Family Engagement

Family engagement promotes equitable partnerships among schools, families, and communities to actively advance student achievement through shared commitment, decision making and responsibility.

It takes effort and purposeful planning to build effective and meaningful family engagement with the families of our students and within the community. Often, it means new ways of thinking, responding, approaching, and including families, across the daily spectrum of activities, decisions, and information sharing that our school promotes. It can be doing something in a different way, or several methods, or changing a bias, or thinking outside the box. But, it is always worth it! Engaging families in our school system promotes real benefits for students in academics, behavior, transition, and their future. It also can help staff and faculty enjoy better results, gain a sense of partnership, and enjoy their jobs more, while building a sense of community - inside and outside the walls of the school.

Students achieve greater success when their families take an active role in their education. Six training modules have been developed by PaTTAN to assist with the planning and implementation of a successful program to enhance family engagement in your school. These updated training units, reflecting current research, resources, best practices, and activities, are designed for educators; however, families, related service providers, community members, and others interested in bolstering student achievement by family-school-community partnerships are encouraged to view them.

The modules are flexible and may be used as professional development, individual enrichment, team capacity building, or a combination of applications. Each module contains content notes and one or more activities that may be utilized with the unit or independently, and activities may be interchangeable amongst modules, depending on your needs. Further capacity building may be achieved by exploring the references and resources found at the end of each module.

The modules are ADA accessible, and citations to research are included. While we encourage you to adapt the trainings to meet your LEA’s needs, we respectfully request that you do not edit the research or legal content.