Over the coming weeks, Jennifer Miller of Confident Parents, Confident Kids will be collaborating with Rethink Ed to discuss practical strategies schools can adopt who are focused on social and emotional learning and want to involve families in partnerships that contribute to their children’s learning. This week, check out the article she wrote for the blog and sign up for the webinar at the end of September that will deepen the discussion. Here’s how the blog article begins…

Educators and parents alike have a sense that school-family partnerships are important. In fact, parent engagement is a top predictor of a child’s school success.¹ Yet I hear from numerous schools who are deeply engaged in implementing research-based social and emotional learning that they are struggling to create authentic relationships with families. They list off the events they host – Meet the Teacher Night, Math Night, and Muffins for Moms/Donuts for Dads – but still feel a gap. “We see only a few well-known faces attending meetings and we can’t seem to attract the others to come.” 

But what if our focus on social and emotional learning could be the glue that bonds educators and families together? What if we didn’t create more events or extra newsletters, but reframed our way of viewing the relationship and as a result, our practical approaches to it? We all – families and educators alike – share a goal of learning. And the dawning realization brought about thanks to the work of Carol Dweck on growth or learning mindset is upon us that in order to support learning, we have to be learners ourselves.² Educators and parents have endless learning opportunities at the ready to explore and understand our children’s temperaments, what they are working on cognitively, physically, socially and emotionally, and how we can support and promote that learning. While teachers bring their extensive professional knowledge of content and pedagogy to the conversation, parents bring their deep knowledge of their family and neighborhood culture and their individual child; who they are, where their strengths lie, and how they are growing and changing. All involved need to be engaged in how to promote the most critical skills for success in school and life: social and emotional skills. So therein lies an opportunity to learn from one another and side-by-side together about strategies for supporting children’s development. Read the full article here.

AND mark your calendars for September 26, 2019 at 1:00 p.m. EST for a webinar to continue this important discussion!