PRINCIPAL VOICE: Inviting families into our classrooms slashed absenteeism and raised reading levels
Two years ago, I bought each of the teachers at Hamilton Elementary in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood a blue chair. I told them to put it in the back of their classrooms, and that if a parent or caregiver wanted to visit to see how their children are learning — no matter what the reason — that this would be a dedicated space for them.
I may have earned some exaggerated eye-rolls from educators that day. After all, I can appreciate the disruption to learning that classroom visitors can sometimes cause, especially among excitable elementary schoolers.
But school is our home, and it is our responsibility to invite families into our home and welcome them. And this was a necessary olive branch, my way of saying to families: “From here on out, things are going to be different.”
And they were. They also can be different at other schools, because the benefits of family engagement go well beyond student achievement.
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Research has long shown that when parents and caregivers are involved and engaged with their children’s education — whether that’s by attending parent-teacher conferences or participating in school events — student achievement, motivation and social-emotional well-being increase.
Parent involvement with reading activities has a positive impact on reading achievement, language comprehension, expressive language skills and level of attention in the classroom, according to the National Literacy Trust.
Research also shows that educators enjoy increased job satisfaction and are more likely to keep teaching at the school, families enjoy stronger relationships with their children and feel less isolated, and even school districts themselves become better places to live and raise children.
None of this was the case when we returned to normalcy following Covid. Just 13 percent of students were reading on grade level, and 37 percent were chronically absent. I knew right away that before we even attempted to tackle academics, we needed to engage families and make them feel deeply connected and committed to the community I envisioned building here.
Today, 45 percent of students are reading at grade-level, and chronic absenteeism, at 12 percent on the most recent official numbers, is down to 10 percent in our own tracking, with a goal of pushing it down to 8 percent in 2025-26.
But it wasn’t easy given the distrust that had boiled over during the pandemic, with families skeptical of our ability to effectively support their children and school staff feeling defensive and exhausted.
It was clear to me that families weren’t excited to send their kids to school, didn’t feel informed about what was happening on our campus and, moreover, didn’t feel comfortable — let alone capable — of communicating their needs to us.
Complicating matters further was the need to share information across many languages other than English, which can make relationship-building and communicating expectations difficult.
Roughly half of our students are English learners, and while the majority of their families are Spanish-speakers, there are growing populations of students whose first languages are Haitian-Creole, Pashto and Vietnamese.
Related: What the research says about the best way to engage parents
The first thing I did was establish open communication with parents using ClassDojo, a mobile app that gives families an easy, intuitive central access point to our teachers and staff, automatically translates all messages into parents’ native languages and allows us to share stories about what is happening in school.
It became an easy way to build trust and collaboration between families and staff.
Creating that type of visibility was key to breaking down walls between us. And in those early days, we didn’t post about literacy, math or anything related to academics. Instead, we focused solely on attendance and getting families to come inside the school as much as possible.
We focused on relationship-building activities and joyful learning. We hosted after-school art classes and monthly family Fridays, when families could come to school to engage in a fun activity.
We organized a Halloween costume drive with candy and fun games for kids; we hosted a Read Across America event where we passed out Play-Doh; and we organized other low-stakes events at school, rooted in building a partnership between home and school.
Again, our goal wasn’t learning during these meet-ups. It was all in service of building trust and creating meaningful relationships with students and their families.
Once we had the foundation in place, we added a focus on academics — though we rooted that learning in family engagement, too. For example, our schoolwide focus last year was phonics, so we sent activities home for families to complete with their children that were tied specifically to concepts the students needed reinforced, based on their individual assessments, like long vowel patterns and sight words.
These activities were taught by the students and their teachers to family members during conferences.
Beyond helping students, the exercise challenged a false narrative so many families had assumed — that they either didn’t know enough about what was happening in school to help, weren’t confident enough to help or didn’t have enough time.
Today, the atmosphere at Hamilton feels radically different than when I first walked through the doors. When we first started hosting Family Fridays, about 10 family members and their children showed up.
Now, we have roughly 200 caregivers at every meet-up. Families run most of the community-based initiatives at the school — from a boutique where families can shop among donated clothes twice a month, to a food distribution center, to a book club, English classes and a monthly meet-up where families can socialize.
When district leaders visit, they’re always impressed by the participation. I tell them, if you care about family engagement, it has to be so deeply embedded into the system that people don’t have a choice but to do it.
That’s why I’m constantly thinking about how to center family engagement in staff meetings, in attendance meetings, in literacy and math plans, in behavioral and counseling plans and in meetings about school procedures and budgets.
It’s a strategy that not only involves families but also supports academic achievement and student well-being. For me, family engagement is the ultimate strategy for academics.
Sometimes in the K-12 world we keep outreach and academics separate, but in reality, engagement is the key that unlocks our ability to hit academic goals and create a joyful school community.
Dr. Brittany Daley is the principal of Hamilton Elementary School in San Diego, California.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about family engagement was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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