Homework Not Just For Kids When It Comes To Family Engagement

Brittany McKee helps her sons Gage and Jayce Meza complete the craft as part of the parent engagement night at Edgewood Primary School in Ellettsville.” credit=”Bill Shaw/WTIU News

Indiana is in the midst of a transition year when it comes to education: new academic standards, an ISTEP+ test that is not yet written and a new pre-k pilot program launching in four counties in January. All of these changes create challenges for kids ages three to 18 – but despite the differences of each area, there is one thing everyone says will help solve the issues at hand: family engagement.

Family Engagement In Action

On a recent weeknight at Edgewood Primary School in Ellettsville, parents and grandparents stream into the lunchroom with their kindergarten through second grade children. Tonight’s event is a literacy-based craft night, and students are signing up for which teacher they want to read them a book. Teachers will read to the children, showcasing techniques they use in the classroom parents can replicate at home.

Jill Ferguson oversees family engagement for Richland-Bean Blossom schools and gives instructions to families before they scatter to different classrooms for the reading activities.

• Engaging Families A Major Goal For Most EducatorsFrom preschool to high school, family engagement is key to ensure a child’s success. With so many changes taking place in Indiana’s education system, educators say family engagement is important to keep students on track. Download

“Parents, I ask you, please get in there,” she says into a microphone. “Listen to how the teachers present the story, maybe it’s something you could do at home.”

Gage Meza,a kindergartner at Edgewood Primary School, listens to teacher Alissa Drewes read during the parent literacy night.” credit=”Bill Shaw/WTIU News

A former schoolteacher in inner city Las Vegas, Ferguson knows how a lack of parental engagement can weigh down a child’s ability to learn. She also knows as a working parent how hard it is to find time to slow down and work with a child on learning strategies.

“What I see a lot is parents doing everything they still can,” Ferguson says. “But with both parents working and they’re working a lot, they’re just trying to get by.”

Parents like Brittany McKee, whose kindergarten son Gage Meza and his brother Jayce chose to participate in the book and craft project with teacher Alissa Drewes.

“We try to read books, that’s a big thing in our house,” McKee said. “They get to pick out a book each and we get to read it, and then we go over it at the end.”

McKee says the focus on reading with her kids and utilizing certain strategies with the book is not something she anticipated when she first became a mom. She says at first she would just read a book through, and move on. But teachers like Drewes helped her develop a better reading style.

As Drewes reads “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus” to the students at tonight’s event, she stops periodically to ask them to make predictions about what will happen next using context clues. Before starting the book they talk about the roles of the author and illustrator.

Drewes says it’s important for parents to see her doing this, especially at the kindergarten level.

“We take our jobs as being that first experience for families in education, we take it really seriously,” Drewes says. “It’s our job to not only hook kids in and find a love for school and reading, but also to help teach those parents and help them understand what they can do at home to help their students become effective students and strong students.”

And Drewes says continuing what happens in the classroom at home is the pillar of effective family engagement.

“It’s a tripod effect,” Drewes says. “It’s myself, all of my parents and all of my students. We’re working together to make sure our students are successful. When one [part] of that tripod is not working it’s going to fall over.”

Making Engagement Easy

Family engagement is a nationwide education goal, and for some parents, all it takes is a little reminder. Researchers at Stanford this week released a study outlining a pilot program where parents received a text message prompting them to engage their child in a literacy activity.

The messages were simple, like have your child say two words that begin with the same letter, or have your child name the letters on a shampoo bottle.

And it worked, parents who got the texts spent up to thirteen percent more time engaging children in reading activities.

Parental engagement is also a requirement of the state’s preschool pilot program, which launches in four counties in January. The family involvement component will be one part of the program the state evaluates before considering expanding statewide. Although the law mandates a parental engagement component, it isn’t clear what that looks like.

So program leaders like John Peirce, who heads up the pilot program in Allen County, are devising their own parental involvement plans. Peirce wants to include home visits and parent nights, because he knows the impact those things will have on the program as a whole.

“I think everyone realizes also that parents are children’s first and most important teachers and the more we can engage them and even educate them on brain development, child development and things like that, the more they’re going to be able to help support and assist those children and the classrooms to perform even better,” Peirce says.

McKee says she’s learned parent engagement isn’t just reading to Gage and Jayce at home, but making sure they know school is important during their first year.

“Just being a part of the school really helps them,” she says. “It’s helped Gage dramatically because then he sees me here and he feels comfortable here, and [with] him adjusting it helped a lot.”