 can you make school feel less scary for parents and carers who have got a fear of school? So we're thinking here about those kind of families where there's this kind of intergenerational issue that perhaps the parents, the carers have had a bad experience of school themselves or their interactions have been negative they were often in trouble or didn't engage and that we're seeing those patterns repeated in the next generation. I work with schools often who've got this over you know two three more generations and these are the families that we really really want to engage and but they can feel harder to reach because often they are quite afraid of coming into school so in this video I'm just going to share some really simple ideas about how to get those families on site and on side. Okay idea number one is think about the communications that you're having with these families try and share good news so very often the communication that they're used to receiving is why is your child not here they've got in trouble they haven't done their homework etc etc etc often it can be quite negative so if there's a family where the child has a quite negative outlook and experience of school perhaps the family has experienced the same thing and they get very used to every time that they hear anything from school it's bad and it kind of reinforces those negative associations that might have been there for many generations so what we need to do is to try and kind of flip that and reverse it and try and encourage some positive relationships between school and home. Now that can be tricky if you've got a child who is quite challenging and it might not be that there's loads of good news to share but your job then comes to hunt for the good so hunt for any little good thing that you can find to celebrate about that child you will be amazed by the positive reception you will get from a family who've maybe never heard good news from a school when you pick up the phone or you send them email or a postcard saying I just wanted you to know that today your child was really kind or they really paid attention or whatever and again this can really help with the family child relationship and the discussions they're having about school because when the kid gets home from school if instead of you know the teacher's been on the phone again why are you doing XYZ they hear hey I heard you tried really hard in your maths test today that begins to change the dialogue so think about how you can share good news positive communication with the family as a starting point trying to change their perception. Okay number two is about picking your events wisely and making sure that when your parents come into school there's something in it for them make them really want to come so often you will begin to build this relationship through kind of celebratory events and getting the children really involved if you're thinking about wanting to do more of a kind of education type program and support the learning of parents and it can be hard to work out from parents what they want if they're not engaging that's the whole problem here then talking to the children can be a really good starting point and also using the children to help communicate why it's important for parents to come and maybe involving children in the delivery of the stuff too that makes it less scary but it also motivates parents to come because they want to see their child kind of performing and doing well so you can kind of think about maybe getting parents in a bit more through happy kind of sociable celebratory type events but also making sure when you're doing informational stuff it's actually what they need to hear and it's pitched at a level that makes sense to them. Okay number three is thinking about when you are bringing parents and families into school imagining what this feels like for them so imagining that you have got a parent whose experience of school was difficult who's got maybe a lot of fear and anxiety attached to this and then imagining what walking into your school for this event feels like for them so you can make this feel more warm more welcoming less scary by trying to make it feel less formal less like school essentially and simple things will make a really big difference here so think about what you're wearing are you dressed really formally is this likely to create a bit of a divide with some of your parents or are you dressed like them you want to all feel like you're kind of there's not a hierarchy here you're all on the same team yeah so think about whether your clothing perhaps might feel kind of scary and formal and perhaps whether that's something to think about think also about simple stuff like how you expect the children to address you so in many schools you go to then teachers are automatically addressed as Mr this or this is that or miss that or doctor so-and-so and I understand fully why schools do that but again if you're working with a family whose experience of school was that every time they spoke to Mr Smith they got told off then going into another school many years later and talking to people in those same terms will bring about you know it kind of retraumatises maybe on what might seem quite a small level but it's significant for that person in particular if they've not worked through those kinds of difficulties and if instead they can call you Sam then you know that can really help and again it reinforces that we are on the same team we're on the same level there's not a sort of hierarchy here idea number four is really obvious but really worth thinking about and that is to make sure that every time your parents your carers your families set foot in school they feel super welcome you want to give them a hug I mean not literally I mean you might literally but you want them to feel warm and held and like you want them to be there how can you let them know that you're happy that they're there actually getting to know a little bit about them taking time to listen to them engaging with them literally telling them I'm really glad you're here and talking to them about what is likely to be one of their favorite topics their children and is a really really positive starting point try if you can also to kind of say a nice goodbye when people go and for those families that you're really working hard to engage with follow up afterwards give them a call drop them an email let them know that you're really glad that they attended and you really hope they got something positive out of it and let them know they're always welcome to come back again in future those little things can make a really really big difference when you're trying to build these bridges and develop those relationships finally remember this might take time so you are perhaps trying to break generations worth of negative relationships between home and school and so this isn't necessarily going to fix itself overnight so don't assume that you're going to be able to fix it quickly but think instead about how you can begin to build those relationships so you might want to start with a bit of a softly softly approach and instead of trying to get your parents in to engage them with the thing that you really want to talk to them about instead think what's going to feel acceptable and nice and happy and kind of bonding for them so a really nice example I heard of recently was a school I was coaching who talked about having families in the whole families in for Christmas lunch and they did this for two reasons one was because for lots of these families it was in a really deprived area and for lots of these families this might be the only chance they got to experience a Christmas lunch and so they thought it was nice and celebratory and a really positive experience for the whole family from that point of view which is lovely but also they had all their staff there dressed up as elves with bells on and all that kind of thing and but they were there going and talking to the parents they were targeting specific families that they wanted to build that relationship with and they weren't having any kind of tough conversations they were just making them feel really really welcome and a part of things in the hope that when they then wanted to talk to them about other stuff or invite them back in for other reasons they'd have this positive memory of the the meal they'd had at school and that was the beginning of a really much nicer less formal more trusting relationship if you want more ideas about engaging your families at school I've got two books to recommend one is this one by Catherine Western which is aimed really at primary schools but I think that lots of these ideas could be applied elsewhere and absolutely love this book and the other one is one that I've recently come across by Nicola S Morgan the S is important not that Nikki Morgan and this is about engaging families I trained recently with Nicola and she was just brilliant and also hilarious but the book is really super practical and I love it so I'd also highly recommend this one I hope this was helpful and gave you some ideas I would love to hear how are you engaging with families in your school leave a comment down below remember loads of different people watch these videos and they read the comments too so if you've got a great idea or something you're going to try please share it so that others can try it out too take care be kind to yourselves and please subscribe new videos every Tuesday and Friday okay bye