The 3 R’s of Engaging Multilingual Families

by Sarah Said

Over the years, I have written about Multilingual Learner Family Engagement. It’s something that is not just a “side activity” but a fabric of partnership that when weaved into the structure of a school supports learning. I have written about the importance of it being consistent with Multilingual Learner Family Engagement and the mistakes we make with the way we engage our families. I frequently write about this topic because it is vital to a school’s success. The pandemic has proven to schools the strength of their community engagement and what needs to be improved going forward.

Over the country, when our schools closed their physical doors they continued to function as entities of distance learning. For many of us, we had to move into quickly responding to the changes. Read my school’s story here. It was a tough spot to be in, but we managed with relationships we built, resources we used to communicate with families, and the way we responded to the needs of families.

Relationships

At our school, relationships with our multilingual families is critical to the success of our multilingual learners. We have had multiple channels of how we engage our families—Multilingual Parent Advisory Crew, School-wide Community Crew, Culture Crew structure in our Community Crew, Celebrations of Learning, Friday Field Studies Program, and our “Pieces of Me” Identity Affirmation project. We also believe that teacher and family communication is critical for our learning environment. With all this said, our family community for all families is very engaged.

During the pandemic, we used these relationships to foster a community that continues to stay connected through virtual community crews, virtual Friday Field Studies Twitter challenges, and Family Story Nights. This connection helps us foster academic success with our students.

These relationships with families and caregivers need:

Time to be built
Trust
An openness between the school and community to be accepting of each other
Communication
Listening and Understanding

Resources

The resources are what help us foster these relationships. They are a “gateway to instructional equity” during the times of distance learning and beyond. What resources support building our relationships?

People

In these times more than ever, you see the need for staff that speak the languages of students and their families. We try to translate every major announcement we make, but we saw a need to translate our online challenges, our E-Learning Matrices, and instructions to assignments. Staff that speak, read and write our parents’ native language have been invaluable in these times and beyond.

Communication Platforms

TalkingPoints: TalkingPoints is a free communication application that allows two way communication. It functions like a text message where a parent can text you in their native language and you will receive the text in English. This application can send pictures and videos. I have seen parents use this tool to send paper assignments to teachers when they do not have internet access because it functions like a text.
Class Tag: Class Tag works as a communication system that allows two-way communication. This tool allows teachers and parents to send messages, pictures and videos via messages. Teachers and families have been able to communicate about assignments with each other over this tool.
Seesaw: Seesaw can serve as a platform to support distance learning instructional resources, but can also support communication between teachers and families. Seesaw does adjust to the language of a person’s technology platform in order to provide two-way communication.

Creativity

Family engagement is not easy. You will have families that are hard to reach because of their circumstances and living conditions. You cannot get upset with these families. You need to be creative with how you communicate with them and even send resources back and forth. Something simple as using “snail mail” with a self-addressed stamped envelope can really make a big difference for a family.

Response

Our way of responding to families is critical as to whether or not we can keep them engaged in learning. This means being understanding and open to support a family’s at home situation. Understand that as educators, we have turned into our families’ instructional coaches. We cannot expect a caregiver to function like a licensed teacher when they are not a licensed teacher. We also have to understand that some of our families may be working at home or be essential workers who cannot attend to their children’s immediate needs. Be open to suggestions to ease the process so learning can happen. Also be able to respond in a manner that is appropriate with visuals and tools to support families with tech tools and instructional concepts.

Looking back, the pandemic may have taught us that as schools we need to continue to be consistent with family engagement and even strengthen our engagement more than we ever have before. People have learned lessons on how schools are run. One of the lessons is that as a school we need to work in partnership with families to support their needs.