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Education Dive
How an 8-page catalog is transforming parent engagement in Philadelphia
A brightly colored catalog is boosting visibility for more than a dozen
workshops that can be made available to parents at any school upon
request.
Natalie Gross
Jan. 8, 2020
Eight brightly colored pieces of paper are streamlining the way
principals in the School District of Philadelphia engage families and
get them on campus.
These Family Engagement School-Level Workshop Catalogs, as they’re
known, offer a concise list of more than a dozen workshops that can be
made available to parents at any school upon request — from lessons in
why school attendance matters to using art to reinforce students’ math
skills at home.
Other topics include helping with homework, transitioning to middle
school, and fostering a growth mindset in children, among others.
At the beginning of the school year, principals meet with their
school’s district liaison for family engagement to select and schedule
the workshops most relevant to their communities, often with parent
input.
“This is just one means, one way in which how we in Philadelphia are
building capacity for our families,” said Jenna Monley, deputy chief of
the Office of Family and Community Engagement, or FACE.
The catalog is part of a larger effort in the district with a large
population of economically disadvantaged students to engage families
where they are — sometimes quite literally — and one they hope will
catch on outside the city as they share the approach with other
districts across the country.
When Monley started with FACE in 2016, there were seven staff members
in the office working on family engagement for the district’s 200-plus
schools. That number has since grown to 26, including 20 family
liaisons, paraprofessionals who represent the surrounding community as
they work directly with principals on strategies for increasing parent
involvement, including the various workshops listed in the catalog.
“A lot of [the work] has been a response to our families feeling
disempowered, disenfranchised and really struggling to support their
kids,” Monley said of her office’s revamped efforts.
Making options visible
In the pre-catalog days, principals could still host workshops, but
there was no comprehensive means of seeing all of their options, or
what they would all entail. In the most recent edition for the 2019-20
school year, short blurbs accompany workshop titles, offering a
description, target audience and a list of take-home activities and
materials.
“It really made it easy,” said Awilda Balbuena, principal of Philip H.
Sheridan Elementary School. “It’s just to the point and you don’t have
to waste a lot of time reading a lot of extras.”
In the last few weeks before winter break, Balbuena’s school hosted
workshops on attendance, reading and math. A future one on STEAM —
science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics — is also
scheduled.
“I tried to offer as many hands-on type workshops for my families as
possible,” Balbuena said. “Parents always leave here excited, and so
that alone has boosted our parent engagement.”
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