COVID-19 brought the accountability monster to its knees. Principals are conditioned to prioritize responsibilities like standardized testing, teacher observations, and school safety drills, but this past year was a recalibration for thinking about what actions actually matters. In my experience, that meant building trust and partnering with our families to support our students. Our school leadership team always knew, at least in theory, that teaching and learning is unsuccessful absent trust between schools and caregivers, teachers, and students. But during a pandemic, relationships with caregivers become a matter of educational survival.
Whose Job Is Engagement, Anyway?
In my first year as a principal, I tallied up the number of parent events and attendees, as if those statistics had something to do with engagement. There had been very little mentioned in my leadership education classes on engaging the community, so I was winging it.
As Muhammed Khalifa describes in his book Culturally Responsive School Leadership, this lackadaisical approach suggests that western interpretations of school leadership place the principal solely accountable to the school, rather than as an extension of the community. This is a result of white supremacy culture, which is deeply embedded in the way we educate a diverse student body. In our case, cultural, racial, and economic differences between a majority white, middle-class teaching staff, and a primarily Spanish-speaking community of parents, many of whom are recent immigrants, can create enormous challenges in bridging home-school trust and collaboration. Much gets lost in translation around tone and emotion, especially when relying on technology alone. The expectation is often to let the principal focus solely on the big picture—test scores and other narrow definitions of learning assessment—and leave community-building work with parents and caregivers to teachers, counselors, or parent liaisons, especially educators of color and equity-minded folks.
For example, prior to the pandemic, I would consult with teacher leaders around pedagogical initiatives, but never thought to gather caregiver input on how they wanted their children to learn. I would host learning nights for parents to share shifts in math standards, without ever considering having parents teach us their funds of cultural knowledge around mathematics as a way to increase entry points for student learning. I'm still grappling with how to structure this genuine collaboration with families.
The more I lead, the more I realize just how much power and influence school leaders wield in creating the conditions for inclusive community environments. It is not enough to intend to involve parents; we must critically examine how we involve them.
More important than the number of workshops or events is the quality of our interactions and how authentic our families can be in these spaces. Do we talk at our parents, running through a list of agenda items? Are we dictating a set of parameters for involvement and only engaging them during parent teacher conferences and learning nights? Are we only communicating with parents for disciplinary or academic issues? Whose voices do we allow and whose do we exclude? I constantly reflect on these questions, knowing I still have much to do in undoing white supremacy culture in my interactions with caregivers.
Authentic Spaces for Communication
In the pandemic's sudden shift to virtual learning, educators relied much more heavily on caregivers to coordinate instruction—which made visible the challenges that lay ahead. Many parents were struggling with the loss of family members or how to put food on the table. Our school's pre-pandemic involvements of culture and climate surveys and our availability of language translators weren't enough to cultivate the relationships required to identify and support a new set of needs. My intentions for creating an inclusive school environment, I realized, did not align with my actions.
At the start of the 2020-2021 school year, my third year as principal, a small group of teacher leaders and support staff, along with myself and my vice-principal, instituted virtual monthly caregiver forums. In previous years, we'd provided opportunities for caregivers to visit classrooms to experience instruction with their children, but we never provided real time and space for dialogue between parents, teachers, and school leadership.
With any new endeavor, there is always a learning curve. I leaned heavily on Shane Safir's book The Listening Leader for frameworks around deep listening with families and Muhammed Khalifa's Culturally Responsive Leadership for a culturally responsive leadership roadmap. Prior to the first forum, I met with a dedicated group of educators to clarify the initiative's purpose and the structure. These educators co-facilitated breakout sessions with groups of parents so that caregivers would feel more comfortable and have adequate opportunity to speak.
The first forum in October had over 70 caregivers in attendance—more people than we've ever had for a school learning night. We scheduled the event well in advance so parents could make time and used communication apps, Google Classroom, and phone calls to spread the word. Creating space to learn which issues were most important to caregivers required intentionality through shared norms. We utilized Shane Safir's trust-building strategies and asked questions like, "What feelings are you carrying about virtual learning?" and "How can we best support your child?" We also started each forum with a summary of the feedback and concerns from the previous session and what actions we were taking to address them.
This process helped us better understand students' and caregivers' needs, so we could reach out to support individual families. Following each forum, we shared the information we'd learned with our teacher leaders, specialists, and grade-level teams. Pairing caregiver feedback with achievement data helped us center parent voices, while improvement science identified the cultural and pedagogical investments we'd need to make long term. One concern from caregivers was student engagement and personalized attention during virtual instruction. We began to incorporate more small-group time and have support staff serve as one-on-one mentors for struggling students.
Navigating Bumps Along the Way
The caregiver forums helped us see our practices through parents' eyes and become more aware of our own cultural lens. After the first virtual forum, a parent shared her perception that her child's teacher was not communicating effectively regarding the students' learning schedule. At that moment, I realized an important part of this work is preparing educators to approach our parents with a deep listening stance, recognizing that we will sometimes feel discomfort when caregivers speak their truth.
Connecting is difficult, but not impossible. During forums, we pair a Spanish-speaking staff member with a non-Spanish speaking staff member as small group facilitators to bridge understanding. Afterward, educators take time to reflect on their thoughts, feelings, and challenges. For example, teachers noticed that parents wanted to discuss their children's progress during the forum. We now do a better job of communicating the intention of these sessions—to dialogue about resources, policies, and the culture of the school and learning environment. I schedule time after forums to engage in one-on-one conversations with parents and facilitate connections between school staff and caregivers to discuss student progress when necessary.
We also devoted more time than the traditional 15-minute conference slot during our regular one-to-one family meetings between teachers, students and caregivers. This helped educators learn more information about students that could not found in a reading level or report card. Parents had space to cite strengths and establish common goals. through was important. We made time for follow up one to one family sessions in December so teachers could provide specific, actionable feedback on student progress and elicit input from parents.
Our school has more work to do, but I'm hopeful that these conversations will force us to look in the mirror more often and be more responsive to the community we serve.
Holding Up the Mirror
Intentions are just intentions. We can never know our impact if we don't ask, and we risk reproducing oppressive practices when we don't. When school initiatives exclude the individuals who have the most at stake in the decision making process, especially in marginalized and segregated school districts, everyone's well-being suffers. Truly engaging parents requires the courage to remove barriers between home, community with radical transparency. As leaders, we have the power to put the focus back on authentic relationships that will make the school experience better for the students we serve.
