EDU650A Leadership Fieldwork Project

Family Engagement Tool in SLCs for New Teachers at HTH (2021 fall)

Principal #4A: Parent and Family Engagement

Xupian Jiang

11/21/2021

High Tech High Graduate School of Education

The following California Administrator Performance Expectations (CAPE) are reflected in the paper below.

4A: Parent and Family Engagement (New administrators engage families in education and school
activities and understand the benefits of and regulations pertaining to their involvement. During
preliminary preparation, aspiring administrators learn how to: )

1. Engage family and community members in accomplishing the school’s vision of equitable schooling
and continuous improvement that includes the academic, linguistic, cultural, social-emotional, mental
and physical health, and/or other supports needed to succeed in school.

2. Create and promote a welcoming environment for family and community participation.

3. Recognize and respect family goals and aspirations for students.

4. Work with staff to develop a range of communication strategies to inform families about student
assessments and achievement, teacher professional learning activities, school climate, and progress
toward achieving school goals.

1. Context

1.1 Student-led conferences (SLCs) at HTH

As a resident of HTH from China, the SLC in fall 2021 was the first parent-teacher conference and
not familiar to me. This is because most of the parent-teacher conferences I had participated in
when I was a student, as well as the typical conversations I had involved in the past 4 years were very
different from my previous understanding. “Traditional parent-teacher conferences often only
passively include the student, if at all. Student-led conferences are just the opposite. In SLCs,
students lead family members and teachers in a reflective conversation about their progress
grounded in artifacts and evidence from class. The discussion goes beyond merely showing
assignments. Instead, it is a deeper conversation about areas of strength and growth as identified by
the student, and draws on specific pieces of work selected by the student as evidence of his or her
experiences in school. Traditionally, parent-teacher conferences are reserved for younger students or
for those who are struggling in school. SLCs are for all students, as every student needs the
opportunity to open windows into his or her learning experiences and lead a thoughtful
conversation with important adults who will provide support for progress and growth”. (Patton et
al., 2017)
In order to improve family engagement at HTH and build on deeper understanding about
parent/guardian relationship, I regarded observing SLCs at a mixed grade classroom as an
​
opportunity of “​Understanding each community’s unique barriers and resources is important for
establishing and maintaining effective collaborations between families and schools”

My focus started from the curiosity to “identify how patterns and amounts of involvement vary
across cultural, economic and community contexts and across developmental levels, in which
involvement takes place” (Hill & Taylor, 2015). And eventually my leadership fieldwork was focused
on developing a tool for new teachers like me to implement SLC easier and meaningful in the
coming semester.

1.2 Review of My Mentor’s Goal and Plan for SLCs

The residency mentor of mine this year is John Santos, a biology/environmental science teacher
whose leadership fieldwork two years ago was also SLCs-related. Therefore, I decided to have an
overall review of his goal for SLCs in 2019 (“ Increase parent attendance for our entire school and
make the process more meaningful for more teaching teams.”) and audit the process of SLCs to
collect data.

1.3 The Plan of SLCs in 2021

The SLC week took place from October 12th to 15th. Before the SLCs, our teacher team including
one science teacher, one humanities teacher and a math teacher has been with the students for seven
weeks. However, all of us were expecting to have a conversation with students’ parents/guardians
because before this SLC week, the only face-to-face conversation was during the HTH Open House
on September 14th with low attendance (8/48). We believed that “Through providing parents with
increased opportunities to complete school or job-training, or connecting them with local resources
to address their own health, providers can utilize a more holistic approach to strengthen the family’s
well-being by addressing parents’ needs, thus enhancing parentchild interaction, and in turn,
children’s development.” (Martin et al., 2015)

I created a form to record the conversations in SLCs with prepared questions. All of the questions
were from the SLC Reflection that John Santos invited our students to write before the SLCs. As for
the data, I was planning to collect it objectively because "we should never, under any circumstance,
make an assumption about a student or parent—about their values or culture or mindset—based on
a single dimension of their identity."(Gorski, 2007)

2. The Event: Student-Led-Conference Observation and Facilitation

SLC’s timeline:

2.1 Student’s Self SLC Reflection

2.2 Invitation of the Families & Teacher Team Meet-up
2.3 SLCs Time Slot schedule
2.4 Online Zoom SLC Link shared on Google form
2,5 The Structure of SLCs
-Greetings
-The student presentation
-Teachers’ feedback & Parents/Guardians’
feedback
-Q&A (Student-Teacher &
Parents/Guardians-Teacher)
*For 12 graders, there was a set question about the
ongoing College Application process

(Time Slot of the SLCs

*The yellow blanks represent absent families)
I have participated in all of the SLCs of each student. Each SLC had at least two teachers of
the class and all three teachers were in the 80 SLCs due to the teacher’s schedule.

3. Data Collection
There were four Spanish-speaking-only families among 46 of the class. And two teachers can speak
spanish but they encouraged students to help with the translation. The social emotional specialists
and educational specialists have been involved in some of the SLCs. In toal, we have 36 time slots
with 20 minutes per family, one 30-minute break each day. That is to say, we have to arrange the 10
students with an extra time schedule.

The Questions from the Parents/Guardians

Most of the Parents/Guardians were active in asking “How can I support my kid better?”. The
questions varied from a general academic performance to a specific subject like math. They engaged
in teaching strategies by sharing the perspectives and information that either teachers or the student
did not know or mentioned, which could provide a more holistic view about how we understand the
student comprehensively.

However, I also noticed that some questions from the parents/guardians are less meaningful to the
student’s growth and a healthier learning environment such as “who is your favorite teacher..what is
the class you learn something from?”
 4. Outcome and Findings
The impact of COVID-19/Online learnings for one year

During the SLCs, I learned from parents/guardians that students are not alone in experiencing
stress, learning behaviour adjustment and social connection pressures.“Many parents, too, are
experiencing stress responses to threats from health conditions, financial constraints, and racial
violence—all of which disproportionately impact Latinx, Black, and low-income families. Evidence
from different parts of California suggest that domestic violence is on the rise, which impacts adults
and the children living with them.” (Knudson & Cantor, 2020)

Support for Bilingual Families

In the next SLCs, we are going to invite the Emergent Bilingual Student Coordinator at HTH to join
the bilingual families, with a need collection in advance so that we can better support the
parents/guardians to join the conversation deeply and easier.

The Equity Audit

Overall, the conversations in SLCs were

led to create a positive relationship among
the students, parents/guardians and the
teachers. The Aspen Institute National
Commission for Social, Emotional, and
Academic Learning (2018) pointed to
brain research on SLC impact: “Positive,
supportive relationships and rich
stimulating environ- ments spur the brain
to form, prune, and strengthen
connections that promote further
development and learning. A lack of social
and emotional support and simulation can
hamper development and growth” (2018,
p. 19). The SLC provides a space to make
the conversation happen where a student
can celebrate the growth and learnings
with parents/guardians. Meanwhile, the
teachers in our class used positive tones
with positive feedback all the time.
I have learned from the SLCs that this is a great opportunity for schools to engage family rather
than just look for family involvement. “One of the dictionary definitions of involve is "to enfold or
envelope," whereas one of the meanings of engage is "to come together and interlock." Thus,
involvement implies doing to; in contrast, engagement implies doing with. A school striving for
family involvement often leads with its mouth—identifying projects, needs, and goals and then
telling parents how they can contribute. A school striving for parent engagement, on the other hand,
tends to lead with its ears—listening to what parents think, dream, and worry about. The goal of
family engagement is not to serve clients but to gain partners.”(Ferlazzo, 2011)

The figure on the left is an Equity Audit of our community need assessment by the Tool from
MAEC, Inc.

5. Next Steps

The SLCs in next semester will start from February 22th to 25th. I am planning to lead a SLC and
help the new teachers at HTH to better prepare it. Now I am creating a small tool for them with a
few inquiry questions to boost their motivation for family engagement: A Tool for new teachers to
prepare SLC: “SLC Prep Check-list”

The goal for this work is to increase the attendance of parents/guardians in SLCs, apply System
Learning “by documenting and disseminating successful practices, supporting school-wide learning
so that educators can adopt and adapt practices that are successful in their settings, and supporting
schools in learning from the research and from each other”(Noguera et al., 2015) As ASCD’s call for
supporting student’s learning needs, “When we believe that the adults around them care about who
they are and what they know and what they can do, they are more likely to respond to what those
adults value and take those values as their own.” (ASCD, 2007)

Check-lists for SLCs Preparation

Have students reflect on their learning experiences and collect artifacts that
represent their learning prior to the SLCs
Email the Invitation of the Families (Communicate with families in Spanish and
English) & Have students sign up for SLCs using texting and calling
Schedule a Teacher Team Meet-up before 8:30am
SLCs Time Slot Schedule Finalized one-two day before SLC
Online Zoom SLC Link shared on Google form
Prepare a Structure for SLCs
 Reflective Questions You Might Need

1) Prompts for family (Is there any questions we can ask the family to ask?)

2) Approaches to identify student's needs (How can we encourage students to find out
their needs and wonderings after they present their learnings in SLCs?)

3) A space/channel for teaching teams to communicate the "Bright Spot" (What will be a
good space to initiate the teacher team’s conversation and even the discussion following
up the SLCs?)

4) Texts/articles/journals recommended by HTH educators in "the significance of parent

participation in student learning." (Can we have no more than three resources at one time
from the collective intelligence of our HTH community?)

References

ASCD. (2007). The learning compact redefined: A call to action. Retrieved from

http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/Whole%20Child/WCC%20 Learning%20Compact.pdf

The Aspen Institute National Commission for Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning. (2018).

From a nation at risk to a nation at hope: Recommendations from the national commission

on social, emotional, and academic development. Retrieved from http://nationathope.org/

wp-content/uploads/2018_aspen_final-report_full_webversion.pdf

Ferlazzo, L. (2011, May 1). Involvement or Engagement? ASCD.

https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/involvement-or-engagement
Gorski, P. (2007, April 1). The Question of Class. Learning for Justice.

https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/spring-2007/the-question-of-class

Hill, N. & Taylor, L. (2004). Parental school involvement and children’s academic achievement.

American Psychological Society, 13(4), 161-164.

Knudson, J., & Cantor, P. (2020). Ensuring Whole-Child Well-Being as a Foundation for Learning:

Relationships, Routines, and Resilience in the Time of COVID-19. Policy and Practice Brief.

In ERIC. California Collaborative on District Reform. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED610398

MAEC, Inc. (2021). Equity Audit. Bethesda, MD. February 2021

Martin, L., Sontag-Padilla, L., Cannon, J., Chandra, A., Auger, A., Kase, C., Kandrack, R., Ruder, T.,

Joyce, C., Diamond, R., & Spurlock, K. L. (2014). SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL

DEVELOPMENT In the Home. In Off to a Good Start: Social and Emotional

Development of Memphis’ Children (pp. 25–32). RAND Corporation.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/j.ctt1287mcv.6

Noguera, P., Darling-Hammond, L., & Friedlaender, D. (2015). Equal Opportunity for Deeper

Learning. Deeper Learning Research Series. In ERIC. Jobs for the Future.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED560802

Patton, A., Williams, K., Sanrena Clark, M., Green, C., Strong, S., & Jana, P. (2017). Hands And

Minds: A Guide To Project-Based Learning For Teachers By Teachers. (T. Fehrenbacher & R.

Scherer, Eds.; pp. 86–98). High Tech High.

Chapter 2 Making Student Learning Public by Kelly Williams