By The Challenge Success Team
“I thought it was okay for high school students to sleep five or six hours a night if they made up for it on the weekends.” – Parent, Overloaded and Underprepared
Over the past 20+ years of working with and coaching a diverse range of schools, we’ve discovered that true and lasting school transformation happens when the entire school community is empowered. When every voice is heard, every member has a role, and everyone has a deep understanding of student well-being, engagement, and belonging, schools become vibrant places where students and adults thrive together.
Family and community engagement in school is critical to transforming the student experience, which is why it’s an integral part of our change process. From integrating more parent education into school settings, to empowering educators to be co-designers with students, read on to learn how your school can approach meaningful community engagement!
Related: Learn more about how we transform schools across the country through these case studies and more!
Utilizing the S.P.A.C.E. Framework in Schools
We have organized our research-based, equity-centered strategies into a framework we call S.P.A.C.E. This framework embodies our vision to create educational systems that value each student for their unique identities, assets, and individual definitions of success and effectively prepare them for the variety of opportunities and challenges they will encounter in school and beyond.
In this blog post, we will focus on the fifth component: (E): Education for Everyone, which promotes engaging the entire school community – students, families, and educators – as partners working together to achieve the school’s overall mission and goals.
(E): Education for Everyone with Family and Community Engagement
Research shows that including a variety of different school community members in the design and implementation of a school change is critical to its success (read more about the research in our book, Overloaded and Underprepared). From incorporating student voice into policy/program changes to hosting parent and teacher education workshops, involving the full school community creates higher levels of engagement and investment in the school transformation process.
For example, during a “Well-Balanced Student” session at Dominguez High School, our team provided the community with in-depth training about how families can advocate for themselves and their children. Kehillah Jewish High School brought students and faculty together for a joint well-being workshop to have the community collaboratively brainstorm ways to have a more balanced schooling experience.
Another powerful example is from Vista Del Lago High School (VDLHS). Using the Challenge Success “I Wish” Campaign Model, the VDLHS Challenge Success team gathered student voices on what they wished their parents knew about them/their lives. In this video, parents and students react to the various “I Wish” statements, aiming to form trust and communication between parents and their children.
However, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for every school: your community has specific nuances and needs! In the Challenge Success School Partnership, we collaborate with schools to identify and implement community-specific strategies to improve well-being, belonging, and engagement.
4 Ways to Promote Family and Community Engagement
Here are four research-backed ways your school can promote community engagement:
- Provide culturally-relevant family education to share and discuss the latest research on student well-being, belonging, and engagement in learning. Create opportunities for dialogue about how families might support areas such as: sleep education, time management tools, and finding the right fit for college.
- Build on each school community’s assets by inviting families and school staff as guest speakers, incorporating family or cultural perspectives, or bringing in family members’ professional experiences to support classroom needs.
- Gather community-specific data using surveys for parents/caregivers as well as educator/staff surveys to integrate and interpret the whole community’s perspectives on student experiences of well-being, engagement, and belonging.
- Amplify student voice and experience data into your process for improving school policies and practices through student fishbowls, advisory councils, and other listening-in protocols.
Related: Bring our Purposeful Parenting in an AI World workshop to your school!
Ready for Action?
Learn how to collaboratively improve the student experience and school outcomes in your community using the SPACE framework!
The Challenge Success School Partnership is an inclusive, community-driven collaboration that leverages the Challenge Success Change Process to transform the student experience within your school. Our program is a research-backed way to prioritize student well-being while also deepening engagement with learning and enhancing belonging.
Together, we will center the student experience, gather and interpret community-voice data, design research-based, equitable policy and practice changes, and create community-specific outcomes for all students. Learn more about how we can collaborate with your school community this year!
Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education – elevates student voice and implements research-based, equity-centered strategies to increase well-being, engagement, and belonging in K-12 schools.