4 Surefire Ways to Increase Parent Engagement

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We all know parent engagement is crucial to student success. With many kids practicing eLearning, it’s perhaps more important now than ever before.

Fortunately, many parents were quick to jump on board and help their students with eLearning. In fact, surveys from Learning Heroes and Pearson found that more than two thirds of parents say they’re more involved in their child’s education than ever before.

But while some parents didn’t need prodding, others may need a little help from your district before they feel confident enough to join in. Here are three steps you can take to encourage parent engagement at your district.

1. Educate

Some parents simply don’t realize the important role they play in eLearning. While in-classroom education placed students in the same classroom as their instructors all day long, remote learners no longer have that luxury.

It’s the responsibility of both administrators and teachers to communicate with parents the important role they can play in helping their child succeed. In an ideal environment, the role of “educator” is now a parent-teacher partnership. The teacher may be the head coach, but parents will have to step up as assistants for their child to achieve the best results.

2. Reach Out First

While you may be excellent at striking up conversations, many people are more likely to respond to a message than be the initiator of a chat.

Encourage your district’s educators to make the first move, inviting parents into ongoing conversations about their child’s academics. When teachers open that channel of communication, parents will be more likely to follow suit, responding to inquiries and reaching out themselves when they have questions or concerns.

Ready to get started? Check out the Message Center tutorials we created for teachers in the Family Access Toolkit:

SMS 2.0 version

Qmlativ version

Note: Don’t hesitate to share these Power-Ups or any of our Family Access Toolkit videos on your website or social media—that’s what we created them for!

3. Set Families Up for Success

Jacqueline Jeffus is a full-time online teacher at K12’s California Virtual Academies. Here are a couple tips she offered on setting families up for success.

Be consistent: Remote learning is not like the traditional classroom where you can sometimes get away with only reaching out once a quarter for conferences. Teachers should get in touch in a way that works for families and make sure that connection is consistent.

Host online orientations: Teachers should consider hosting two orientation sessions—one with students and the other with parents. Use this time to introduce everyone to the video conferencing tools, learning management system, and any other tools they’ll be using throughout the term. Walk them through use of each of the platforms and answer any questions.

4. Make It Easy

If your district is not using push notifications, now’s the time to start! With push notifications in Skyward, for instance, you can eliminate the need for parents to log in to Skyward or check their email to find out about missing assignments, test scores, or communication in the Message Center.

Check out this video tutorial for parents! It can be found in the Family Access Toolkit.

By using push notifications, you’ll make it even easier for parents to stay in the know about their child’s education—and make stories like this one more likely:
 

 

eLearning provides a special opportunity for parents to play an increased role in their child’s success at school. Don’t let this opportunity pass them by! Encourage parents to get involved—and make it easy for them to do so—and you’ll set your students up for success.
 

Follow-Up Resource: Family Access Toolkits

We've already done the work of kickstarting parent engagement for you! Check out the Family Access Toolkits for the tools you need to get your whole district family engaged.