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Members, Partners, and Stakeholders,
Whether you're an educator, an administrator, a parent, or a policy-maker, the start of a new school year brings a sense of excitement and newness. Welcome back!
There is no shortage of
upcoming events and
new resources to help you kick your family engagement efforts into high gear. Here are some highlights:
Visit our
In the Trenches section to learn about some creative solutions being put in place locally to combat common family engagement barriers. We also encourage you to learn more about our new partner,
Ready4K, an innovative, evidence-based family engagement program delivered via text message.
Finally, we wish to extend our congratulations to NAFSCE Board Member, Gini Pupo-Walker, on her election to the Nashville District 8 School Board! Gini will surely be a fierce advocate for the families and students in her hometown.
Best regards,
Vito Borrello
NAFSCE Executive Director
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Thursday, September 27, 2018, 3:00 - 4:30 PM ET
NAFSCE Effective Practices Webinar Series:
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Two-generation approaches focus on creating opportunities for and addressing needs of both children and the adults in their lives together. The approach recognizes that families come in all different shapes and sizes and that families define themselves. For years, programs tended to arrange parent-oriented and child-oriented programs into separate silos,
but two-generation programs and policies seek to engage families in ways that knit together support services to address both groups simultaneously. New programs are finding that when opportunities for children and parents are approached jointly, the benefits can be greater than the sum of the separate parts. In this NAFSCE webinar, presenters from Seattle Public Schools, Seattle Housing Authority, and the Aspen Institute, all of whom employ 2Gen approaches to family engagement, will discuss the various ways that a 2Gen approach is implemented across the country, and the tools family engagement professionals need to use these strategies in their own communities.
Kathlyn Kocher Paananen
Housing and Education Manager, Seattle Public Schools
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Fahmo Abdulle
Parent and Community Leader
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Roy Chan
Strategic Advisor for Education,
Seattle Housing Authority
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Sarah Haight
Assistant Director for Network and Outreach,
Aspen Institute
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Date: September 12, 2pm ET.
Join Attendance Works as they highlight key findings from the new brief,
Data Matters Using Chronic Absence to Accelerate Action for Student Success, from Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center.
Webinar speakers will share examples of how they use chronic absence data to unpack what are the causes of absenteeism so that schools, districts, and community partners can develop solutions tailored to local challenges and resources. These insights are even more important as states begin to make chronic absence data available in their school report cards.
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NAFSCE is seeking volunteers for several different roles in our new NAFSCE Ambassador Program including Group Leader, Resource Librarian, Engagement Liaison and New Member Welcome Ambassador. Find out what it means to be a NAFSCE Ambassador.
Complete our interest form today.
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NAFSCE welcomes its new partner, Ready4K, an
evidence-based family engagement program delivered via text message. Developed by Stanford-trained educational researchers, Ready4K is proven to increase family engagement and children's development over the course of a school year. Families receive 3 text messages a week with easy tips on how to boost their child's learning by building on existing family routines - like pointing out the letters on shampoo bottles during bath time and naming their sounds, counting the number of steps as you walk to the car or bus, or making feeling faces in the mirror after you brush your teeth. The Ready4K curriculum covers birth through 3rd grade and is available in English, Spanish and Arabic. Learn more.
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NAFSCE congratulates the Maryland Family Engagement Coalition on the launch of its new
Maryland Families Engage website. The site helps build a community of support for those who care for and work with young children. Their database of resources contains links to child development, family engagement initiatives, research, and more. Visitors from all over are invited to use the website to
share resources and help promote school readiness, positive parent-child relationships, and the benefits of family engagement.
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A
new video from the Global Family Research Project Research draws from data shows there are three main ways that families strengthen STEM learning from early childhood through adolescence:
- Families can create a mindset that promotes strong STEM identities.
- Families can strengthen STEM learning by participating in activities across a variety of settings.
Learn how to use the 5Rs of engagement - Reach Out, Raise Up, Reinforce, Relate, and Reimagine - as strategies for strengthening families' capacities for creating effective opportunities in STEM learning.
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Last month, The 74 published an extensive interview with Karen Mapp, in which she discusses a wide variety of topics relating to family engagement.
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One of the foundational pillars of effective practice is that whatever initiative a school or district designs, there has to be a real intentional focus on building relationships of trust and respect with families" says Mapp. "The relational piece is the glue that holds the rest of the initiative together. Having trust is really important for any initiative to be sustained."
Read the article
to find out why Dr. Mapp feels that Family Conferences should replace the traditional Parent-Teach Conference, and more.
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In this report, the Center for American Progress outlines how
the community schools strategy rethinks public schools in order to provide children in low-income communities with a high-quality education.
The report addresses how concentrated poverty affects the student populations and highlights school districts that have built and sustained community schools initiatives from the bottom-up, giving students the high-quality education they need to be successful.
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Listen to NAFSCE's own Vito Borrello discuss the national landscape of family engagement in the latest podcast from Intentional Partnerships, a joint project of Parents as Teachers and Strong Fathers Strong Families. Vito
highlights key work occurring in the field today and brings us up to speed on what NAFSCE is doing to ensure that family engagement practices become an integrated part of education, from cradle to career.
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Patricia Weinzapfel, a former broadcast journalist and now
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. executive director of community schools and family engagement has identified ways to make it easier for educators to engage with parents in her new book,
"No More Mumbo Jumbo: Bridging the Communication Gap Between Educators and Families.
The 93-page book is written in an easy-to-read format outlining different styles of communication and gives educators various tools including step-by-step examples, tips and checklists.
Learn more.
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A new initiative at Crouse Elementary in Akron, Ohio is
aims to engage, enlighten and empower parents through the seven core principles of Kwanzaa: unity, self-determination, creativity, faith, purpose, cooperative economics, collective work and responsibility. Parents will learn how to create a safe and secure environment for their kids while communicating openly with them and effectively preparing them for their day. Learn more.
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When you support NAFSCE, you are supporting initiatives that have the potential to change the way our country thinks about the family's role in our children's education. From our partnership with the NEA to develop higher-education training for future teachers, to our work with the Frameworks Institute to create a fundamental shift in the way people think about engaging parents and caregivers, NAFSCE's work will have a profound effect on how we all think about family engagement.
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© 2018 All Rights Reserved.
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