Family

April Barajas, a fourth-grade teacher at Ruby Duncan Elementary School, has a family engagement plan to involve parents and community members in their children's education. She wants to have room parents who can assist the teacher with various tasks in the classroom, such as laminating, working with small groups, and planning classroom parties. April believes that having room parents will positively impact students' learning, attendance, and behavior. She aims to have 75% of families participating in volunteering inside the classroom. To evaluate the effectiveness of the plan, April suggests tracking attendance and gathering feedback from students. She plans to use Google surveys and ClassDojo for communication, ensuring that families have access to information and can communicate in their native language. April's family engagement plan aligns with professional responsibilities, including facilitating two-way communication, welcoming families of all backgrounds, and connecting families Hello, my name is April Barajas and I'm here to present my family engagement plan. I'm currently at Ruby Duncan Elementary School in a fourth grade position. My mission statement is I want to involve parents and community members in their children's education to achieve lifelong success in learning. For my family engagement plan, my plan for my state is to have room parents. If we have room parents, family engagement inside the classroom would go up. I would ask parents to help their child's teacher with things that are needed in the classroom. So things that the teacher may use a room or room parents for would be like lamination, working with small groups, assisting students with crafts, helping students with centers, helping with the bowls and boards, and maybe planning classroom parties. Other things may be doing like read-alouds or things that parents are comfortable helping with. Part of my family engagement plan is we want to make parents comfortable, so later on you'll see that like a survey will be sent out so we know what the parents' comfortability with being in the classroom would be. My reasoning for this is I believe having room parents will positively impact students' learning. Students will have more to look forward to each day at school, which will positively impact their attendance. They'll be excited about coming to school and seeing what's new or who's in the classroom. And I think increasing family engagement would be – we would see a better in grades, attendance, and behavior inside the classroom. We currently, last year, had 30% with chronic absenteeism last year. We're getting a little bit better this year, but it's still a problem. So enticing them to come to school would really positively impact. Also our scores in both math and reading aren't that great, so if we can help with their grades, of course, that would be another positive thing coming from this. My goal – my goal is to have 75% of families from the class participating at least once in a volunteering inside the classroom. The reason for not 100% is it's during the day, it's during work hours, so work schedule or obligations for some families won't allow them into the classroom. They just don't have the time. So, what assistance and support would be needing? Well, administrative – a policy allowing students into the – or parents into the building. We know that parents are not allowed to be left with children, especially – they need to go through all the screening. The teachers will need to be a part because they will need to be setting up for what parents will do or having tasks for them to do, especially if it's just like laminating or copying or bulletin board stuff. While we want the parents there, they won't know what to do unless the teacher tells them. And in the front office, just being parents and signing them in. Someone that could be used would be like the community and school member and just making sure they get to the right place. So, to evaluate the effectiveness, I think just keeping track of attendance in classrooms with the active family members would help. Also, just a survey of the students about how they feel about having parents volunteering in the classroom would be kind of seeing if this is effective or something we should be continuing. For communication, I think creating a Google survey that parents are able to read and fill out in an open house would be like the best thing, right? Encouraging families to fill out this document that tells us what they're interested in helping with and also their availability. Having it on Google allows for the translation to the native home language. And for my population, it tends to either be like English or Spanish, but there are some that are not. Writing home a QR code with families, so a family community survey is also another way to do it. TABOR communication, going home in a going home folder is a way, and then you can do like English on one side and Spanish on the other. Another one would be like teachers communicating with families via ClassDojo because it helps with translating. We want to make sure that we're translating for families that need it. And that also kind of lets us know what jobs or tasks in the classroom they can be doing. So what this family engagement plan would hit as far as the framework standards, and I think it's like the professional responsibilities, so number four, family engagement. And I think it would be like indicator one, the teacher regularly facilitates two-way communications with parents and guardian using tools, so that one. And then I also think indicator number two, which that teaches the teacher values and respects and welcomes and encourages students and families of all backgrounds, so we're not just limiting it to like families that only speak English or anything like that. And then indicator three, the teacher informs and connects families and students to opportunities and services according to the students' needs. So within this, just being able to talk to families and show them what, like, they need something, we're able to do that. I'm excited because I plan on implementing this with my fourth grade class and having grandparents more involved, and thank you.