Lacey Family Engagement Plan

Jean Marie Lacey, a grade 3 teacher at Walter Bracken STEAM Academy in Las Vegas, has a family engagement plan for the upcoming school year. The plan includes a back-to-school family fun night on August 23rd, with the goal of increasing parental engagement and attendance at school events. The event will provide resources and learning opportunities for families, as well as connect them with school staff and their child's education. Various booths will be set up, including sign-ups for committees and clubs, and representatives from community organizations will also be present. The plan will be evaluated by tracking family attendance, and communication will be done through technology, flyers, and a bilingual parent bulletin board. Accommodations will be made for non-English speakers, including translators and bilingual materials. The goal is to improve family engagement for the school year and support student success. Good afternoon, my name is Jean Marie Lacey and I'm a grade 3 teacher at Walter Bracken STEAM Academy in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. This is my family engagement plan. My family engagement plan is a very fun and exciting back-to- school family fun night. It's going to happen on August 23rd, 2023. It will be at Walter Bracken STEAM Academy and that address is 1200 North 27th Street. The time will be from 430 to 630. My vision statement. Walter Bracken STEAM Academy will provide families and guardians of our school with precious resources and learning opportunities at a back-to-school family fun night. Our goal is to enable our parents, our school, and our community to work together to create significant partnerships that can lead to their and all children's academic excellence and overall success. Why is this plan needed, you might ask. Well as a Title I school near downtown Las Vegas, the amount of parental engagement is minimal. We know that students gains in academia and society is due to the engagement of families in their child's education. In general, at Walter Bracken STEAM Academy, we have about a 20 to 30 percent family attendance rate at school events and our aim for the 23-24 school year is 70 to 80 percent of family engagement and attendance at our events. This is going to be the first event and more will follow throughout the school year. So we have several goals for our back-to-school family fun night. The first goal is to get more families actively engaged and participate in school events. In addition to feeling welcomed and valued and connected to each other, they will connect with school staff and to what their students are learning and doing in class. Goal number two is in addition we are aiming to provide many make-and-take resources that the families can bring home to support their child's learning throughout the year. Another goal of ours is to provide direct context to resources the families can use throughout the year. And finally is to have 70 to 80 percent of families attend and engage at events throughout the year. The back-to-school family fun night is the kickoff event for a successful 23-24 school year. Now, support that's needed, booths that will happen at these events. The school-based support that's needed will be facilitated by faculty and admin. We will have booths with committee sign-ups. We'll have a class dojo sign-up booth. We'll have a homework. We'll have an organizational tip booth. We'll have grade level standards overview booths. We'll have a yearbook booth and we'll have a student club and sign-up booth so the kids can sign up for our like club or girls who code. We have a lot of great clubs at our school and we want to get lots of participation. Some district-based booths that will happen will be the safe keys, the badges and volunteers. We'll have a paper booth. This is a new app that CCSD has brought out and it's a great app. It helps with tutoring and homework all online and virtual. We'll also have an infinite campus booth so the parents can get all dialed in on their infinite campus. These booths will be manned by our faculty and admin and any district people that we can get as well. And finally our community-based booths will have a three-square, a Boys Town, a Boys and Girls Club, Head Start and we'll also have the Harbor. These will be manned by representatives from the said clubs like Boys Town. We'll have a Boys Town person at their booths. Some information I'm just going to give you some quick numbers and information. As you can see on the screen you can come back and write them down or take a screenshot. So classdojo sign up is just www.classdojo.com. To volunteer with CCSD there is a link that I have put on this presentation. You can just go ahead and click on that. Threesquare is a food bank. Again another link you can go ahead and click on. The Head Start program, the Boys and Girls Club, the Safe Key and the Harbor all have links and phone numbers that all you have to do is just go ahead and click on them and you can get all that information as well. They will, like I said before, be at the family fun night back to school night and we'll have all the information you can need there as well. So how I'm going to evaluate the effectiveness of this plan? Well quite simply by having families sign a sheet upon entering for the night. After that I'm going to develop a data system where we keep track of family attendance throughout the year. We'll keep a close eye on the sign-in sheets and evaluate the percentage of people attending our events. As I said earlier the goal for our year at Walter Brackenstein Academy is a 70 to 80 percent attendance engagement of families at school events. Communication of the plan. Well it's two parts, school-wide and families. Well school-wide my plan is going to be presented to the leadership team and admin on August 1st. Discussion logistics and roles will be discussed. The other communication of the plan will obviously be to the families. The families will be formally invited via technology like ClassDojo, a simple text, phone call, Infinite Campus, many different ways. In addition students will bring home flyers and reminders up to the day of the event. Lastly a bilingual parent bulletin board will be named for the main office. This will have upcoming school events, resources, and commonly used phone numbers and other helpful hints. Some accommodations for our non-English speakers. Well we'll have some headsets and the headsets that people can listen to pre-recorded information in their native language like Spanish. We'll have some translators on hand as well. These people are at school and they can speak in various different languages. We'll have any information that's printed be printed in English and Spanish as well as all media. We'll have the media and the parent bulletin board will be bilingual. So as you can see family engagement makes a huge difference. Students that have an engaged family are more adaptable, have good attendance, better social behavior, and higher graduation rates. This event will be the beginning of a full year of family engagement that is relational, interactive, collaborative, developmental, and most importantly linked to the students learning. Walter Brackenstein Academy we aim to be to better our family engagement for the 23-24 school year. The parents, the guardians, the teachers, and admin are all part of the same team and our goal is to work together to support their child. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. If you have any questions at all, feel free to email me at lacyjm.nvccsd.net. Thank you and have a great afternoon.