Sample Assignments – VIII. Exploring the Core Competencies of Family Engagement

Introduction

This chapter explores frameworks for understanding family engagement as outlined by core competencies.  These core competencies outline the required attitudes, practices, and opportunities that are embedded into programs that work with families, schools, children, and communities.  They lay the framework for how we interact with one another, and how programs are designed from a strengths-based and collaborative perspective.  There are a variety of core competency models.  For this course, you will be introduced to the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement. You will find it helpful to review the following preview videos to pair with your reading: Dr. Karen Mapp’s 3 Prerequisites of Effective Family and Community Engagement   Culturally Responsive & Sustaining Family Engagement Explained in 6 Minutes

Discussion Prompt A:

1. Read Exploring the Core Competencies of Family Engagement
2. Interview a family of a child who attends school about their relationship with the school.  How have they been invited to contribute to their child’s education?
3. Categorize those contributions into parental involvement, family engagement, or family learning.
4. What opportunities or barriers exist for them to collaborate with the school?
5. Recommend strategies for the school to increase the number of parental involvement, family engagement, and family learning opportunities.

Reading Review

1. Interview an educator about their understanding of parental involvement, family engagement, and family learning.

• Can they define how these concepts are different from one another?
• What training have they received in these areas?
• What strategies do they employ to create an equitable and strengths-based process for parental involvement, family engagement, and family learning?

2. Compare the interview to what you have learned in Exploring the Core Competencies of Family Engagement.  Where does the interview align or misalign with what you have learned?

Reflection Option A

1. 1. 1. Rate yourself in the Family-Facing Professional’s Reflection Tool.
      2. Based on what you have learned from your reading, identify ways that you can develop and improve in your collaborative work with children, families, schools, and communities.

Reflection Option B

Read Families: An Introduction and choose one of the trainings outlined in the Family Engagement series from The Virtual Lab School:

1. 1. • Promoting Family Engagement
      • Promoting Family Engagement: Helping Staff Communicate With Families
      • Working With Families of Children With Special Needs
      • Strengthening and Supporting Military Families and Families Facing Challenges

1. 1. 1.  Determine which activities in the module align with parental involvement, family engagement, and/or family learning.
      2. Reflect on the ways that the module aligns or misaligned with concepts of inclusion, cultural humility, funds of knowledge, and/or cultural capital.
      3. How might you use the module in your own professional or personal life?

Optional Bonus Activity A

1. 1. 1. Contact an early childhood center or local school.
      2. Conduct an inventory of parent involvement, family engagement, and family learning strategies and events that are facilitated there.
      3. Categorize the strategies and events into “parent involvement”, “family engagement”, and “family learning”.
      4. Is the early childhood center or local school using “parent involvement”, “family engagement”, and “family learning” correctly?

Optional Bonus Activity B

Complete the self-paced module Cultural and Linguistic Differences:  What Teachers Should Know from the IRIS Center Peabody College Vanderbilt University.  Turn in your answers to the Assessment section.