appreciate the importance of lesson learned from school and from community
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According to the recent MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, teachers, parents and students all agree that parent engagement in schools has increased over the past 25 years. Given the role that family engagement plays in not only academic success, but life success, that is great news. However, the survey also noted that parent engagement remains a challenge for many schools.
Last weekend, at the Celebration of Teaching and Learning, surrounded by educators, representatives from the nonprofit and business worlds, global education experts, academics, and education advocates of all stripes, I found it inspiring how committed the group as a whole was to not just improving family engagement in schools, but expanding engagement beyond the family, to the community in general. Two featured initiatives in particular seemed to embody it: Reconnecting McDowell and Cincinnati's Community Learning Centers.
Linking Schools and Communities
McDowell County, West Virginia, has ranked last in education in the state for most of the past decade. But it is not just educational challenges that the community faces. The area was once a booming coal community, with over 100,000 residents. Today, there are just 22,000. Many are unemployed (72 percent of students live in a household without gainful employment). McDowell has limited medical services, inadequate access to technology, and substantial drug and alcohol abuse.
Yet those in the community care deeply about it. And everyone agrees that McDowell's children deserve every opportunity for success. So under the leadership of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the West Virginia State Board of Education, a public/private partnership was born. Reconnecting McDowell is a long-term effort to make educational improvements while addressing all of the community's complex problems.
Based on the school improvement plan, that team should choose four goals (two academic goals, one behavioral, and one focused on improving school climate) on which it will focus its efforts. It should then write and implement a one-year action plan, with activities carefully linked to their goals, monitoring outcomes and continually adjusting the plan as needed. (There are many more details on how such teams should work available on the National Network of Partnership Schools' website).
Bogenschutz offers some additional thoughts as to what is necessary to start the work:
A culture shift. Those on staff must sincerely recognize the value of the partnership, or it will never succeed.
A third party. In Cincinnati, each school has a lead partnering agency to assist in connecting with the community. She believes that third party helps ensure the community is comfortable sharing its true hopes and concerns about a school.
Meeting the community where it is. If you send home a flyer asking the community to come to a meeting at the school, it won't show up. Ask the "neighborhood grandmother" where the meeting should be held -- a church, a restaurant, wherever the community gathers -- and go to it.
The bottom line: Family and community engagement is a vital part of a truly successful school. But it rarely just happens -- it must be intentionally designed. When it is present, we should take the time to celebrate it and learn from it.