Cookie preferences

HundrED uses cookies to enhance user experiences, to personalise content, and analyse our web traffic. By clicking "Accept all" you agree to the use of all cookies, including marketing cookies that may help us deliver personalised marketing content to users. By selecting "Accept necessary" only essential cookies, such as those needed for basic functionality and internal analytics, will be enabled.
For more details, please review our Cookie Policy.
Accept all
Accept necessary
search
clear

Relationship Building Through Shared Fun

Joyful children create opportunities for parents and educators to listen and learn

We wanted to be deep listeners to our parents, especially those who lacked connection with the school because of language barriers. We didn’t want to guess at what parents wanted out of engagement but rather to know how to build a relationship that would lead to a collective feeling of purpose, and all in the direction that was meaningful and helpful to their children's education.

Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Web presence

2022

Established

-

Children

1

Countries
Target group
Parents
Updated
January 2024
We were not hearing from parents who are new to the district, in particular the English Language Learner families. Neither new families not ELL families had joined the focus groups, helping us see that this was important outreach and a gap we needed to fill to ensure that all families had equal opportunities to learn and were valued members of the school community.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

The school co-lead had observed, “Even being asked if they [parents] were interested in joining the focus group had an impact. No one had asked before.” We had challenged ourselves as a small team of educators and parents to ask, “How do we capture real concerns in a way that people feel safe sharing.” As we were learning, this especially applied to our English Language Learner families.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

First, we brought the ELL families together for dinner and really listened to them. It was a social atmosphere and ideas flowed naturally in this relaxed community meet-up. In this setting, we realized there are assumptions we make about what people want to know, sometimes we're right but sometimes we're not even close. For example, a parent shared that her son wanted to play baseball but didn't know how to play the sport or the American rules.

Building upon the power of this shared moment, we gathered for an evening of painting and games which allowed even more conversation and ideas for engagement. Seeing our children happy is a satisfaction that parents share and it was the same for our ELL families. Relationships can grow from these joyful experiences, and for us one result was a peer-to-peer family mentoring program that encourages families to create their own social networks. This is one way to empower their voices and create a greater shared agency.

How has it been spreading?

Participation in the focus groups revealed that English Language Learner families did not join in. At the same time that Franklin-Regional typically enjoys high turnout for events, outreach to these missing families was clearly a need. This realization helped us become more intentional about making sure their voices were included. With grant funds, our educator/parent team scaled deeper and through collaboration with our families introduced a mentor/mentee program for the ELL families.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Whether it is surveys, focus groups, coffee chats, one-on-one conversations or social occasions as described here, provide ways for people to talk freely and express their views honestly. Taking time to dig deeper and to listen are essential to relationship building, to learning about the known and unknown needs and to enact innovations that reflect shared purpose and engagement.

Spread of the innovation

loading map...