also needs to change.

NSDC's family involvement standard says staff development should develop the knowledge and skills of teachers and administrators to create partnerships that support student learning with parents and other caregivers. This is a far cry from baking cupcakes!

Joyce Epstein has expanded the definition of family involvement (1997). She identifies six types of family involvement:

1. Parenting: Help all families establish home environments to support children as learners.
2. Communicating: Design effective school-to-home and home-to-school communications about school programs and children's progress.
3. Volunteering: Recruit and organize family help and support within the classroom and school.
4. Learning at home: Provide information and ideas to families about how to help students at home with homework and other curriculum-related activities, decisions, and planning.
5. Decision making: Include parents in school decisions, developing parent leaders and representatives.
6. Collaborating with community: Identify and integrate resources and services from the community to strengthen school programs, family practices, and student learning and development.

Many teachers and administrators want to create more opportunities for involvement but don't know how. Some ideas include:

• Develop community partnerships through student service learning programs;
• Create a school and/or classroom web site that provides a calendar of upcoming events, homework, tests, and project due dates;
• Provide family education workshops;
• Provide information on child development in classroom or school newsletters;
• Communicate frequently with families about student progress;
• Encourage families to attend school functions, conferences, and school performances by providing free babysitting services or meals;
• Disseminate information about community activities that link to student learning;
• Develop an ongoing committee that focuses on family and community partnerships; and
• Communicate with families about report cards, grading procedures, student work, and homework.

A Baltimore school took the idea of family involvement one step further: It ensured that every classroom had a phone that could be used to call home to notify parents about student successes as well as their problems.

Parent involvement has been identified in most school improvement models as a critical element. NSDC's standard and Epstein's work help us see a wider array of actions and activities that can create positive partnerships with parents and community organizations.

Reference

Epstein, J. (1997). School, family, and community partnerships: Your handbook for action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

About the author

Pat Roy is co-author of Moving NSDC's staff development standards into practice: Innovation configurations (NSDC, 2003).