 Welcome to another episode of the Learning Loop podcast where we talk all about education. I'm your host, Chris, and I'm thrilled to have with us today a very special guest, Megan. Megan is an assistant principal in Fulton County, Georgia. She is going to share some incredible insights with us about family engagement. In today's show, we'll be digging into important questions that will help you to deepen your family partnerships from day one of school. You won't want to miss this valuable discussion about bringing families into the Learning Loop. So settle in and let's get started. Megan, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. Very excited to be here. Of course. I want to start with a pretty easy question. How does family involvement in your children and your children's education, how does that impact student achievement and success? Great question. I mean, that's a big question. I think that the thing to remember is that really education should be a way to involve all stakeholders. It's not really just about the teacher with the student or even just the parent with the administrator. It's everybody digging in together to make that community really effective and to get really a picture of the whole child, right? Because we want to know everything we can about the child's learning, about their well-being and just their successes. And the only way to do that is to hear from each individual stakeholder how those connections can be really tricky. Absolutely. And I think what we've learned coming out of the pandemic and other things is that there is much more to an education for a child than just academics. There's so many things around social emotional growth and just development around friendships. And I appreciate that you guys are being mindful of that as you're thinking about what does success look like as far as our connections with our families. How do you help your families feel connected in your school events and provide opportunities for them to participate even though you're in a virtual environment? What are some ways that you found to be successful? Yeah, definitely. So, you know, I think that that's the fun part is the virtual environment, you know, kind of taking down those digital walls, if you will, and finding ways to bring us together. And one thing that we started doing over at our school where we're year two, we're starting year three now of just opening our brand new school. And so every year we're learning something new. We're the most valuable year of learning and building community. That was our big focus was how do we build community and bringing in opportunities for meeting face to face. So we have things where we still meet virtually. We have our online town hall meetings where we can have a casual way of meeting with parents. So instead of having a, you know, a strict online presentation ready for parents, it's more of that casual ask some questions, get some answers, you know, give the parent the floor to share things and ask questions and dig deeper. But we also decided to involve in-person community events. So we're a very large district. I'm sure if anyone has known anything about Fulton County, it's pretty huge. So it spans over like 70 plus miles. And so bringing us together, we have to be very creative about where we meet, how we meet and the purpose and the attention of the meeting. So we're not just having meetings for meetings. We found the way to get buy-in, of course, and to get people to come out is really to have those opportunities where it's a little more fun. You know, it's about relationship building. It's about having the opportunity to sit one-on-one with a parent to give the little ones a hug. You know, an actual physical hug, right? We haven't been able to do things like that. In your virtual environment, you can do your Air High 5 so it's not quite the same. And so getting the opportunity to do the fun things. You know, we make our own spirit wear. We have a screen printing station where they get to get hands on, build their own spirit wear. We're right there in the mix with them. We're building, we're laughing, we're cutting up. We're building that connection so that later, whenever there are difficult conversations, we're kind of overcoming that because we're real people now. We're not just, you know, a name and an email. We're real people. So that has been when Big Key Strategy is to, you know, to make sure that when you do have your events and your meetings that they're intentional and that it is two-way. Again, I think that's my biggest thing you're going to hear me talk about today is two-way conversation instead of one way. Instead of just giving an email or sending a graphic, it is more of that opportunity to open the floor so that you have your stakeholders be able to, you know, build the connections, ask the questions they need to ask, get the answers they need to get. My favorite thing you said there was intentionality. You know, we can always say, we're going to go do this connection. We're going to do this fun, you know, next new thing. But if you don't have a purpose and intentionality around building that connection on the back end, then, you know, you might be missing an opportunity there to actually, you know, create and deepen that connection as well. So I just love how you're being purposeful about that and making sure that the steps you're taking are all leading to the right path you want to carve forward. Speaking of kind of leading this path, we're thinking about back to school and this is on top of mind to a lot of different people of, you know, what do we want to make sure we do and how do we really start our year right? What are things that you do at the start of your year to just get to know your families, get to know your students, get to know their home lives, their culture, and how do you start to really bridge that gap and start to collaborate with those parents from the start of your school year? Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the things that we do, you know, seems traditional in a normal building where you actually will bring, you know, parents into the school building to have an opportunity to meet and connect with you. But we do that too. We have an actual in-person meeting. But one of the things that we're adding to our little mix this year, again, something new, because we're growing, we're new, is having an opportunity to have kind of a parent workshop built in. So instead of just get your device, grab your materials, you know, say hi, pass through call of the day, you're actually going to have kind of a campus tutorial. So they'll come in and they'll learn about specific tools that they'll need to be accessing throughout the school year. You know, how to be a good learning coach online. If the teacher's not there to sit in the room, they'd like they would in a teacher's desk where they would walk around the classroom and circulate and you've got that proximity, you know, the power of proximity. You don't really have that in this online environment. So the parents are key players. They are a learning coach. They are their partners in education. And so we really want them to feel like they have the tools and the resources they need to be a partner. And so having that one-on-one kind of workshop, not really a tutorial, you know, we don't want to make them, we want to empower them to feel like they're a definitely a part and they understand if we ask them to go and use a specific spot or go to a certain, you know, place to access the content, they know where to go and how to do that. So I think that that is something new we're going to add. And I'm hoping that also again, we'll take down a wall or a barrier for parents who might be a little nervous about technology and feel comfortable in coming and asking us, knowing that again, we're partners in this together. And I think that that hopefully this little welcome back partnership will be fruitful. Absolutely. I'm sure it will. I'm sure it will. I know there are parents, like you were saying, who might be apprehensive about what does this mean for me when my child is here in the virtual school and what kind of job do I have to play at home and being there to open your doors and literally have them come in and get all those questions answered is not only going to kind of remove that anxiety, but also really allow you to coach them and to really like empower them to be those coaches at home and to really be that teacher right next to those children, even though you can't physically be there, they can still be there for you. And so I think that's an awesome step to take just to make sure that your students have the most support possible. What are some of the biggest challenges that schools face when it comes to getting families engaged and how can these challenges be overcome? These can be challenges that you have felt and seen and experienced or challenges that you're starting to see around you. What kind of things are out there and how can we start to overcome them? Sure. No, that's a great one. And I could speak from different lenses, of course, because I too am a parent and in the same school system and I can see just from my own peers some of the common things. And I think the biggest is really getting families to feel engaged with the community enough to involve themselves. And that comes from volunteer work. I feel like that's the biggest thing and that's an area of great need. We need a lot of parent involvement and this is in virtual life. This is in face-to-face life. This is in Cub Scouts. This is in all of the places that you go and getting people to feel that need or the call to duty, if you will, to volunteer maybe and to support and be an active member of that community. I see, especially since COVID times, there has been a little bit of a slow go to get back into the groove of what that's like in our daily normal because I think we got really comfortable in staying in our own space, in our own lane and doing our things. So I think finding ways to get that community to be more engaged has been our biggest challenge to conquer. And I think one of the things that we've done really to do that is to overcome that is to scaffold a little bit of what does that volunteer work look like. So instead of giving an exhaustive list of things that will really overwhelm the person, I know even me as a parent, if I'm looking, someone needs help and there's this huge exhaustive list, I might be a little hesitant to want to go dig in on all of the things. So I think that really prioritizing what the need is and then figuring out who are the different groups or parties inside of your school building that can really help you with that work. So for example, your PTA, your PTO, they might be able to help you find some of the volunteers that you need. We've got our big device distribution day coming up, but our teachers need training and they need to be able to prepare and they need to be able to plan so we can't really lean on them. So we were able to recently reach out to our group and say, hey, we need a couple extra hands to help us out with some of these welcome back events and they're able to reach out to their network and then really help support that. So that networking piece, the scaffolding, the prioritizing, what it is you need to get people involved and get them excited about helping out. You spoke about this earlier in a different context, but I think you're coming back to it here too about how do you really personalize these conversations and make sure that you're reaching a level of comfortability with everybody that you can allow to have some of these asks and allow them to feel comfortable enough to be able to step into those environments and really continue to support schools in unique ways. It's a really strategic way to make sure that you're starting to build that community in a really purposeful way for your schools and for your families as well. I want to come back to a question or an answer that you shared about how large your district is and within that large district, I'm sure that there is different areas where there might be different socio and economic statuses or there might be different cultural barriers that are there. Can you share some practical tips or things that you have done to overcome some of those barriers that are in your way for your schools? Yeah, so I think that that's something that it's going to always be a work in progress because that is definitely, especially in our area, we've got such huge wide diversity between just portions of the district and they all get to come to our school, which is great because we're a public school open to everyone. But I think that the biggest thing when it comes to that is just ensuring equitable access. When we're talking about, there's the normal things the district will provide and our district is very, we're very blessed to be able to offer computers to everyone, access to internet, things of that nature. But I think one of the things to think about is just access to people, people resources. I think people resources are probably the biggest, most important factor. So there might be times where you'll have some students that are maybe that have a social economic problem or need that they need support with and so having the ability to go and knock on the door and offer support or bring them in for any one-on-one in-person opportunities. That's important. I think meeting them where they are is key in knowing where they are because everyone's going to be in a different level in a different space and that looks a little different. You can also, I think it's great opportunity to partner and buddy up kids that they have an opportunity to help and learn and grow from each other. I think peer learning is probably one of the most beneficial things for students who need that extra support. But again, when it comes to our parents and our families, we've been known to knock on some doors and help support in ways that are maybe not so conventional that you would see in traditional school. Absolutely. You're embodying that persona of we'll do anything for our kids and we'll make sure that we're there whether it means we have to physically knock on doors or we set up different systems on the back end that just allows them to have different peer support networks as well. Love to hear those practical steps. I have a next question for you is going to be our throw you for a loop question. If you could eat one food for the rest of your life what would you choose? That is such a good question and this one is going to, I would probably eat any potato product. Any potato product. French fries, big potatoes. Does that count? It's pretty broad. It's potato. It's a single item. So that definitely works. That's a fantastic answer especially coming from someone who lives in the Midwest that potatoes are really everywhere and they're a great source of carbs and they're super delicious. That's awesome. I don't think it would be the best option though for eating only potatoes forever but it's okay. That's okay. You'll enjoy it while you have it. It's all good. One final question for you as we start to close off things thinking of one last thing that the audience can leave with one more little tip or trick that we can give to everybody who's tuning in what advice would you give to your parents and what advice do you hand to your parents when you start your year to help to provide supporting environments for their students learning and how they can be successful in school? What are some things that you start to share with your parents, whether it's the start of school or even maybe midway through school how do you continue to just provide that information to them? I think that one of the biggest things that parents really need to know is how to access student data because in order to really understand student achievement and how well your child is doing personally is to actually see what your child is doing. One of the things that we start the year off with specifically is our school system uses canvas so that's one way for them to look for grades, for grade points and data points but finding ways to access that as a parent observer I think is the biggest piece and then that way they can follow with communications and actually speak to the data points. I see that my child has done this on this particular standard and so what can we do to help support that? As a classroom teacher, one of the things that I used to love to do was of course my sea salt since we never talked about sea salt so as a music teacher I actually would have them show progress so if we were working on a project they would do step one here and they would show it in their portfolio then step two, step three, step four and so when we look at data points then I can even say along the way it's not and that's how it guided and shaped our final project and so having those data points really I think helps our parents see along the way, the journey along the way so it's not an aha got you at the end or a surprise, as a parent I think there's been times where I've gotten to the end and I've gotten a final grade and I was like how did that even happen? I feel like I know how to find the data so I think that schools in general really need to help parents understand where is it going for the class, how can I view it how can I keep track of it along the way and then that way they can have this open conversations for sure I love that, I think that really embodies that growth mindset that you're really trying to instill in your parents, your families, your community and your students most importantly there so I think that's an amazing step to take at the beginning of the year and really any time to just inform your parents like what does success look like in our school and how do we measure that and just being really clear and transparent with that with your families is a great step to take as we close up today I just want to say thank you Megan for taking some time here, thank you for just taking your busy day and making sure that you can come here and chat with us a little bit about family engagement we learned so much from your specific instance and how do you really bridge those connections in virtual schools I just want to thank you and appreciate you sharing all these wonderful insights thank you so much thank you