 Hey everybody and welcome. We are so excited you're here joining us today talking all about family engagement. I'm super excited to be welcoming Justin here from Eugene, Oregon. I am Chris, your host. We're gonna be chatting all about how families can be engaged and how that powerful learning loop can be connected with our communities. Justin, I'll let you introduce yourself really quick before we jump right in. Yeah, my name is Justin Huntley. I'm a curriculum administrator here Eugene School District out in Oregon. We're I think the fifth largest district here in Oregon. We've got four comprehensive high schools and eight middle schools and like 2021 elementary schools. So a lot going on, a lot going on. I've been in education for 26 years now. Most of those have been as a secondary administrator, but for the last five I've been enjoying life in the curriculum department here at the district office. Awesome, awesome. I love it. You bring such a wide breadth of experiences which is always great. It helps you to just really serve your community, serve your teachers in the right way. We're gonna kick off with a pretty basic question here Justin, why is family engagement important for you in your role? I think it's something that I've learned over my years of being a school administrator. I thought as a high school principal I did a good job getting things out, using social media, kind of using the latest technology and kind of you get that high insight and you realize you could have done a better job. And I will say having daughters and having kids grow up within the system, elementary teachers do a far better job than secondary teachers at communicating with parents. They send a lot of things home. You kind of have an idea what's happening in the classroom and as they get older the disconnect between families and school just widens. And I think we can do a better job opening the doors and opening the window into the classroom. And that's one of the reasons I'm a real proponent of CSaw is it does just that and does it in a way that no other tool does. Is there anything you do at the beginning of the year specifically that really helps to kick off this climate you're aiming for? A positive connection with your community, a positive connection with your families? You know, Eugene's a unique community in that we have a lot of individuality even amongst our schools. And so there has been a lot of unique efforts at various buildings that are different. And so it's not necessarily a unified district way of going about it. But I think our schools have done a good job reaching out. They host various events at the beginning of the school year where they're inviting those families into the schools. You know, whether it be an open house or they just have some very unique community type activities where they reach out and some of them have picnics some of them have barbecues and they invite their community to the school and try to get connected that way. And you know, it's funny too, communications always changing. And so folks are changing their phone numbers and you'll get those families that still have their original email and they've got their Yahoo, AOL and you have to kind of tackle when those come across but then there's others that are changing them monthly and it's like trying to keep up with how best to communicate and reach those parents. And so you've got to reach out. You've got to connect them to the school in some way and inviting them in. And the more that you can get that regular communication set up, the better off you're going to be. What has been the most impactful change you've made in your role to help to increase family engagement? I think in my role, my biggest strength or impact that I've had is being able to work directly with principals to show them the tools available, specifically to get them familiar with how to use CSAW. So that professional development that you do upfront to help folks, especially at the beginning of the year, there's never enough time at the beginning of the year but to spend the time, etch it out, do the professional development so people have the at least awareness that the tool is there. And then maybe in a couple of weeks when they can take a deep breath and go, okay, I need, come out and help me, walk me through this so that I can start to do this tool. And I think that's the biggest, the upfront loading and the upfront work can pay huge dividends in the end. And so it's just a matter of forcing yourself to sit down and learn that new tool. And I met with a principal just last week and she was asking me this exact question, what's the best way to communicate with your mom and parents? And I walked her through the tools and what you can do within CSaw. But then I said, hey, again, you've got to reach parents where they're at. She was used to doing this newsletter and using, I think, SMORE to do that newsletter. And hey, if you're already doing that, keep doing it. Just add another tool to your toolbox. Just add another way to reach out because the more that you can do, the more tools you can do, you're meeting parents where they're at and so just trying to convince folks that just try it. Just send one message, see what happens. And just getting them over that phobia of, I've never used this and now all of a sudden I'm gonna use it as my communication tool as my first interaction with a parent. It's like, no, no, it's not that big a deal. You can always, just like we're doing here, we can always delete it, go back and you can ask me that question again. It's not the end of the world. And so trying to get them over that phobia at the beginning, I think is important. If I were to give advice to another district, one of the things that we just kind of don't have the ability to do here is kind of that top down, edict of this is exactly how you're going to communicate. So we have an interesting district in that we're very site-based in our management and not district-based. And so that has its pros and cons, but in a district where you are centralized to be consistent in your communication because if I'm a parent and I've got a middle school student, a high school student, an elementary student and I'm getting communicated with three different ways, it's hard for me to keep up. Again, let's meet that parent where they're at and make sure that that parent, whatever it is that they're using, whether it be social media, whether they're using the app, whether they're getting on canvas, that it's very clear on how to access those tools. And so, and to do it multiple ways, if you do a newsletter, make sure you're just copying that link and you're dropping it into a message and you're sending that via whatever message system you're sending. You don't necessarily have to recreate it. You can just send a link to it, but at least they have access to it. And I think access is the key. We're real cognizant of trying to make sure that we are putting out messages that are multilingual. We wanna make sure that we're hitting all of our families that we're not just catering to the dominant majority. We want everybody to be connected. And so, looking for tools that translate into multiple languages. Yeah, having sat down with one of our teachers at one of our high SEL population schools, she talked about how powerful it was to UCSA in that it broke down that communication barrier. The parent at home didn't speak any English and she didn't speak the language of that student, the home language of that student. And so, UCSA allowed her to break down those communication barriers because they could chat two ways and it would translate for each of them. And so, kept them connected, kept that parent involved in what was happening in the classroom, allowed her an avenue or a venue to be able to communicate and it just broke down all those walls. And so, if we're not using technology to do those kinds of things, I mean, you're missing the boat. It's the 21st century. There's no reason why these things can't happen. There are so many tools, so many really good tools that do this. And so, if you don't find one that works, you're not trying very hard. In the terms of maybe starting the year or even if you have new families coming in, if you've ever come across a challenge or a barrier that was just tricky for you to overcome and if you did, what did you do to get through that barrier? How did you bridge that gap to be able to have that positive connection that you were aiming for? Yeah, and I'm gonna kind of go back to my earlier answer and I know Eugene is a community along with a lot of communities around the nation right now are seeing a rise in homelessness and just a lack of access. And so, I think that partnership that we were able to have where we were providing cell phones and cell service and internet service to those families and really breaking down those barriers is huge. And again, one less barrier for a family that's really experiencing trauma and going through some difficult times. If we can break those barriers down and give them the access they need to communicate with the teacher, which that's our goal. We want to connect that parent directly with that teacher in that school. If we can provide at a fairly low cost a way to do that, I think the benefits far outweigh the expense. Why I'm a proponent of CISA is because of the student voice. Parents don't necessarily want to hear the principal's message. They don't want to read through all of the pieces and parts. We got my teachers at the elementary where my daughters, they send stuff home every Friday. And it became the newspaper to me. It came every day. And if there was something catchy, I looked at it. If not, I didn't really pay attention. And I didn't ask my student about it either. I just looked at it and that was the end of it. Whereas with CISA, I think the power is I get to hear my kid narrate what they're learning in the classroom. Whether that's over the top of a picture that they've taken or they're doing an actual video. And I'm listening to that, watching that. I'm gonna watch that. I'm gonna be tied right into that. I'm not gonna get tired of hearing my kid with that little short video clip talk. So, and I'm gonna share with the person next to me, oh, look at my kid. It's the dad pulling out their wallet of pictures. But it's, hey, here's my kid. Look what my kid's doing. I just, I can't stress enough how important I think that tool is. And the other piece I think it does is it, because I have that window into the classroom when my student gets home and I ask them, I'm not asking them, hey, what'd you do today? And I'm gonna get the answer, nothing. That's the classic answer, right? And then you have to probe and pull teeth to figure out what they did in class today. No, I got to see exactly what they did in class today. And I'm gonna ask that specific question. Oh, I got to watch your video today. Tell me about that. And they're gonna get excited as well because you saw something they did. So it just takes the barriers down. It takes those, the curtains off the window. I can see what it is that they're doing every day. I just wanna close up with saying thank you so much, Justin, for being here. Thank you for chatting about family engagement and family involvement in your schools. We learned a ton from what you guys are doing here and we're very excited to share your stories with everybody who's interested in continuing to grow their family engagements and bridge their family connections. Thank you so much, Justin. Thank you.