Family Engagement
What is it?
Families and school staff work together to support and improve the learning, development, and health of students. Family engagement with schools is a shared responsibility of both school staff and families. School staff are committed to making families feel welcomed, engaging families in a variety of meaningful ways, and sustaining family engagement. Families are committed to actively supporting their child’s learning and development. This relationship between school staff and families cuts across and reinforces student health and learning in multiple settings—at home, in school, in out-of-school programs, and in the community. Family engagement should be continuous across a child’s life and requires an ongoing commitment as children mature into young adulthood.
Ideas for Your PTA
- Incorporate health lessons from school into PTA activities.
- Send a representative from your school to SHAC meetings.
- Implement the National PTA School of Excellence program.
- Regularly seek feedback from your school community about what health topics interest them.
- Engage families about healthy kids using a variety of tools: calls from your principals, newsletters, email, facebook, twitter, and bulletin boards. The opportunities are endless!
- Seek out opportunities to engage families around healthy schools: host service days, provide cooking demos and taste tests, and use nutrition and physical activity examples in reading and math sessions for parents.
Resources
- National PTA’s Family-School Partnership Standards
- Strategy Guide for Engaging Parents in School Health
- Parents for Healthy Schools
Do you have other ideas to share? Email us at [email protected]!