 Welcome to another episode of the Learning Loop podcast where we get to talk all about education. I'm your host, Chris, and today we're going to have a great show. Our special guest is Joanie, a technology integration coordinator here to share about how families make an impact. Today during our show, join us while we talk about insights, how family engagement matters, and what effective engagement really looks like so that practical examples and students and teachers can start to come together the right way to support student success. You don't want to miss our important conversation, so let's jump right in. Joanie, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Chris. I'm excited to be here and hopefully I'll come up with some good ideas for you. Oh, of course, of course. You are such a superstar. We are so excited that you're here sharing some insights and you have such a broad wealth of knowledge here. We're just going to jump right in with our very first question and hopefully glean some things off this one right away. How has the involvement of families in their child's education impacted student success? Have you seen that happen? And if you have, feel free to share any examples. So I think that's an easy answer to see when it's successful. Families that are connected in whatever way they can be, I think that's the important piece. In the long ago years, it meant that they were volunteering in your classroom and they were coming to see all the events. And because of the things that have changed in our world and their busy lives, and most families have two working families or working adults are too busy to attend those things or many things, we've had to pivot and find ways to connect them in different ways. So I think even checking in on what the students are doing on a daily basis or having short conversations or just knowing what's happening at school in the way that they can, I think that's the most important thing. And so when families are engaged like that, they do feel connected to their student at school, but it's different than it used to be. Absolutely. It certainly has changed and we're seeing that continue to evolve and grow as we start to fall into what does that technology component that you have in that school, what does that really look and feel like? How is that different between each student and each school as you continue to grow with that? But I do think that you hit the nail on the head is that it's a matter of going to that core element. Like what is that connection? What does that really mean and how do we continue to make that personalized for each of those families and personalize that to and how the technology and or the connections continue to change. So I love that. What are some challenges that schools face when they're trying to engage all of their families and we're thinking about the broad expanse of families that are out here. Maybe they have different cultural backgrounds. Maybe they have different socioeconomic statuses. What are those barriers that are out there? And how can we start to overcome some of those in education? Yeah, I think one of the biggest thing is time. I already kind of mentioned that, you know, parent just busy families, you know, if your children are involved in anything outside of school, it creates another element of busy in their lives and then just their work schedules. But the other part of it in that and I think that we've begun to address it a little bit. There is a cultural cultural barrier for sure. But language is also a big barrier. And we've come up with new and innovative ways to address those barriers. But it's still, you know, it's not just language in terms of words. It's language in terms of understanding. So context. So I think, you know, in reaching out to our families, we really, really have to be innovative in how we communicate. And not always the thing that works best and easiest for the teacher, but the thing that works best for that family. And that really does personalize that experience because it's different for all of them. And it's a big job to be able to do that. So. Sure is. I love how you're really getting personalized, the word that you use, you know, personalizing that, making sure that you're meeting them where they are. And maybe that's halfway. Maybe that's 90% of the way for some families too. But just making sure that you're meeting them somewhere along that journey. Yeah. Is there anything that you can share from your experience that, you know, really helped you to start to overcome those barriers in your schools? Yeah, I think one of the biggest things or one of the stories that I that I think about often when, when we're talking about barriers and overcoming that is, and it's a seesaw related story. But times have changed with how we communicate. And as I mentioned, you know, we as educators have this, this is how we communicate. This is the platform. This is what we do to communicate. But we have never like really dug deep about, well, what does the family need to communicate? So one of our schools as seesaw became more of a communication tool with the messaging platform and different things. One of our schools discovered kind of by accident that they were finding really, really amazing success at connecting families using seesaw. So prior to that, their family engagement was really low. Like they were trying to get families to come to conferences, to come to events, to come to even just respond when they were using email alone. And when they when seesaw came about and it had the capability to do some communication for families, they turned that whole, they flipped that whole design and found out that they could get a hundred percent of their families engaged. And I think it's just twofold. It's like part of it is like they weren't looking at their need. But the other thing is just like it's quick. It's easy. They get a notification on their phone and whether or not their families had all the technology tools in their home, they had their phone. And so they were responsive and responding. And I think that's just that's just a really good example of looking at it differently. And that doesn't mean that that is the only way or that's the only successful way. But so you have to look at your environment, your culture, your students, your families and figure out the way that works best. Absolutely. But you did manage to find a golden bullet and or a solution for you for that school to get to a hundred percent is truly amazing. I mean, I think every school would really strive for that. You know, you want all your parents to be connected. You want them to be informed of what's happening and how to be involved in school. So to hit that number is truly amazing. That's so awesome to hear. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It was it was surprising for that for the school to like, wow, we didn't we didn't consider that and look at the results. So they were excited. They are excited. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's the best surprise to possibly have, which is great. Yeah. What are some best practices for getting families engaged right from the start, whether this is back to school, whether this is like preschool kindergarten, like how can a school start on the right foot with those new families and or those families who are just starting the year here in, you know, probably about a month for most schools. Yeah, I think the biggest thing is to have a plan. And to have a lot of people involved in supporting it. In our district, we actually have a first trimester goal for all of our schools to have 100% families connected. And so what we do is starting like even before school, we look at the data that we have when we build our classes and find out who's not connected because we're lucky. We've been seesaw for schools for a long time. And as time has gone on, many, many more families are automatically connected, but, you know, we always have, we always have a large number that isn't new families, kindergartners. And so we look at that data and we target those families to make sure that they get invited. We do that in a couple of different ways. So the teachers are sending out their invitations when they send their welcome back to school letter. But they're also, we also have our office coordinators are seesaw admins in their schools. So when a new student comes or a student that hasn't been connected, they have the ability to just jump in and send that invitation right away or print that invitation right away. So having them involved in the process, like, you know, it's just normal practice for families to be connected. And then at open house in when there is such a thing at our schools, we have a station where it's not, the teacher is sitting there. It's other people in the school that are sitting there, you know, like, are you connected to seesaw? So I think, you know, just that team concept of it's not just one classroom teacher that is working toward that goal. It's the whole school. And it's important. And the fact that ever that it's normal, this is normal practice that that helps as well. So if you're talking about a new practice situation, you would have to build that culture of, of the goal is that this is normal practice for us to have our families connected. So I think those are, those are kind of the key tricks or key best practices tips. Absolutely. It comes back to this old quote of, you know, shoot for the moon and you'll fall among the stars, shoot for a hundred percent. And if you get to 95, that's still truly amazing when you think of the numbers and getting 95% of your families connected. So I love to how you said this is our regular practice. Like this is our expectation is to get to a hundred percent. And so it's just a great precedence to set for not only your culture as a school system, but for your community also, you know, they know when they start that school year, our first step is to connect and our first step is to make sure that, you know, we're connected to seesaw and we're informed in what's happening in those classrooms. So I love that. I think one of the things that teachers have done is that they've sent out, they've sent out, maybe they sent by email me and they sent it by seesaw. But they send out a letter that says, just so you know, this is the only email you're going to get for me. Everything else is going through seesaw. So I think that just, you know, like clearly this is what we do. This is how we communicate is also important. The other thing I think to get our admin on board with the idea is that we showed them an example of, we're a seesaw for schools pre-K5, so we have the luxury of everybody's on the same platform, but we showed them kind of a courtesy of Holly Scads, I'm not going to use her name, like an example of like if you are using seesaw and email and whatever other platforms and you have multiple children in your school, a family has to look in multiple different places for the information. So just making it clear, it's a free line, everybody's in the same place. That also has been contributing factor to the success of getting more families connected. Absolutely. Sometimes less is more. And I would definitely say in this case of keeping communications open and informing families of what's happening. Like you were saying earlier, families are very busy. And so how do you make it easier for you to share what's happening, keep them in the loop without overwhelming anybody. So I love that you're trying to make sure that that's in as few places as possible. You're connecting as many people as possible. So you're just keeping everybody informed. Right. What does this family connection, when we think of this from our educational backgrounds, we know what that means for us. What does this connection mean for families in your school? So have you heard anybody share anything about what that means for them to be connected, to be a part of learning at such a deep level in your schools? Yeah. I think the biggest thing is that seeing authentic experiences of what students are doing at school, and I would say more important than the activities that show this really structured, like I accomplished these tasks in an activity, those moments of the child reading a book and hearing their voice using their own voice and expression, those powerful moments are what families like, they melt your heart. We've all listened to them in many different ways and when you're a busy parent and you have a moment, you're at work even and you get this notification and you hear your child's voice or see them explaining something, it just gives you goosebumps. I think that authentic connection is the most important or the most valuable part of being connected to school and then I think you also find out what's happening at school, like what kinds of things are you weren't doing because the kindergartener that comes home and you say, what are you doing at school today? Oh, nothing. What was your favorite thing? Gym. We played outside, which all are really, really important but the family, there's just no other way and so when you see that authentic collection of experiences at school, that's a very, very powerful connection and that's what families want. They want to know their child is happy and has friends and is doing well more than just academically well but just doing well and having a good experience at school. That's what Sisa does. Love it. I love that. You hit the nail on the head as far as what I as a parent care about when I go to parent teacher conferences. It's less about the academics. It's less about the grade and the score. It's about, do they have friends? Are they enjoying school? What's their favorite part outside of math reading, ELA science? What else do they like to do? What are their passions? I think like you were saying, parents get to see that inside of Sisa. They get to feel that and really have that be a tangible connection whether they're on their device or whether they're simply just sitting together listening to things too. So I think the power that this comes with informing families and keeping them a part of the learning is just second to none. I love that testimony. Exactly. I'm going to ask you a throw you for a loop question. This is part of our podcast that's just designed to give you a little quirky question for you. Would you rather be stuck in an endless loop of bad hair days or in an infinite loop of bad jokes? Wow, that's a really tough one. My boss is a bad joke winner. I mean, he's the king of dad jokes. So, oh goodness, bad hair day, bad jokes. Well, you know, I kind of find the bad jokes a little bit funny. So from time to time, they might get tiring, but bad hair days just makes your day awful. Sure. You know, you just, like you're doing, you're on the videos, you're like, oh my God, the hair day, that would be just draining. Totally. I think I would agree with you too. I think, you know, I do find the bad jokes and the dad jokes too sometimes a little bit funny. And it's also, you know, it's good for your body to laugh and get some giggles out throughout the day. Love that. Final question for you. We're thinking of what else can a listener just take away from our conversation? You've shared so many amazing things, but maybe we can share one last thing before we close up. What advice would you give to educators about how they can be most helpful and supportive of their students and how they can learn and succeed in schools? What's maybe one thing that they can do to continue to grow and blossom that family engagement environment so that they can really have success this year? I think right away of, you know, in our classrooms, we make it a point to have connection with our students on a personal level with each and every student that we have. And when teachers are able to do that successfully, that can be challenging. But when they are able to do that successfully, the students thrive and do better and feel like this classroom is an extension of their home. And so if we can think of a way to make connections with our families in a similar way, that's also a big challenge. But if we can find ways to connect with our families on a more personal level to make them feel like they are valued and that they're important to the process, they're part of the process, just at school, this is school, and at home, that's home. If you can make some sort of personal connection with your families, just thinking back on my career, those families that I had a great personal connection with, you remember them, you remember their children, you remember all the positive things that happened. So trying to find ways to make that personal connection with our families, I think that would be really important. Amazing. Whatever way that is. I would also say to continue what you were saying, the families also remember you. Not only do you remember those families, but they remember the impact that you had on them in the care that you brought to those conversations. So that's truly amazing advice, and I think that that's always what we should strive for. Powerful connections and memorable moments for everybody. Joni, I want to just say thank you so much for taking some time here today to talk about family engagement. I am sure that listeners here are going to pull away so many amazing nuggets from our conversation. I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time. Great. And thank you for bringing this platform to the people because the more the better.