On the Same Team: Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_00:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Ari Gerzen-Kessler. Ari leads the Family Partnerships Department for the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado, and he's also an educational consultant working with districts committed to forging stronger school-family partnerships. Ari has been an educator since 2000, having served as a principal and bilingual teacher, and he was the recipient of the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund, which allowed him to study the education system in Japan. His latest book is On the Same Team, Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together, which we're here to talk about today. Ari, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thanks, Justin.

[00:54]

It's great to be here.

[00:55] SPEAKER_01:

Appreciate the invitation.

[00:56] SPEAKER_00:

Ari, help us understand your area of expertise around family engagement. Often in schools, we get some family engagement, but we're usually not happy with it. Sometimes we get too much engagement from some families that we wish would back off a little bit, and we wish we could get broader family engagement. from a wider range of families. Help us understand your field and what needs you saw in the profession for the material that you talk about in the book.

[01:25] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, thanks, Justin. When I was a principal, I saw on the one hand that certain practices really fostered high levels of trust with families and made a real difference, even if they were very efficient strategies for us as a staff in fostering better relationships. And I came into a school in my second principalship where trust was broken and doing things like a morning award ceremony around character and academics and having that open door as a principal, making positive phone calls, leveraging some of these best practices made a real difference in us harnessing better relationships. On the other hand, I saw that we weren't utilizing some of the stronger family engagement practices. I regret tremendously looking back on my principal days that when we designed family engagement evenings like a literacy night or back to school night, you can guess how many families we had sitting around the table with zero.

[02:21]

It was all staff design. So from both some practices that I had really seen make a significant impact as well as those regrets, when this opportunity came along to actually lead a family partnerships department, I felt inspired and, you know, I'm in a district that's affluent yet has about a quarter or more of our families are from underrepresented communities. And what I saw were pretty high levels of disconnect between staff and families across language, cultural, racial, other barriers. And what I heard from people in the system, and this is a school district where I actually finished high school myself, was that for decades we had been guessing what families needed instead of actually asking them questions. listening, and then putting into place their suggestions on how we could better partner with them. And there was this phrase that's always stuck with me that they say, nothing about us without us.

[03:10]

And we essentially had been guessing and doing a lot for families, but it had resonated. So for me, it was this question then of how do we bridge a variety of gaps? And through these teams, which are at the heart of my book, By centering family voices, we've really uncovered a number of different gaps, from trust gaps to relationship gaps to access gaps and several more. And our work as educators and school leaders has been, once we've listened to families, how do we actually show follow through and co-create some meaningful changes?

[03:42] SPEAKER_00:

I wonder if we could talk a little bit about what families are looking for, what families want, because when we don't succeed in getting families to show up, clearly we've guessed wrong, but that doesn't give us necessarily a better idea to try again. As you've worked with lots and lots of families and now with a number of different schools in your current role, what are some of the things that parents tend to want, especially parents that historically have not been as engaged or that have been harder to reach because of the way we do things in schools?

[04:12] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I love that question because it really gets at the heart of what can we do in any school, whether you have a team like these Families and Educators Together teams that the book's based on, or you're just trying to up-level your family engagement or partnership approach. I would say, Justin, some of the pivotal needs I've seen across the 27 schools I work with regularly, whether it's elementary, middle, or high school, is families want us to ask them how they'd like to be communicated with. Many of our schools continue the email blast and we have parents almost every other night I'm with families, they say, we're overwhelmed with too many emails. So a lot of families are wanting more texts, more communication that's personalized to their preferences. I think another piece that comes through is schools showing flexibility in terms of scheduling. So principal might host a coffee with the principal.

[05:03]

It really is best practice, but not common where a school should offer that at two times, maybe for working families. you know, a 5.30, 6 o'clock. And then again, for other families, another day that week at, you know, 8 or 8.30 in the morning. So that flexibility where it's really centered around what's best for families, not the tradition we have of really typically what's best for us as educators and most convenient, which I totally understand because we're always overstretched, but accommodating families' needs.

[05:29]

And then another piece that comes to mind is just us listening and kind of flipping the imbalance. You know, when you think about parent-teacher conferences, you've sat in as a principal or you led as a teacher, typically the educator's talking 80, 90% of the time. It's what I've noticed in my own experiences and observing many conferences. And so I think one need from families is for us to see them as the true experts on their children that they are and to spend more time kind of taking off our expert hat and meeting them more on a human level and truly building a relationship in that fashion. And the final thing I'll add, because there's a lot of needs I think our families have, you know, a final one that comes to mind is more ongoing two-way communication. What families say in my district and other districts is, especially at the middle and high school level, I'm often just hearing from you during conferences with the report card, I really would like

[06:30]

some channels of ongoing communication, ideally some positive news along with the kind of academic updates. So those are four things that come to mind.

[06:39] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned positive communication again, because you said as a principal, making positive phone calls is one of the things that really made a difference for your relationship with families.

[06:49] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I appreciate you highlighting that, because that was really, if I had to say why I'm in this role, it was probably the experience with positive phone calls. And I got it as a principal and an assistant principal from a book. And tried it out as an AP and then brought it to five different schools in terms of an actual system. And I'll say, Justin, the impact of it to surprise families at home or work with that positive news about their kid was the most rewarding part of my job. It sparked motivation for the kid. Parents felt happily surprised, had more trust for us.

[07:25]

And in the last 10 years, I've seen how much the research backs that up as a great practice. And literally, I would spend as a principal 15 minutes making five calls on a Friday. And by the end of the year, with that consistency, it's about 200 families getting a call. I think we need to utilize some of those best practices with more frequency, intentionality, and a lot of the wonderful principles that I work closely with now I think we've discovered it's about integrating and carving out the time that if we're asking staff to do that, we can't expect them to do that at six at night. Ideally, we're, as we've learned through the Family and Educator Together teams or FET teams, When we want to implement best practices that educators will have bandwidth for, it's vital to weave in the time to say a staff meeting where the principal says, we're canceling the last 15 minutes so that you can go make three or four positive calls.

[08:18]

Whether it's positive calls, positive texts, positive postcards, positive emails, the return on investment is just massive compared to the time invested.

[08:28] SPEAKER_00:

Well, Ari, I know a lot of the approach that you describe in the book centers around teams, what you call families and educators together teams. First of all, why do we need to think about a team approach to family engagement? And then second, maybe you can take us into some of the detail on how those teams are designed.

[08:45] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the core shifts that in the field we're trying to make is from family involvement to family partnerships and involvement over the last many decades in our country and elsewhere has been characterized by a very one way looking at how families connect with schools. Did they show up at conferences? Did they come to back to school night? And it's very evaluative and one sided.

[09:09]

Whereas what we're trying to move towards in terms of authentic partnerships is that co-creating events having it be two-way in terms of the relationship and so in terms of authentic partnerships and shifting from guessing or telling families what they need to know and flipping that to how can we learn how to better partner with families by listening to them and learning with them the teams really they started out as a small pilot at a few schools And in the first three or four years we learned a lot from both successes and struggles. And what we've seen is that families really need this space to both learn how our school system works, especially our immigrant families that have, you know, went as parents themselves to schools in other countries. And we're at the point where more than 20 million US children are from immigrant families.

[10:00]

I think it's about 27% of student population. So we can't assume that they just know how our schools work. And if we truly wanna partner with them, we have to create a space to inform them beyond the emails we send so that's one part of the equation the other piece that feels vital is creating a space where we actually can ask them questions and learn how can we better communicate this information about events or how we do things at school as well as how do we build a better relationship how do we create a more inclusive community my recollection in my principal years again with regret is At our different PTA, other gatherings, the principal, myself, or someone else would talk to families for about 90% of the time we're together. And then the last 10% is what questions do you have? Whereas the FET teams are really about let's listen to families more than they listen to us.

[10:52]

And let's... have them help us illuminate our barriers, our blind spots, our biases that are actually making it harder for many of our families to feel like they truly belong and are valued in our community. The teams really were based on that idea. And during the fifth year, when we had nine teams and five new ones launching, I finally saw the ingredients for effective gatherings.

[11:21]

And so it's been really satisfying to see all those new teams since 2019 really thriving as we put into play the different ingredients involved. for a dynamic 90-minute gathering once a month that's really bringing people together across cultural, linguistic, racial, and other differences to collaborate in a professional learning community that is giving families more of the voice and power than we typically do. And the fruits of that have been just wonderful to see, which is part of why I wrote the book, because I feel like every school community really needs and benefits from creating this kind of space with intentionality and investing the time and energy, but it reaps a lot of rewards.

[12:01] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I wonder if we could talk about some of those because I'm interested in hearing, you know, what, what kinds of inputs families have given in the schools that you work with and what kinds of changes that have been made. Cause I like, I think there's a certain temptation to, to view things like this as a performative obligation where it's like, okay, I have to have the meeting and I have to give the survey. And then once we've done that, we've checked that box and then we can kind of move on. And then of course, nothing changes if it's just an exercise to check a box. So talk to us about some of the substantive changes that have come out of these partnerships with families.

[12:31] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, a couple of it come to mind right off the bat. One is one of our larger high schools where for instance, the meetings were held consistently in Spanish. There's more than 300 Latino families that had years ago felt kind of on the margins of the school. And so one of the projects we engaged in when they said, wow, there's so much about how this school functions that we weren't aware of.

[12:54]

And as a result, our kids and us as families are often missing out on taking advantage of these great opportunities the school is putting together. So we co-created a frequently asked questions document that would be for all families. And that meant asking the families, what are all the things a new family or family that has not felt connected to the school would wanna know to better connect with the school? They drove the question crafting process, principal and the team leaders completed most of the answers. And then we went back and got their feedback and they said, make that shorter, stop using so many acronyms. And essentially we co-created that document that now gives families information about afterschool clubs, advanced courses, all kinds of things that truly create equitable access.

[13:41]

And that same high school now is Working on a project through the FET team to have the parent leaders serve as tour guides and welcoming phone calls when new families arrive, whether from another district, another state or another country. So really harnessing and cultivating parent leadership to support new families and new students. So that's kind of an example from the high school realm. And then I'll share with you, you know, one from the elementary level. The second team meeting, once we had made it really clear, we want your honest, constructive advice. And this is a space for you to just be candid with us.

[14:15]

It's the only way we're going to improve as a school. And the principal was very humble about that. Families revealed two major things. They said, we essentially, seven weeks into the year, many of us don't know our teacher's, child's teacher's name. We have not received communication in our language, so there's a major gap. And so what we did to address that was there's a wonderful app called Talking Points, and we trained the majority of the staff that was working with multilingual families.

[14:43]

And literally, Justin, from 2019, when all the families were going through one staff member who was not a classroom teacher with their communication skills, and relationships as a result were not being cultivated with those teachers to where teachers sent out in that next year after the FET team gathering 2,800 text messages to families, they got 3,500 back. And so it opened the doors to true two-way communication. The other thing in that evening that I'll never forget is, you know, we were talking about parent-teacher conferences that had just unfolded and families felt like it hadn't met their needs. And so They hadn't had a chance to share what they knew about their kid, ask enough questions, answer questions even from the teacher. And we did two simple things. You know, we said, OK, if you're having an interpreter to make it more equitable, you should have more time since your 20 minute conference is essentially 10 with an interpreter.

[15:39]

So we bolstered that to half an hour. And I offered a 20 minute training to the staff, a pretty succinct PD on how do we create a more balanced conversational two-way culturally responsive conference with families. And it was incredibly rewarding four months later when we then asked the same parents What was your experience in the second round? And they said, I felt heard. I felt valued. I really had a chance to tell the teacher ahead of time because they asked what I most wanted out of this conference.

[16:09]

So some of these changes towards stronger partnerships are not about more time investment or investing a lot of money or other resources. It's really gaining insight from families and then with their support and guidance, putting it into practice. And fortunately, we have so many teacher champions and wonderful principals who are just hungry. And as one of them said at this school, he said, I'm getting from this team everything I need because I don't know how to do this on my own. I don't have this expertise. And with the guidance of families and colleagues, I now feel like I'm reaching all of my communities were his words.

[16:45]

So super rewarding that creating that space is leading to that kind of learning and new innovative ways to partner with families for principals and teachers alike.

[16:54] SPEAKER_00:

Wow, those are great examples. I'm very impressed. And part of it certainly is just the perspective that we can't have as educators firsthand, because we know where everything is. We know how everything works. And it's impossible to take yourself back to that point of being new to the school. You can't unknow all the things you know.

[17:11]

And it's very hard to imagine or empathize with someone who is new to your school and trying to figure things out. you know they don't know who all the people are and where all the things are and how everything works and i was thinking about just the power of going outside your school and trying to get in your school and trying the doors and looking for signs and trying to find where the office is and things like that things like that it can be eye-opening to try to take that parent perspective But to take it that much further and say like, what do you wish you had known as a parent is so, so powerful. So thank you for those terrific examples. Talk to us about why this is work for each school to do and not just a set of best practices. Because I know you've identified a lot of best practices. Some of those have even been promoted at the state level as best practices for family partnership.

[17:58]

Why is it important for schools to engage in this type of work with their specific families rather than just, you know, implement practices that they learn about from elsewhere.

[18:07] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, great. I mean, a couple things come to mind. One is, and again, it speaks to some of my regrets as a teacher and principal, is some of these great partnership practices for a school are often a nice to-do of, oh, if I have time, I'll go make a home visit. Instead of prioritizing it, When we know there's many practices that are not just good for relationships, but translate to higher student learning. And, you know, Tony Brick did some research in Chicago more than a decade ago that showed that stronger school family partnerships is one of the five keys to move from a good to great school or good to great classroom. And so that has really...

[18:48]

drove this work in conjunction with the fact that I was fascinated in uncovering the research and writing the book that if you ask teachers, as the MetLife survey did several years ago, in what area do you feel least confident or least prepared? They said engaging with families. So on the one hand, it's vitally important, yet many of us feel lacking in confidence or preparedness for it. So to your question of the need, As educators, we get on the ground kind of live professional learning when we create these spaces to engage with families and break bread with them. All the FET meetings start with dinner together before we dive into other practices. And so it's really that the team is to help families access and feel more connected and a greater sense of belonging.

[19:38]

So that's a need in every school community, I think. In every school, there are families that feel marginalized, underrepresented. And typically, there's a handful of parents that have access to the principal, but many other parents feel at a distance, and many of those want to feel more strongly connected. So I think there's a host of benefits for families to have this space. to really get to know educators on this more human level and have their perspectives heard, valued, appreciated. But in some ways, the FET teams have been even more vital in terms of revealing to us all these pathways for us to better meet the needs and grow as educators.

[20:16]

Just like the research says, home visits are fantastic for developing our cultural competency as educators. The FET teams create a space where We're able over time through vulnerability on both sides for teachers and principals to say, hey, we're really stuck right now. We had only 20% of families from this demographic come to our back to school night. What are we doing wrong or what's missing? How could we do it better? You know, we always as educators have good intentions, but I think we have a tendency to also maintain the status quo of, oh, we'll just do back to school night this way because that's how we've done it the last 25 years.

[20:53]

And I also get it that we're limited always with time as this scarce resource in education. So it's harder to innovate, I think, than business or other areas. But that said, once we create this space, some of these pivots are small and powerful. I'll give you one example. One of our elementary schools asked the FET team, how could we create a more meaningful back to school night where you're not just listening to the teacher for half an hour? And parents said, we want to connect with other families in the classroom.

[21:24]

We want to connect with the teacher and not just sit and get. they made two major pivots. They had educators record what they would normally share in person, send that out to families ahead of time. And they used that night to engage in team building community activities in the classroom with all the families. And then students led a scavenger hunt throughout the school that helped families feel more comfortable and familiar with the school. So it didn't take any more money.

[21:50]

It didn't take a ton of time. It just took some space to listen to families and then envision kind of a better way of doing it.

[21:59] SPEAKER_00:

Speaking of the time issue, I wonder what you've encountered on this question that, you know, I think as educators, we often get the sense that a lot of families are just very, very busy. They may work multiple jobs. They may work nights. And there's a perception that, you know, if we offered something like this, an opportunity to participate in this way, to partner in this way, that families just wouldn't take us up on it, that they're too busy, they've got too much going on. And as a result, we end up with what we have kind of always had, which is the stereotypical PTA moms who have the free time to participate. How do we engage more families?

[22:31]

And what have you found to actually be the case when it comes to families' availability and willingness to engage in these ways?

[22:37] SPEAKER_01:

It's such a vital question. And it's really one of the foundational ones when we launch a team, knowing that everyone's lives are so busy. And so I think one of the learnings has been, let's not evaluate the meaning or effectiveness of this gathering based on turnout. That some of the richest conversations in our FET teams have been four parents and five educators sitting in a circle together, diving in. So the FET team is predicated on the idea of if we get at least five underrepresented families and five educators in the school leader, they can each represent as stakeholders their communities. That said, of course, we know everyone benefits if we cultivate a larger turnout.

[23:19]

So one of the things we've learned over hundreds of meetings at various schools is we have to both be persistent and multi-pronged in our communication outreach. Often we send a flyer as a school, we write an email, and then we are either disappointed or at times even judgmental of families of, boy, we did that and they didn't even come, versus what we're discovering, which is reach them not only in the ways they like, but in a host of ways. So many of our teams in August are reaching out with a personalized call to a few dozen families, texts, flyers, emails, the auto dialer from the principal, one of the team leaders. And when there's been enough communication, also drawing on parent leader to reach out to other parents. So there's half a dozen strategies. I think part of what we have had to do better and more consistently is use that variety of communication.

[24:15]

And then the other big learning, Justin, which continues to be a growth edge for our teams is if you're a high school that has 250 families that might participate on a PhET team and 15 are showing up, that's wonderful, but what are we doing to engage the other families? And so part of what I've been encouraging our 60-some PhET leaders at various schools is take some good concise minutes of your team meetings, share those highlights with the families that weren't able to attend, and then ideally pose a question to them that sparks some input back from them. And whether or not they're able to regularly attend, they're benefiting from what was shared at the gathering, and they're also enhancing what the school's learning by giving some input. So I think that's a piece knowing that for some families, it's simply going to be challenging.

[25:09]

And as I was saying earlier, maybe find other avenues to engage them if that particular night isn't a good fit with their family life and their work responsibilities.

[25:18] SPEAKER_00:

Well, Ari, it is certainly a compelling vision of family partnership to think about what you've described and what's going on in your district. If you could give a few words of advice to principals and just talk about the principal's role in this work. I know you have been a principal and work with principals and starting and leading these teams. What do you have to say to principals in particular?

[25:39] SPEAKER_01:

I mean, one of the things that comes to mind is I want principals to know the true power and benefits of sitting down with families and hearing their insights and getting their perspectives. It leads to so much innovation. And what I discovered early on with the FET teams was if a principal was invested, the team thrived. So in the fourth year, I stopped trying to recruit principals in particular and drawing upon the positive relationship I built with them over time, I allowed them to basically reach out to me when they were ready to do this deeper work. Because what I discovered was if the principal wasn't invested to be there and be that model and show the staff, this is a commitment worth my own time, the teams tended to falter. Whereas when principals have been invested, it's been amazing to see what's grown out of that.

[26:33]

And I think about when I was researching the book, I learned that there was a province in India where the principals essentially came together with community members, parents, and teachers in an advisory committee. And I remember reading that in that specific spot in Delhi, India, student achievement was higher in almost every area than other parts of India. And to me, that spoke to this power of a collaborative task force that's really coming together ultimately with this goal of how do we create a more inclusive, equitable, and stronger school community? So yeah, I would just say principals are able to gain so much insight. And the biggest thing, Justin, is they don't have to hold this responsibility alone for partnering better with families. By having a team that cultivates a host of teacher champions and parent leaders that then distribute

[27:24]

the leadership around doing this deeper work and really put it back on the school for how, you know, there's a quote, Pedro Nogueira, who's kind of an inspiration to me, education leader. He talks about when we have a garden and the vegetables don't grow and students would be the replacement for vegetables, we don't blame the vegetables. We look at what did we not cultivate just right? And so I think these teams really help principals see how do we cultivate the seeds that will lead to this more just, connected school community. So it's a couple hours max of their time a month and how they feel. And many say at the end of the meeting, I feel inspired.

[28:07]

I feel uplifted. My heart feels full by the connection and conversation we've had tonight. As I was saying earlier, the rewards really outweigh the time invested.

[28:16] SPEAKER_00:

So the book is On the Same Team, Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together. Ari, if people want to get in touch with you, learn more about the work that you're doing to support schools, where's the best place for them to go online?

[28:29] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, thanks. Probably the best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn, searching for Ari Gerzon-Kessler and also Solution Tree. dot com slash R-E-A-R-I. Those are probably the two easiest avenues to reach out. And I love partnering with folks that are dedicated to dampening this work of deeper school family partnerships and really appreciate this opportunity, Justin, to share with everyone in your network.

[28:53] SPEAKER_00:

Well, thank you. Really appreciate your time. And thank you for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[28:57] Announcer:

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