Cultivating and sustaining effective family engagement is some of the most important work educators do, and yet, with everything else on educators’ plates, sometimes the link home to families doesn’t get the attention it deserves. A forum on May 6 in East Hartford aims to change that by focusing on strategies and best practices for linking family engagement to student learning.
The forum will feature keynote speaker Karen Mapp, Ed.D., a senior lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the faculty director of the Education Policy and Management master’s program. Over the past 20 years, Mapp’s research and practice focus has been on the cultivation of partnerships among families, community members, and educators that support student achievement and school improvement. She is the author and coauthor of several articles and books about the role of families and community members in the work of student achievement and school improvement.
The forum will be held at the East Hartford Holiday Inn, 100 East River Drive, and consists of two different sessions.
- The first session, Family Engagement for Driving Student Success, will take place from 1:30-4:45 p.m. and is tailored to the needs of schools and districts. Participants are encouraged to come in teams. The theme will be leveraging the school improvement plan and the new educator evaluation system parent feedback component to improve family engagement and promote best practices and authentic engagement.
Participants will have the opportunity to participate in breakout workshops that will provide tools and strategies for implementation in their own schools and districts. Click here for descriptions of breakout workshops.
- The second session, Rethinking Our Direction for Engaging Parents, will take place from 5-7 p.m. and will be relevant for all stakeholders: parents, teachers, administrators, and community members. It will cover how we can shift our thinking from traditional family engagement activities to high-impact strategies that boost student learning — and why our schools won’t improve unless we do.
The forum is free, but pre-registration is required. Click here or call 860-257-9782 to register before May 1.
This community forum is part of a series sponsored by CEA, the American Federation of Teachers Connecticut, CommPACT, Connecticut Federation of School Administrators, Connecticut National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Connecticut PTSA, Connecticut State Department of Education, Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission, and Urban League of Greater Hartford.
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