This document discusses strategies for improving equity and engagement in schools. It defines equity as ensuring everyone has access to resources and a voice. Challenges to equity include some groups feeling unheard or disadvantaged. The document recommends focusing on community aspirations, avoiding "edu-babble", and improving student engagement through practices like shadowing and giving students choices. Barriers to family involvement like inflexible schedules are discussed. The document advocates for more teacher and parent representation, home visits, and teacher advocacy and involvement in the community to improve engagement.

1. ENGAGEMENT, NOT
OUTREACH
Using Equity to Empower All Families

2. What is Equity?
• Everyone has access to what they need
• Everyone has a voice
• Everyone’s needs are considered
• Decisions focus on greatest needs, not greatest power

3. Challenges to Equity
• ”Have you ever felt you weren’t heard?”
• ”Do you feel you have access to the resources you need
to thrive?”
• "Have you ever felt disadvantaged by your race, accent,
ethnicity etc in terms of access?"

4. Movie Break!
•Key And Peele, “Substitute Teacher”

5. Large Group Discussion
• Is this video funny, or uncomfortable for
you?
• Have you ever been Mr. Garvey? Have
you ever been one of the students?

6. Barriers to Communication
• Language
• Superiority, lack of respect
• Fear
• Communication styles
• Communication methods

7. Avoiding Edu-babble

8. Can you translate Edubabble into
comprehensible English sentences?
• We will advocate for school-based inquiry throughout multiple modalities within the core
curriculum.
• We will maximize learner-centered experiences and objective learning through the
collaborative process.
• We will synthesize interactive practices and harness collegial Common Core Standards via
thinking, learning and doing.
• We will engineer thematic decision-making to triangulate impactful styles in authentic, real-
world scenarios for our 21st Century learners.
• We will orchestrate discipline-based career and technical education, prioritizing compelling
cohorts with a laser-like focus.
• We will strategize actionable action-items through the experiential based learning process.

9. Engagement, not Outreach: The Harwood
Method
• Turn outward, towards the community
• Focus on community aspirations
• Develop public knowledge to speak with authenticity and
authority

10. Harwood Tool: Aspirations

12. Student Engagement
• Students feel their classes help them understand what’s
happening in the world
• Students feel respected, recognized and cared for
• Students feel self directed

13. Improving Student Engagement
• Student “Shadowing” – experience their day
• Learn student histories
• Look at “opportunity to learn” data
• Give student choices to be self-directed
• Demonstrate equity

14. Perceptions of Equity
• African American students most likely to think schools are
unfair
• Boys are more likely to think schools are unfair

15. Look at Assets, not Deficits
• Non nuclear family/ Strong extended family?
• Uninvolved in school/Involved in faith community?
• Non standard English/Code switching or translating
ability?
• “Bad” example/Leadership qualities?
• “Daydreamer”/Creative talent?

16. Barriers to Family Involvement
Do your policies support and respect …
Family responsibilities,
Parenting traditions and practices within
the community’s cultural and religious diversity?
Disability as another form of diversity?

17. Communication via Trusted Partners
• For the families you want to connect with…
• Where do they get their information?
• Where do they worship?
• Where do they socialize?
• Who are the trusted community leaders?

18. Small Group Activity
List your students’ …
• Place of worship
• Favorite family restaurants
• Non-school sports or arts activities
• Community hero or mentor

19. Engaging Parents
• Let them shine
• Let them show off
• Let them teach you
• Meet them on their turf

20. Disparate Impact
• “Small fees” not so small
• Free time not so free
• Schedules not flexible
• Always feeling criticized
• Always feeling stupid, incompetent

21. Parent Representation
Are your involved parents representative of the population,
including those who are…
• Economically disadvantaged,
• Have limited English proficiency,
• Have disabilities, or have children with disabilities?

22. Home Visits
• Shown to improve student and parent engagement
• Can reach families not responding to phone calls, notes,
email
• Pitfalls: can seem punitive if only used for low income or
“troubled” students

23. Teacher Home Visits

24. Home Visit Demo
• https://player.vimeo.com/video/113515836

25. Community Equity Strategies
• Regularly visit student homes.
• Regularly attend community organization
• meetings, events, and spiritual services.
• Set up systems that allow parents and students
• to express their concerns;
• Host community-based forums where larger
• groups can express their concerns and needs;
• Engage in community-based advocacy work.

26. Models for School Engagement

27. Teacher Advocacy and Involvement
•Instead of asking how involved
parents are in the school, ask:
•How involved are teachers in
the community?

28. Opportunities for Teacher Involvement
• Work with a local nonprofit
• Work with local advocacy groups
• Join a local arts or sports group
• Join a local faith community

29. Honing Your Equity Lense
• Does what we’re doing now meet everyone’s needs?
• Is everyone getting the same “opportunities to learn”?
• Are we contributing to “opportunity hoarding?”
• Am I listening to everyone in the community, or just
• people like me?
• Will this change or this policy widen or narrow the gaps?

30. Resources
• Family Engagement Framework: A Tool for California School
Districts
• Engage Every Family: Five Simple Principles (Corwin
Press. 2016),
• Understand and advocate for communities first: efforts at
education reform and other measures aiming to raise
achievement levels will be more successful if schools first
establish trust-based relationships with parents and their
communities
• Muhammad Khalifa, Noelle Witherspoon Arnold and Whitney
Newcomb Phi Delta Kappan. 96.7 (Apr. 2015): p20.

31. Resources (cont.)
• Home visits: teacher reflections about relationships,
student behavior, and achievement. Ranae Stetson, Elton
Stetson, Becky Sinclair and Karen Nix
• Issues in Teacher Education. 21.1 (Spring 2012):
p21.
• Home Works: The Teacher Home Visit Program
www.teacherhomevisit.org/
• Edubabble bingo http://www.sciencegeek.net/lingo.html

32. Resources (cont.)
• Castagno, E. & Brayboy, B. (2008). Culturally responsive
schooling for Indigenous youth: A review of the literature.
Review of Educational Research, 78 (4), 941-993.
• De Gaetano, Y. (2007). The role of culture in engaging Latino
parents' involvement in school. Urban Education, 42 (2), 145-
162.
•
• Black father involvement in gifted education: thoughts from
black fathers on increasing/improving black father-gifted
teacher partnerships Tarek C. Grantham and Malik S.
Henfield Gifted Child Today. 34.4 (Oct. 2011): p47.

33. Thanks!!
• Lesley Williams
• Head of Adult Services
• Evanston Public Library
• 847-448-8646
• lawilliams@cityofevanston.org
• thecrankylibrarian@yahoo.com