 Welcome to Train the Trainer, Get Family Started on CESA. If you are here, it means you are a CESA trainer and you are planning on giving the Getting Family Started on CESA professional development to your staff. You will be participating in this training as a teacher participant, so make sure to put on your teacher cap. You will need to access a handout during this professional development. You can find it in the description of the video. Let's get started and learn how we can make sure all family members are connected on CESA. The idea of children learning from their parents isn't new. It really does take a village. Is it going to be a good day? Say, I am respectful. I am fit for it. Though this isn't a new term, the term family engagement can mean many things to different people. I want you to pause and think about what family engagement means to you. Family engagement is not just a one-way communication. It's not simply sending a newsletter or inviting family to events. It's not families feeling pressured or anxiety to complete their child's work. It's really about seeing family members as assets and leveraging their unique strengths that they bring to the table. Research shows family engagement makes a huge difference. One of the most accurate predictors of student success is the extent to which families are involved in their child's learning and supported at home. When we recognize families as assets, we support students to do their best. Please take a moment to think about what are some of the common barriers that make family engagement challenging. Let's look at a few common barriers. If one of the following barriers resonates with you, give a few snaps of your fingers to show that this is a barrier you and your families within your school face. Child care can be a barrier for family engagement. Transportation limitations can also be a barrier for family engagement. Cultural or language differences can really become a barrier for deep family engagement. Work schedules can be a barrier even for teachers like this comic shows. Finally, our own fears as educators can be a barrier. We will spend our time together looking at how CESA supports teachers and families to overcome those barriers. How CESA helps teachers leverage families' unique assets to form partnerships around student learning. Today, you will learn how to successfully connect families on CESA by meeting them where they are. As we discuss family engagement, we will continue to emphasize the tremendous strengths that families bring and how to leverage those assets at all stages of family engagement. Many teachers wonder, what's the difference between the class app and the family app? Let's take a look. CESA brings together educators, students, and families to create powerful learning loops between the classroom and the home. Connecting families on the family app invites families to be part of this learning journey and creates an authentic audience for students to create their work for. Teachers use the class app to assign and facilitate powerful learning experiences for their students. Above is an activity for students. Students use the class app to create, reflect, collaborate, and make their learning visible. They have voice and choice to use the learning tools that help them demonstrate their learning in ways that are best for them. Here is a student response to the activity. I noticed that dog and nun are the same amount and the least is a mouse because a lot of people don't like mouses. And the hamster, the guinea pig, and the turtle are all two that are the same amount. And I noticed that only the fish has three. None else has three. Now we are in the family app. This is what families see when they log in. Connected family members only see their child's work. They can engage with their child's learning in real time by liking or commenting on their post. They can leave encouraging comments for their student to read. If they have more than one child using CESA, they will be able to see all of their students that they are connected with in the family app. To reiterate, families only see their own child's post or post that their children are tagged in. That means they can also see comments on their child's post, both from you and other students. In addition to viewing and engaging with their child's learning, families can also communicate with the teacher in the family app. Notice we are in the family app inbox here. Teachers can send resources and support as CESA messages to family members, creating strong home school connections that involve families in the learning journey and equip some with the tools they need to support learning at home. Communication is easy and all in one place. Families can type a response to your message or they can click the plus and use CESA tools. Multimodal tools allow families to open their homes and share powerful learning moments and milestones happening at home. Group messaging isn't available right now, so you can only message one family member at a time. Only you can see the messages between you and the family members. Your co-teachers and administrators are not able to view them. Translation tools ensure every family is involved in their child's learning. When a family member's device is set to a language other than English, any type text like messages, comments, notes and captions can be translated in one click. Families will see C translation when it's available. This means you no longer need to wait for a district translator or in-person meeting to connect with families. You and families have all the tools you need right in CESA. This is a common point of confusion, so let's reiterate it here. Students and families cannot complete activities or post to the journal from the Family App. This can only be done in the Class App. The CESA Class App and Family App work together to support engagement. Summarize how CESA supports engagement. What stands out to you as particularly powerful? Please pause the video. What did you discuss? Why is it so powerful to connect families on CESA? Instead of what did you learn at school today and your students saying, oh nothing, families now become a powerful part of the learning loop, and it allows them to reinforce and support learning at home. They are constantly seeing what's going on in the classroom rather than twice a year at conferences, so they can be actively participating in their child's learning. Students love when they get comments from their families. It provides a real authentic audience for them and often increases the quality of student work. Now that we know how CESA supports family engagement, let's learn the three ways you can connect families on CESA. One huge benefit of CESA for schools is once families are connected, they stay connected for future years. Remember, you can delete any slides that will not be relevant for your audience. Lucky for you, your administrator has bulk invited families for you. Let's still look at how to connect families in case you need to invite families in the future, or if they didn't join at all. Remember, delete this slide if it is not true for your district. You will always begin by clicking the plus families in the bottom right. Your first option is to print student invites. When you click print invites, you will receive a PDF for each student with a QR code that is unique to your student. It looks like this. All families need to do now is create an account if they're new to CESA or sign in if they've used CESA before and scan the QR code. So easy. The best part is, these handouts are available in 15 languages. That is some amazing connecting power. Your other option is to invite families by entering their phone number to send them an invite via text message or enter their email address to send them an invite via mail. Family members will receive a text message like the one on the left or an email like the one on the right. They simply click on the link and follow the prompts. Students can have up to 10 family members connected to their journal. That's a lot of powerful family engagement. Once you send invites, you can check on the status of your invites here. It will show you if an invite is sent, if a family member is connected, or if it didn't go through. If you ever need to remove a family member, you can do so in the class settings under the student section. Now it's your turn to add families to CESA. Please follow the directions on my screen. Click the plus families and either download invites, print them, enter the family's phone number or email addresses. You can pause to do this now, but before you do, as a best practice, families are more motivated to connect when there is a post waiting for them in the journal because it helps them immediately see why CESA is so amazing. If there isn't any student work yet, create a welcome post in the coming days for the family members to see. Please pause now and add families. You've taken the first steps towards connecting families. Amazing! Think to yourself, will all families be able to get connected this way? What additional supports might they need? You may have thought to yourself that some family members might need more assistance and need help connecting in person. Families are busy. We might need to convince them why CESA is helpful. And lastly, some families might not have reliable internet or technology to use. They might even need help creating an email address so they can use CESA. CESA has a few supports you can use to ensure all families are connected. Here are the resources available from CESA. Let's take a look at them. We'll look at the overview of each of them and share a link to where you can get access to those in just a few moments. First, let's watch the what is CESA introduction for families. This video gives families an overview of how CESA supports their child's learning. The video is great to share with families if they're not sure why it's important to connect in CESA. This video is also available in Spanish and French. Those links will be found in the Family Engagement Kit that we will share shortly. Please enjoy the video. Welcome to CESA. CESA is a portfolio that your student will use to showcase what they're learning and doing at school and share that with you, their family. They'll add photos, videos, drawings, voice recordings, notes, and much more to their learning journal. And you'll be able to see their amazing work right on your phone or computer whenever they post something new. Students love CESA because they're able to show what they know with lots of different tools and share their work with meaningful audiences, all while practicing those super important 21st century skills. Teachers love CESA because they're able to gain insights from all of their students, see student growth, and have all that classwork organized in one place. Parents love CESA because they can be closer to the classroom without being there every day and really understand how their student is doing. Teachers and parents are always in control of how student information is shared. Once you've connected to your child's account using the special invite code or link from your child's teacher, you can view all of their posted work. You'll only see your own child's work and messages that your teacher sends home. When something new is added, you'll get a notification. You can decide if you want notifications via email, push, or text message. Notifications can come each time something new is added or just once a day. You choose the settings you prefer. Once you follow the CESA notification, you can see what's going on in the classroom in real time. Teachers can also turn on options for you to like and comment on your child's work to encourage their learning. Remember, the best comments help us learn something new. Things like, wow, you did a great job because... have you considered? Interesting. This made me think of... I'm proud of you because... our great conversation starters. We're all learning together how to communicate and be our best selves online. You can leave a text comment or even a voice comment. Voice comments are perfect for younger learners. CESA takes your and your child's privacy seriously. We understand that you're trusting us to protect your child's information and we promise to provide a service that keeps students safe. You can learn more on our website at web.cesa.me slash privacy. Your participation in your child's learning journey is the best way you can support them as they grow into a kind, curious and empowered learner. Thank you for being part of the CESA family. Sometimes families don't want to watch videos. These are a series of one-page handouts that walk families through what CESA is, how to connect, and how to use the family app. You can share these handouts physically or as an email attachment. One easy way to ensure all families connect is to connect them at in-person events. This resource provides a step-by-step plan and tips for leveraging things like classroom events, back to school night, curriculum night, or a family night to connect families. Imagine how great it would feel to have all families connected by the end of the evening. You can also leverage any time when you're one-on-one with families. This resource provides a step-by-step plan and tips for leveraging one-on-one events, like conferences to connect families. This strategy is particularly effective for families with limited access to technology, who speak languages other than English, or who are particularly resistant to using CESA. We even have a kit for connecting families if you, like many teachers these days, cannot meet with families in person. Now it's your turn to explore these resources and make a plan to connect your families by meeting them where they are. You can access all of the resources here. Please pause the video and visit this URL on my screen. Your task is to use the implementation plan in your handout, which is in the description of this video, to plan how you will ensure all of your families get connected on CESA. Please pause the video to spend some time creating your implementation plan. Now that you've had some time, think about one way you will ensure all families get connected. Discuss with a partner or think to yourself. You may want to make sure there's student work in CESA for families to see from the start. You could invite families through CESA by printing, texting, or email invites. You can also track who hasn't connected and follow up in person, either during class events or one-on-one. You did it! You're ready to connect families. You know how CESA supports teachers and families to form partnerships around learning. You learn the three ways to invite families on CESA and have a plan to connect all family members. Your exit ticket out of here is your completed plan if you haven't finished it yet. Please make sure you check out web.cesa.me slash training for more free trainings on how you can use CESA.