Foster Community Engagement: Address 6 Root Causes That Get in the Way
Enhanced community engagement will strengthen the capacity of families, community members, and school and district staff to create authentic partnerships and initiate difficult conversations necessary to support student success.
– The Community Engagement Initiative
INTRO
Educators know community engagement is crucial for school and student success, but many struggle with getting past the various barriers they face. The Community Engagement Initiative focuses on addressing six root causes that get in the way of high-quality community and family engagement. Their wealth of research, information, and resources can help guide you toward promoting high-quality community engagement with your school or district.
The Community Engagement Initiative is a five-year effort intended to strengthen the System of Support by building the capacity of school districts to authentically engage one another. This includes identifying effective models of community engagement, developing metrics to evaluate those models, having difficult conversations, building trusting relationships and participating the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) development process.
OBJECTIVES
- Understand the 6 root causes that get in the way of community engagement
- Begin brainstorming your school’s/district’s plan for addressing these root causes and begin nurturing community engagement
ACTIVITY
Understand the 6 Root Causes That Get in the Way of High-Quality Community Engagement
Each webinar in the provided resource focuses on one of these six causes:
- Lack of belief that the system’s success is critically dependent on its relationships with students & families
- Lack of belief in students and families as experts
- Lack of committed and consistent district & school leaders
- Lack of understanding and expertise around highly effective student & family engagement
- Lack of inclusivity based on race & culture
- Systems/tools are not made to be community-friendly
Reflect on your school’s/district’s standing with each of the six causes
- What are your strengths in each area?
- Where is there room for improvement?
- What are the most urgent priorities to address?
- What changes will bring the most positive and noticeable improvements?
TIPS
- Big Plays are more substantial efforts that take 6-18 months to fully accomplish.
- We know, this is a lot to tackle. Here are some ideas for how to make this process manageable and engaging:
- Have different members of your leadership/admin team(s) each focus on a different root cause, then have everyone come together to report back on their findings
- For smaller teams/schools/districts, this may mean one person per cause
- For larger teams/schools/districts, these can be broken up into partners/small groups
- Ensure enough time is provided for them to really dig into the content, reflect, discuss, and prepare to share with the whole team
- Turn this into a series of PD/Staff Training for your entire staff over the course of a school year and then spend the next school year implementing your plans
- Have different members of your leadership/admin team(s) each focus on a different root cause, then have everyone come together to report back on their findings
Responses