Family Engagement

Online Seminars for CTLE

Increasing Multilingual Learner Family Engagement (5 hours) Families are a critical component of their child’s success in school. This seminar will focus on what culturally sensitive engagement looks like for multilingual learner (MLL) families and how to create an effective plan for your school or district.

Involving and Interacting with Families (5 hours) - This seminar examines how and when teachers should provide information about student progress and the instructional program to families. Participants will explore how to successfully engage families in the instruc­tional program with professionalism and keen cultural sensitivity, as well as how students can participate and contribute ideas to the program.

Student Behavior Part III (5 hours) - This seminar explores methods for responding to student misbehavior, including intervention strategies, family involvement, use of external resources, respecting dignity, and preventative responses.

Student Learning and Achievement (5 hours) - Participants will evaluate how teacher, student, family, and school community involvement create accountabili­ty for student achievement in which all members support the value of learning.

Teacher to Student Interactions (5 hours) - This seminar examines the teacher’s role of interacting with students in an environment of respect and rapport. Participants will explore when and how to use effective verbal and nonverbal skills and work with families to enhance their relationships with students.

Online and Remote Courses for Graduate Credit

Establishing Parental Partnerships as a Framework for Student Success (CURI 6539) - This course focuses on the family systems theory models as a guide to understanding, appreciating, and supporting diverse families. It introduces the participants to contemporary issues such as working with linguistically diverse and immigrant families. It provides strategies on how to deal with families going through divorce, remarriage, or military employment; families dealing with financial difficulties, natural disasters, and violence. Participants examine families that face hunger, chronic illness, death in the family, and students with parents in prison. They will also examine the use of the latest technology as a communication tool. In this course participants will review the 9 principles of family support in schools. This course is designed to help teachers find ways to partner with parents to help build successful students.

VESi-Early Childhood: Family Centered Services (EDV 528) - Welcome to Early Childhood: Family-Centered Services, a course that seeks to promote the development of thoughtful, knowledgeable, effective educators for a diverse society. The course provides conceptual frameworks for working with families of children from a variety of backgrounds. Course content places an emphasis on family-centered practices designed to help early childhood professionals involve and support families in the care and education of children.

Building Positive Connections With Diverse Families and Communities (CURI 6505) - Developing strong and positive connections with families and communities is critical in our educational settings today. This course will explore and discuss diverse perspectives that are critical to school-community relationships.

In-Person and Virtual Synchronous Seminars

Building Capacity in NYS for Family-School Engagement Linked to Learning Initiatives - The framework for this initiative revolves around the work of Karen Mapp. This initiative creates and implements family engagement practices designed to promote positive student outcomes and career and college readiness and success. In addition, a critical part of the program is to build capacity of educators (beliefs, understanding, skills, and confidence) to engage and partner with families in ways linked to student learning, strengthen family’s beliefs about the role they play in their children’s education. Enhance parental/family knowledge about educational policies and programs. Increase family’s portfolios of tools and activities they can use to support their children’s learning. (6 hours)

SRP and K-12 Practitioners: Family Engagement Home Visits - This session will introduce an evidence-based Family School Engagement visit approach based on tenets of trust, active listening, collaboration, and cultural responsiveness where educators are asked to develop new understandings related to the diversity of the families and communities they serve.  During this session, educators will be immersed in a series of capacity building activities including practicing, modeling and role-playing scenarios and use of a coaching map to ensure the Home Visit conversation. (3 hours)

SRP and K-12 Practitioners: Family Engagement for Middle and High School Families - This session will examine research-based practices and strategies for building capacity to support family-school engagement at the secondary level. (2-3 hours)

Family Engagement Linked to Learning - This session explores new evidence on family school engagement practices that accelerate student learning.  While some parents may support fundraising events, attend back to school nights and celebrations and participate in parent organizations, these involvement activities have a lower impact on student learning.  During this session educators will examine “touch points” that the school has with families and examine higher impact strategies and family engagement practices that work in concert with classroom instruction and student learning.  Some of the strategies include academic/parent teacher teams, data sharing, student led conferences and parent support networks. (2 - 3 hours)

SRP: Family Partnerships to Improve Classroom Behavior - This seminar engages educators in discussing the benefits of having consistent and positive family school partnerships through frequent communication.  Family Partnerships to Improve Classroom Behavior focuses on how educators can improve and enhance classroom behaviors and relationships with the students and families they serve. (3 hours)

Increasing Family Engagement to Promote the Achievement of ELLs - What are some approaches educators can use to develop effective partnerships with bilingual families? In this session, you will examine ways to increase family engagement and improve the home-school connection with the families of our English learners while taking into consideration the four stages of immigrant parent involvement. (3 hours)

Increasing Family Engagement to Promote the Achievement of ELLs - Participants will examine a multitude of ways to develop effective home-school partnerships with the families of our English learners. Initial activities work to increase familiarity with the diverse cultures of the community to identify their needs, create a more welcoming school environment, and develop culturally responsive, two-way communication. The culminating activity will be to create an engagement plan in accordance with the requirements in ESSA that targets specific academic outcomes for ELLs while strengthening the meaningful engagement of diverse families. (6 hours)

Positive Parent-Teacher Communication - This seminar engages educators in reviewing the benefits of having consistent and positive parental/guardian involvement and communication. The seminar will address tips for developing relationships with parents, importance of effective and timely communication and more! (3 hours & 6 hours)

SRP and K-12 Practitioners: Re-imagining Family Engagement After Coronavirus - This session encourages participants to assess family engagement efforts during the time of the COVID-19. To understand how and in what ways family engagement is linked to students’ learning and academic success. In addition, this program introduces high impact family engagement strategies that can be implemented and leveraged for student learning when schools reopen. (2,3 & 4 hours)

The Power of Academic Parent Teacher Team (APTT) - Academic Parent Teacher Teams (APTT), an innovative approach to conducting parent teacher conference—it’s a way to build the dual capacity of family and schools to improving academic outcomes for students.  During this six-hour session, participants examine the essential elements of the APTT model, which includes facilitating three meetings a year, plus a 30-minute individual conference with families. Teachers will learn how to facilitate the process, hear about lessons learned related to implementation as well as work in groups to being planning to implement an APTT program in their school. (3 hours)