Promoting family engagement in afterschool

Study after study confirms the importance of family engagement in a child’s development.  A new article in the April issue of Phi Delta Kappan, “Engage families for anywhere, anytime learning,” shifts the focus of the conversation from if family engagement is important to how to better engage families.  Written by Heather B. Weiss, founder and director of the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP) and M. Elena Lopez, HFRP’s associate director, the article discusses the need to look to the out-of-school time hours to help promote family engagement efforts. It also focuses on three principles to create a “more equitable approach to family engagement based on family strengths as well as the shared responsibility assumed by families, schools, and communities for children’s positive academic and social development across time and the many settings where children learn:”

1. Shared responsibility:  Families, schools and communities coming together and working together to create a learning environment that helps students grow and thrive. The authors include the example of Makeshop, an exhibit at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh that works with a variety of partners—including schools, a library and a university—to create a space where children and their families can work together to tinker and learn about new objects using a mix of materials and technology—from circuit boards to wooden toys. 
2. Connection:  Connecting children to a variety of learning opportunities in and out of school, where parents, schools and communities find ways to facilitate, encourage and sustain participation in afterschool and summer learning programs.  The Greenwood Shalom afterschool program, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is included as an example of an afterschool program that not only provides targeted support to their students, but to their families as well.  The program offers parent empowerment seminars, information sessions on college enrollment and voter registration, and helps facilitate meetings between families and school day staff. 
3. Continuity:  Leveraging the collective support of families, schools and communities to ensure that students have afterschool and summer learning opportunities available and of interest to them as they grow and move through elementary, middle and high school.  The example provided is Comienza en Casa (It Starts at Home), a program serving migrant preschoolers and kindergarteners in Milbridge, Maine, that offers support to children and their families as children transition from learning at home to a kindergarten classroom.  The program works closely with their students’ school, as well as a local library, to help with the transition, and also creates individualized learning goals for parents to work on with their child at home.

To learn more, read the full article in the Phi Delta Kappan.  If you’re looking for additional examples of the ways in which afterschool and summer learning programs are helping support parent engagement efforts, you can also read our issue brief, “Afterschool: A Key to Successful Parent Engagement.”