Episode 035: Navigating the Art of Parent-Teacher Collaboration with Alina Davis

Unlock the secrets to fostering strong family engagement in schools with Alina Davis, a visionary from Orange County Public Schools. Our candid discussion peels back the layers of the Parent Academy's success and shares how to tailor family initiatives to meet diverse needs. Discover the art of effective communication and how a strategically organized committee can orchestrate impactful events that resonate with students’ success. We delve into the nuances of cultural diversity, inclusivity, and the dual capacity-building framework that strengthens the bonds between educators and families. Alina provides an arsenal of strategies, from optimizing parent-teacher conferences to employing the question formulation technique, all designed to empower parents and encourage meaningful dialogue.

Feel the pulse of transformative education as we dissect how to bridge the gap between families and schools, creating a welcoming atmosphere that celebrates unique cultural backgrounds. Learn how to streamline messaging and use tools like Talking Points to maintain clarity and avoid overloading families with information. EAina illuminates the value of student-led conferences and academic parent-teacher teams, offering insights into effective ways to engage parents in their children's education. This episode is a treasure trove for educators seeking to craft clear, supportive, and engaging relationships with families. Join us for a masterclass in nurturing the educational environment where every family feels seen and supported.

Alina Davis is a Senior Manager with Federal Programs for Orange County Public Schools (OCPS), where she consults with private schools in utilizing grant funds. In her prior role she served on the district wide Family Engagement team,  coordinating Parent Academy events for families and students as well as coaching engagement liaisons in Title I schools. During her last 27 years with OCPS Alina  has taught  grades k-3 and worked as an ELL Compliance Specialist and Exceptional Education Staffing Specialist. Alina’s interests in research include the whole child approach, equity and poverty, and parent and family engagement. Alina holds a Bachelor’s in Early Childhood Education, a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction and a Specialist ‘s degree in Educational Leadership. Alina has also served on the ASCD Board of Directors as is an ASCD Emerging Leader.

Alina embeds family engagement in her work, including coordinating district wide Parent Academies and coaching parent engagement liaisons.

Linked in https://www.linkedin.com/in/alina-davis-3672369/ 

Twitter  https://twitter.com/alinadavis 

This episode is sponsored by Plan Z Professional Learning Services.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:18

Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, a podcast about paring down to refocus on the purpose and priorities in our roles with co-hosts and co-authors of the Minimalist Teacher Book, Tammy Musiowsky-Borniman and Christine Arnold.

Speaker 2: 0:34

In this episode, Elina speaks with us about family engagement and communication. She shares lots of tools and strategies with us and her pared down pointer is a reminder not to be too wordy. Elina Davis is a senior manager with Federal Programs for Orange County Public Schools, where she consults with private schools in utilizing grant funds. In her prior role, she served on the district-wide Family Engagement Team, coordinating parent academy events for families and students, as well as coaching engagement liaisons in Title I schools. During her last 27 years with OCPS, Elina has taught grades K-3 and worked as an ELL compliance specialist and exceptional education staffing specialist. Elina's interests in research include the whole child approach, equity and poverty and parent and family engagement. Elina holds a Bachelor's in Early Childhood Education, a Master's in Curriculum and Instruction and a specialist degree in educational leadership. Elina has also served on the ASCD Board of Directors and is an ASCD Emerging Leader.

Speaker 3: 1:41

Welcome everyone to this week's episode of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. This week we are talking to Elina Davis from Orlando, florida. Welcome, elina, hi. Thank you so much for having me. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience in education?

Speaker 4: 1:58

Certainly so. I work for Orange County Public Schools, which is the seventh or eighth largest school district in the country, with over 200,000 students, and I've spent the last five years working as a program specialist for parent family engagements.

Speaker 3: 2:16

Working in that size of district is fairly daunting. I also worked in a really large district in the US first or second largest, I'm not sure but I didn't work at the district level. Now I know that in your role you've had to put together some pretty large scale events for your families. So can you talk a little bit about the approach for doing something on such a large scale but also keeping your sanity, because there's a lot of moving pieces to that, with just the pieces to the puzzle but then also working with people to get things done? So I know that's a big question, but can you talk about that?

Speaker 4: 2:58

Yeah, I think I might need to pare that down a little bit. Yeah, so, as we know, family engagement is a really critical part to student achievement. In fact, research shows it has the greatest impact on student success. And so in a district of our size, we have so many families that we want to reach. And how do you do it in a way that meets all of their needs but yet, at the same time, tailors it to their individual needs, right?

Speaker 4: 3:25

So we have a couple of different resources that we use and events that we put together, and I'll give an umbrella view of it and then break it down a little bit more simply. So we call it the parent academy, and under the parent academy umbrella we have full day conferences, and then we also have weekly virtual mini academies. The full day conferences are theme based, and the one in August focused on getting ready for school to start. We just completed one that focused on college and careers, and so we brought in the secondary audience there. Our virtual mini academies are pared down even smaller, where we look specifically at students that are English learners or in the exceptional education program, or we might look specifically at reading strategies for young children, and so we have these different kinds of events and then within those we have a structure that we kind of streamline across it. How do we communicate with our families, how do we organize the events and get the resources out to families? And then also, how do we select the people that are going to provide the expertise? Because I don't know everything, my team doesn't know everything, so we have to reach out to others for that, and so keeping systems in place that are simple but complex can be challenging.

Speaker 4: 4:47

And so, when I think about our just putting together a full day conference, we have a committee structure. Having one person that knows everything doesn't help when that person leaves. And so by developing, by developing committees where everyone has a responsibility, based on whether it's the technology or vetting the presentations, right, those kinds of things, and then even the communication piece, for that we have a communication plan that we have to follow, and so each committee has specific roles and then the committee leads come together and provide regular updates on what's going on with those roles. So that's the beforehand part, right. And then on the day of, we've got the registration area, we've got processes streamlined for that, we've got the presentations, and then we have, like, the exhibit hall space, and so, throughout that, we use technology to communicate with the workers, to communicate with the parents that are attending, and then, when that concludes, then we follow up with surveys to see how successful it went for the worker, how successful was it for the parent, what is something they learned, what is something that they needed to learn that they didn't get from the event?

Speaker 4: 6:01

And so having those processes simplified across the board makes it so that it's consistent for each event and it doesn't become overwhelming. So that was one snippet. You're probably thinking, oh my gosh, that sounded like a lot of information, but really I think the big takeaway from that is having structures in place that are clear and have defined roles helps get the information out so everybody can learn something.

Speaker 2: 6:28

Yeah, there's so much to manage and think about with events of that size. I can imagine it's got me thinking about catering for all of our different needs in our family community. I'm at an international school but I know that with globalization there's not many schools or districts of schools that are homogenous anymore. We do deal with a lot of different languages and different cultures and religions and this sort of thing. So do you have any thoughts or tips for us about how we can reach out to all of these different, diverse people and needs and expectations in our family communities?

Speaker 4: 7:09

Oh, yes, that's definitely something we have a great need for as well. We have over 150 languages spoken in Orange County alone, so we definitely have to look at how do we push out our publications, our communications, and so we rely on a couple of different tools. If we look at district-wide communication, we do use our school messenger for some communications and then, based on how parents have signed up in the student management system, they can hear those messages in different languages. We recently started using Talking Points, which Talking Points is a phenomenal tool for communication and it was originally designed specifically for helping families of other languages. So it's basically like a texting app and you can select the language that you want to receive the messages in. So if I say something out in English, it comes to them in Spanish, they can respond back in Spanish and then I can see it in English, and they have like a hundred different languages that are in there for that, and you can use it teacher to classroom, you can use it administrator to the whole building, you can use it district-wide, to the entire district, and so we push a lot of our communications out that way so they can receive it in their language but also have that option for that two-way communication, which, when it comes to our events, we don't really use that piece of it, but we do push things out that way.

Speaker 4: 8:33

And then the other resource that we use, that anyone that has Microsoft 365 has access to this, and it's like our most favorite tool right now. It's called PowerPoint Live, and all of our sessions that we have in person, we record them and then we use PowerPoint Live as well in the session, and then also for our virtual events we use PowerPoint Live. But basically what it does is it allows you to have captioning run across the screen. You can select. Like, let's say, for us, our largest language after English is Spanish, so we might have the captions running in Spanish. Hearing me speak in English, but then if I have a parent who speaks Portuguese, they can scan a QR code and on their phone, see the captions in Portuguese, and so that's one way that we're able to differentiate for all of those languages.

Speaker 4: 9:21

Of course, having a live interpreter is definitely the preferred method, but when you have 150 different languages that could show up, it's a little tricky to know. But we're gonna be able to have that many interpreters, and so communication in those ways is kind of how we've met the needs of those diverse languages. They're tools that I think have been very effective for us and I think they're underutilized. There's still people in our district that are like, oh, I didn't even know this existed. So it's good to find those tools and stick with one tool. When I mentioned talking points, we've got teachers using lots of different things right now. So now this is something that, as a district wide tool, everyone's gonna have to use it, and so it makes it simpler and easier to access, because all teachers, or all parents, know this is the tool that all of my kids' teachers are gonna be using.

Speaker 3: 10:08

That's really fascinating that you can use such a simple like one tool to be able to communicate with so many people. That feels very revolutionary, because I'm not in that realm right now where I don't need to use those kind of tools, so learning about that is super helpful. And how are you finding or? I don't know if this is easy to measure or no, but when you're trying to use these tools with families, do you know what the like, I guess response rate is, or their understanding level? Like, how do you know how many families are using these tools, because you have so many families? Is there some kind of like data collection or like, how do you know these tools are the useful ones? Because, like you have talked a lot about, like, simplifying processes and making things as simple as possible to communicate. But are they effective tools too, I guess?

Speaker 4: 11:05

Oh, that's a great question.

Speaker 4: 11:06

We're like reaching people. You know? Yeah, absolutely. So. We definitely have a couple of different data measurement tools that we use For all of our events. We have a survey that goes out and it's the same survey that we use for everything and there's a couple of different questions specific to the content and whether a learning strategy was gained. But we also have a question like did you use the PowerPoint live? Do you feel like this was helpful for you? Did it not? And if it didn't meet your need, why? And so we measure to see how many people have actually used it and whether it was effective.

Speaker 4: 11:39

On the talking point's end, because that's, you know, put together by a company. They've created a dashboard where we can look in there and actually break it down by language and see, you know how many families am I communicating with that speak Portuguese, and how many have responded, and those kinds of things. And there's also ways to kind of look at it and see you know what this teacher's communicated with these 10 families, but not these five. So let's give them some nudges to send out messages to those families, and so that's a great part of that platform. But we definitely have to make sure we're intentional in the data that we're collecting, because you know, if we're just using a tool and we don't know if it's effective, then we might be missing something. And you know, we don't want to be wasting people's time and causing confusion. So giving them that survey data has been very helpful, and so then we have a dashboard within our departments, which at some point will become a public dashboard. We're building that right now where you can look and see those different pieces of data.

Speaker 2: 12:37

Yeah, for sure, we definitely want to make use of those resources and those tools, but not if it's a waste of time for everyone, as you say, or not hitting the need that you're looking for. Thinking about one of the aspects that seems to keep coming up over and over again year after year, and that's bridging that gap between what families or parents may have experienced in their own education, or perhaps a more traditional view of education, with where we're trying to head with our teaching and learning, and maybe some different aspects of attempting to do school in a different way or assessing learning in a different way, etc. Etc. And how do we bridge that gap with parents and let them know that we are still doing teaching and learning the right way, but it might just not be exactly what they're used to or what they're familiar with. Do you have any ideas for how we can really get parents on board with us, sort of getting them to also do an education degree to see where we're coming from?

Speaker 4: 13:50

Oh, yes, and knowing that our families come from so many different experiences, the way they see school can look different, and I don't know if you've noticed, I've been using the word families versus parents, because the parents or guardian of a child looks different across all different aspects, and so we have changed our language in our district to focus on families and how are we communicating with families? So that word kind of encompasses all of that. But we are, we've spent a lot of time coming up with a strategy approach right for family engagement, and so Dr Karen Dr Karen map, out of Harvard, has developed what's called the dual capacity building framework for family school partnerships, and within this there are some process conditions that we need to implement in order to reach that student achievement that we're looking for at the end and that partnership with families. And so one of her process conditions is a welcoming environment.

Speaker 4: 14:45

And so, you know, while I might have loved going to school, and so I'm happy to go in and ask questions, my neighbor might have had a very poor experience in school, and so I have to figure out a way to, to, to, to reach out to that parent so that they can feel welcomed, and so when we look at building those relationships. You know we have to start with the, with the trust and where they are, and so creating a welcome environment is a great place. If I'm a student of color and I don't see any posters in the hallway of people that look like me, I'm not going to feel as welcomed. If I walk up to the door and there's a buzzer to get in, which is the way we get into schools these days, does it tell me in my language that I need to push that button?

Speaker 1: 15:28

in order to get in.

Speaker 4: 15:29

So those little pieces help help a parent feel like, oh okay, they want me to be here, right, even though there's a system, there's a glass door or a locked door, I still feel welcome when I walk in that door. Having access to a language line where you can have an interpreter for whatever language, even if there's not someone at that front desk, is an important piece for that. And then, how I continue that communication, am I involving the parents at the table? When it comes to you know, what are the things that you want to see in the classroom, what are the things that you want to hear about? And then having those, you know, those newsletters or those video clips that you send home, things like that, because not all parents can come in and be involved.

Speaker 4: 16:15

Oftentimes you know, we've got families that are working two and three jobs and having those quick snippets, like you know, the little tiktoks. We don't use tiktok, we're not going to do that in our district. But you know, having those kind of formatted videos, right, that's where our parents are, that's where our students are, and so by bringing information to them that way and sharing, you know strategies with them that way, it kind of helps break down those barriers to to the classroom and to what's going on in the schools, and I could go on and on and talk for days on different ways of getting our families engaged in the work of our schools. So those are a few easy things you can look at. You know, have somebody walk into your front, your front office, or call your school and tell you how they felt, because those impressions can change that access. And they're easy things to do.

Speaker 3: 17:07

Yeah, In a large district or I guess really any district. Do you have any feedback from parents that there's over communication or they're getting bombarded with too much information? Because that's an issue too, and we spoke to our mutual friend, Megan Everett, not that long ago about this kind of thing right, where there's a lot of like one way communication and not always so much coming back from families. But do you ever hear anything about that, or are people pretty happy with what you share?

Speaker 4: 17:43

You know, I'm so glad you brought that up because that's one of the reasons why we've introduced the talking points is to help streamline that communication, right? So so we use school messenger for many, many years, which can come in the form of a text, an email or a phone call, and I have my school district programmed into my phone so I know when those texts come up and sometimes I know I'm just going to ignore them or I'm going to accept them. Last year we were bombarded and it got to the point where I would just ignore the text. You know, and I'm an active parent and I'm excited to see text messages coming through because that means the school is reaching out. But when I get four of them in a week and they're all at dinner time, right, it becomes overwhelming. And so this year that has dropped significantly while we're still trying to get parents to opt in to the text messages. The ones that come through school messenger are maybe once a month, once every two weeks. Usually those kind of align with, you know, school emergencies or being alerted to some big change, and then with the talking points. Because it's interactive, I can respond or ignore, and there are some announcements that come through that, but it's mostly with the teacher, and so that has been something that as a district we have seen. You know what? We've got a lot of communication, and it's almost too much communication.

Speaker 4: 19:07

But I think what makes it hard is Not everybody wants information the same way, right? Like you might have a child who is being raised by their grandparents and they don't know how to use all the apps on their phone, or they don't use email, and so they appreciate that phone call. Or you might have someone who is a busy, busy working parent that is on a computer all day, right, and so if the email goes to my work, I'm going to see it, I'm going to make note of it, or I don't want an email going to my work, I'm going to make a quick text because it's easy. So it's kind of hard to measure, or not hard to measure. It's hard to determine what's going to work easiest for all people when there's so many different places. And so that's one of the nice things about the talking points, because you could download the app or you could just take it as a text. So finding the right tool can be tricky.

Speaker 4: 19:59

And then talking about that two way communication piece is really important, because there are some things that you want to be able to talk back and forth with and there are some other things that you just want to alert and so knowing how many alerts to send out. And there's actually some research. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but there's a researcher named Todd Rodgers. He does something with data science. I believe I could be wrong on that, but he looks at, you know, a lot of those little numbers. What is it that people want? When do they need it, how short should you make it and how pertinent is it to these different groups? And so I think, as a district, that's important that we look at that kind of data. But even also in our own classrooms, you know, my parents want to hear about what my kids are doing, but how much do they want to hear about that? So kind of finding what the right groove is and really just ask them and kind of go from there.

Speaker 2: 20:52

Just thinking about the different, you know, we have parent, teacher, family teacher conferences, student-led conferences, three-way conferences. We have all these different versions of these ways that we can get together and talk. Do you have a favorite and if so, what makes it your favorite?

Speaker 4: 21:11

A favorite way of doing this, so we recommend a couple of different models to our teachers. I really enjoyed doing student-led conferences when I taught third grade, when kindergarten. It was a little trickier to do that, so it was more led by the parents. We've had some models where they'll do like academic teacher teams. I think it's what it is academic parent teacher teams, where you're looking at the data of the whole class. It's kind of blind so you don't know the students, but for the parent it's a big a-ha to see where exactly their child is within that spectrum, and we have some schools that have found success with that.

Speaker 4: 21:52

There's a strategy actually that I have taught to some of our engagement parent engagement liaisons and I've actually used, called the question formulation technique, and this is actually on the parent side, so it's to help parents to be successful going into a conference. What kind of questions do I ask? Right, like I might be a parent where I have all these things in my head that I want my teacher to know about, I want them to know this about my kid, and then I walk in the door and I just freeze, or I don't have the language to be able to express what it is I'm saying, and so this question formulation technique and I cannot remember the author right now, but it's, there's a book that is published by ASED that she has written walks you through how to brain dump all of your thinking about your questions, what you want to say, and then determine what's the most important, whether it's a question that you I can even think of the terms right now where you get like a one word answer versus an elaborative answer, and then how to rephrase questions to get the information you're looking for. And so then you're charged with like three questions that you're going to ask. These, the three questions I absolutely want information for when I go into that conference. And then I can go in as a parent feeling confident with that, and we've trained a lot of people across our district in using this method and you know, on the parent side, you build some confidence there and it's even something that you can do with your students.

Speaker 4: 23:18

The right question Institute, I believe, is what it's called, is the actual organization that has the resources for this. They've also done this with students so that students can be more successful in looking at text and also in communication. So when I, when it comes to what your question of you know what format do I like best or what works best? I think a place where you're letting the parent do most of the talking and guiding the conversation is going to be the most powerful, because then you're going to get a better connection and they're they're going to want to continue to be engaged in the work that you're doing, and so by using this question formulation technique and understanding how it works, I think sets it up for a better teacher parent teacher conference and, you know, with the student as well. I'm really excited about it and I would love to see more people be involved in that work. So I'll share with you the resources so that you can show those with your listeners if they're interested.

Speaker 3: 24:16

That's perfect. I think you've just shared so much really valuable information, so I've been jotting down some of those strategies and techniques that you've been talking about, so we'll definitely put have that in the show notes, and at the end of an episode we always ask our guests for a pair down pointer, and so we've talked about a lot of things. But do you have like just one quick tip or strategy or idea that you would want to share with our listeners, and it might be connected to communications with families, or it could be really something that just is front of mind for you.

Speaker 4: 24:54

Sure, since we've been talking a lot about communication, I think one of the most important things and this is something I'm practicing right now with peering down is how wordy we are. I'm a talker and I go all around the block and the things that I'm saying to get to my points. The advantage of having AI it helps us learn how to be concise with our language. Actually, I mentioned Todd Rogers earlier. He just wrote a book called Writing for Busy Readers, and then he has a website where you can actually drop in your email and it'll put it in bulleted format in easy ways for the reader.

Speaker 4: 25:32

Our families are busy, they're overwhelmed, they may not have the language or the knowledge, and so the more we can simplify the messaging we put out, the easier it's going to be to communicate with them. So I would say, whatever tool you're using whether it's the ones I've recommended or another one find ways to simplify your message and make sure that what it is you want them to hear is what you're saying, and this is something I definitely need to work on for my own self, but I think it's really we have. So, and then, looking at all the forms that we sent home, and here's what we need for Saturday's event Make it simple, make it clear, make it concise so that people can access it and understand it. That is very powerful.

Speaker 2: 26:20

Thank you very much for your time today, Alina. We really appreciate all of your words of wisdom there and tools that you've shared with us. We've got lots to explore and investigate, so thank you for coming on today.

Speaker 4: 26:32

Absolutely. Again, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate that you are working on getting messages out there to help all educators have a more peaceful, mindful, minimal way of doing things, because we live in a very busy world where we're bombarded with so much, so this is really a great podcast. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 26:56

Thank you. Thank you. Today's episode was brought to you by Plan Z Professional Learning Services Forward Thinking, Educator Support. Find out more at PlanZPLServicescom.

Speaker 1: 27:13

Be sure to join Tammy and Christine and guests for more episodes of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. They would love to hear about your journey with minimalism. Connect with them at Plan ZPLS on Twitter or Instagram. The music for the podcast has been written and performed by Gaya Moretti.