5 Culturally Responsive Family Engagement Strategies

For decades, research has affirmed that engaging families is one of the five keys to transforming schools and districts from good to great schools. Strengthening partnerships is an essential component to effective teaching, propelling student growth, and school improvement. In turn, families need staff to create spaces for them to learn about the inner workings of the school, as well as have opportunities to share their experiences, insights, and questions.

Parents and caregivers want to be involved and to find easy pathways to feeling connected to their child’s school. As I explore in my book, On the Same Team: Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together, forming a diverse team of families and educators dedicated to creating more inclusive and culturally responsive approaches is one of the best ways to foster more authentic school-family partnerships. Here are five overarching ways that you and your school can strengthen your partnerships with families.

1. Make Communication Accessible for all Families

We educators often say we “communicate regularly” with families. But are we communicating on their terms or ours? In our language or theirs? Is communication a one-way street, or are we fostering ongoing two-way communication? To be culturally responsive in building bridges to families, we have learned that some ways of communicating are better than others.

• Carve out time for face-to-face connection, and use two-way communication tools that provide seamless translation (e.g., the app Talking Points) to ensure that all families have equitable access to communicating with the school. 

• Remind families that they have a right to interpretation support.

• Share timely information through multiple communication mediums, and make it easier for families to respond with their inquiries. Instead of relying primarily on email, also draw upon video messages, texting, and prerecorded audio messages, and highlight important information at in-person events.

• For families that may not reference the school’s website, use QR codes with vital information that families can easily access on their phone, and post them on the school newsletter or magnets that they can place on their refrigerator.  Consider having a directory that makes it easy for families to know how to contact you and other school staff.

• Schedule school events and activities at times that make it easy for families to attend, and offer virtual access when possible to create greater flexibility.

2. Make Consistent Efforts to Learn About Families’ Cultures, Identities, Beliefs, and Rich Histories

We educators are often eager for families to learn about the education system. We offer them “orientations,” “handbooks,” and “newsletters.” But do we work equally hard to learn about them? Here are a few key ways that we can show through both our words and actions that we truly value diversity and respect our students’ lives beyond the walls of the classroom. 

• Avoid scheduling special events such as field trips or tests on important cultural or religious holidays. For instance, students and families should not feel torn to decide between a cherished event with families such as Yom Kippur or Ramadan and performing in their school play, concert, or athletic event.

• Engage in professional learning around family partnership best practices and cultural responsiveness, including questioning your own assumptions when it comes to families’ identities and practices. This could be a training in how to conduct relationship-centered home visits, two-way communication apps, or an exploration of implicit bias and how it impacts our work with students and families.

• Spend time in students’ communities to meet families where they are and learn about their lives (i.e., home visits, neighborhood walks, attending students’ extracurricular activities).

• Learn basic greetings in a variety of languages.

• Forge connections and draw upon local cultural organizations that are relevant to families, and collaborate with other school personnel and community partners to support families around key needs.

3. Make it Easy for Families to Participate in Events and Share Their Input 

We like to imagine our schools as open and welcoming to the community, particularly to the families of our students. But after decades of doing this bridge-building work to connect educators with families, it is still too commonplace that school events for families are scheduled around what is most convenient for educators and often designed without family members at the table.

• Invite families into the classroom more often to celebrate students’ learning, whether that is reading aloud poetry, presenting projects, or incorporating families as guest experts.

• Establish ongoing, team-based structures, such as the Families and Educators Together model, so that underrepresented families in particular build stronger relationships with school staff, regularly have seats at the decision-making table, and consistently feel seen and heard.

• Solicit meaningful input and feedback from families several times each school year. After asking for families’ feedback, educators demonstrate prompt and meaningful follow-through, which includes updating them on the impact of their input. 

4. Help All Students and Families see Themselves Reflected in the School Community

Ensure that students and families’ cultures, identities, experiences, and languages are represented in the school. This can look like greetings in a variety of languages being featured at the front of the school building, posters in the school library that reflect a diverse array of cultural heroes, and ensuring that the curriculum incorporates the cultures of all students that you serve. As Albert Marshall, an Indigenous elder in Canada, puts it, “We need teachers who can weave back and forth between the knowledges” of various cultures so that students have mirrors that reflect their cultural backgrounds and windows into other cultural experiences.

Schools can also host culturally relevant events and activities (i.e., cultural fairs, heritage days, and international nights) and design these events in ways that strengthen relationships with families as well as between them to foster higher levels of collective agency. 

5. Help Families Support Their Children’s Learning at Home

Explicitly convey that you value families for all that they do at home to support their children’s learning rather than evaluating their engagement by how visible they are at school. Bryan Goodwin writes, “The extent to which parents regularly communicate high academic aspirations for their children had a greater effect size than any other parental behavior.” Make a concerted and ongoing effort to help families, particularly immigrant families, develop an understanding of how the school operates.

When there is trust and collaboration between educators and all families, children feel it. They feel accepted and valued. They feel known. Then, school and home are like parentheses, with children nested inside a community that feels connected rather than fragmented. In that kind of quality learning environment, it is safer and more enjoyable to learn.