Getting parents more engaged and involved in their children’s elementary schooling provides enormous benefits for students, teachers, parents themselves, and the overall school community. However, fostering greater parent participation can also be a significant challenge for already overburdened school staff and administrators.
Thankfully, elementary schools have many proven strategies and simple, often free solutions to tap into the deep wells of energy, passion and skillsets among students’ own families and caregivers.
Benefits of Improving Parental Engagement
Before detailing specific tactics elementary schools can employ to boost parent engagement, it’s helpful to review some of the evidence-based benefits of doing so:
- Students with more actively engaged parents tend to have better grades, test scores, attendance and graduate rates
- Students gain motivation through seeing their family’s interest and investment in their schooling
- Teachers and administrators gain helpful insights into their students’ home lives that allow them tailor their teaching methods
- Schools with extensive parent/community engagement enjoy improved reputations and often increased funding options
- Parents who take a more active role in their child’s schooling tend to have better relationships with their children through adolescence and into adulthood
- Parent interactions help schools identify and serve struggling students earlier, mitigating against depression, behavioral issues and delinquency down the road
Clearly, putting time and resources into getting parents more invested in school activities is more than worth the effort on the part of administrators and teachers. Thankfully, technology solutions like user-friendly school management system software have increasingly allowed even resource-strapped elementary schools to implement parent/school engagement initiatives that had once seemed unrealistic or only possible for private schools.
Strategies for Increasing Parental Engagement
Communication
At the most basic level, clearly communicating with parents through multiple platforms can foster engagement simply by helping families stay continually informed and invested. Specific tips include:
- Maintaining email lists for school and even classroom updates
- Creating Facebook groups for each grade, sports programs or special events
- Keeping school and teacher websites and apps continually updated with news, assignment updates and upcoming activities parents can participate in or volunteer for
- Quickly contacting parents at the first sign a student is falling behind or having behavioral or social issues rather than waiting for scheduled meetings
- Proactively seeking parental input through surveys to find areas needing improvement
Scheduling Accommodations
Elementary schools should strive to make events and important meetings outside school hours as parent-friendly as possible by:
- Offering childcare for evening functions whenever feasible
- Promoting and celebrating volunteer opportunities compatible with parents’ work schedules like weekend school improvement projects or assisting with take-home tasks teachers would otherwise have to tackle
- When meetings cannot be scheduled outside work hours, allowing some parents to attend virtually via video-conferencing software
The above table summarizes just some typical barriers for parents attending school functions and engagement opportunities along with feasible solutions elementary school administrators may want to consider when planning their parental involvement initiatives and outreach.
Volunteer Options
Increasing and promoting parent volunteer options has perhaps the greatest potential impact towards getting caregivers invested and engaged with their children’s school community. Possible roles include:
- Assisting teachers with tasks that can be completed from home like copying materials or preparing lesson supplies
- Tutoring struggling students or those needing enrichment in special areas like computer skills, arts and crafts or music
- Speaking to classes about their career or culture to enrich curriculum topics
- Chaperoning field trips
- Coaching sports teams and supervising other extracurricular clubs and activities
When organizing volunteer initiatives, savvy principals create centralized databases using school management system software solutions listing all the opportunities where parents can directly engage. This allows admin to easily tap willing caregivers to fill specific needs as they arise rather than having to continually solicit new helpers.
Rewards Programs
Fun competitions among classes or grades challenging parents to log the most volunteer hours or make the highest rate of attendance at school events will also turbocharge participation. Offering public recognition of winning students creates positive peer pressure. Schools might grant bonuses like discounted field trip fees, points towards purchasing equipment and supplies for a teacher, or even just a celebratory ice cream party for the kids of the most actively engaged parents.
Making Engagement Accessible for All Families
While technology now facilitates schools reaching and informing more parents and making accommodations for busy work schedules, administrators need to ensure they make comparable efforts to enable involvement opportunities for less advantaged families as well.
bridging the Digital Divide
If lower income households have limited internet access for utilizing email groups, websites and apps to stay updated, principals need to emphasize maintaining old-fashioned telephone calling trees and distributing printed flyers through students to disseminate information. Schools can also create programs allowing parents without home computers to access and learn to use school management system software or other digital platforms supporting their child’s education from the school media center after hours.
Providing Needed Resources
Creating welcome environments for less affluent parents often means supplying furnishings and equipment allowing them to participate on an equal footing with households not struggling financially. For instance, serving snacks at meetings and events helps parents who cannot afford child care. Maintaining uniforms and equipment for extracurricular programs allows children to participate regardless of their parents’ ability to purchase these items.
Most importantly, school principals wanting to bridge socio-economic divides hindering some parents’ full engagement may need to take the lead in building those communities themselves rather than expecting financially secure parents to make disadvantaged families feel welcomed and valued automatically.
Conclusion
Parents provide elementary schools an enormous untapped resource to enrich curriculum, improve outcomes, raise funds, tackle projects and generally bring school communities closer together around shared goals of educating children. While programs encouraging greater caregiver engagement do require administrative time and effort, emerging solutions like user-friendly school management system software increasingly automate parent communications and volunteer coordination.
This frees principals and teachers to instead focus efforts on inclusive relationship and consensus building across all parent groups. The substantial dividends – happier teachers, more motivated students and a more equitable and supportive environment distinguishing the entire school – make increasing parent engagement in elementary schools one of the wisest investments of resources administrators can make.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are some small ways elementary schools can foster more parent engagement each day?
Small daily efforts like maintaining updated classroom websites, using software to automatically text parents reminders of due dates, and encouraging teachers to initiate positive communications not just when a problem occurs can greatly foster positive parent engagement.
How can schools promote volunteer initiatives most successfully?
Centralizing volunteer opportunities in an easy-to-use software platform allows admin to match tasks to parents’ skills and availability. Publicly celebrating classes and grades with exceptional participation builds enthusiasm through positive peer pressure.
What responsibilities do school principals have to ensure engagement opportunities accessible for disadvantaged families?
Bridging digital divides with printed communications, serving snacks to allow income-limited parents to attend functions, and securing uniforms and equipment for extracurriculars allows children from disadvantaged families to fully participate. Most crucially, administrators and teachers should build welcoming school communities appreciating all parents for supporting student success.
