BELE

Building Equitable Learning Environments

education

Back-to-School Nights — A Missed Opportunity

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Back-to-School Nights — A Missed Opportunity

By Karen VanAusdal, Senior Director of Practice at CASEL

Imagine walking into your child’s high school, where members of the marching band are performing outside the building. Student greeters hold the doors open and welcome you warmly. Inside, parents put on name tags that indicate not only their own names but also the names of their children.

In the auditorium, the principal begins with a personal story about their favorite teacher from childhood, and invites parents to turn to someone next to them and share their own memory of an adult who supported them when they were young. The principal shares a vision for the school year that helps all parents feel positive and part of the community and encourages them to contribute to that vision by adding sticky notes on a wall display.

As parents move to classrooms, teachers greet parents at the door as they would students and open the conversation with an invitation for parents to introduce themselves before discussing what their children can expect in their classroom. Parents are invited to leave notes for their children and can share one thing they hope for this school year.

How does this experience match the types of back-to-school nights or open houses that families attend this time of year? Often these events, in the spirit of expediency, miss important opportunities to catalyze a sense of belonging and authentic partnership between schools and families. As caregivers ourselves and SEL professionals who help districts create this type of community, we offer a few tips to keep SEL in mind as you welcome families back to your school.

First Impressions

How can you welcome families as they enter your building and set a tone of student-centered welcome, support, collaboration, and joy?

  • Consider how to incorporate young people’s voices, either in person as greeters and guides, as performers (such as the school band or dance group performing as people enter), through artwork or messages on the wall, etc.
  • Before the event, ask students what they want to share and celebrate most about their school.

Getting to Know One Another While We Get to Know Your School

How can you ensure that families not only learn about the school curriculum, but also get to know the school staff and each other?

  • Have name tags available for families where they can share their name and “I have a child in x grade”
  • Begin classroom or whole-school presentations with a warm welcome that allows for connections between caregivers. This may be a brief turn-and-talk about something caregivers are looking forward to during the year ahead or an activity such as a “raise your hand if you … (have multiple students in this school, remember being nervous for a first day of school, attended this school yourself, tried something new or traveled outside of our state this summer, etc.)” Find more ideas in our 3 Signature Practices Playbook.
  • Ensure that staff members introduce themselves, their vision as educators, and their hopes for the year, in addition to the schedules, curriculum overview, and logistics of their classroom.
  • Include an overview of the ways that the school is explicitly building community at the school and classroom level, any SEL curricula you are using, and ways that student supports are integrated into the classroom experience. Create opportunities for caregivers to share how they are supporting their students’ holistic development at home as well.
  • Consider having interactive opportunities rather than just telling caregivers about the curricula. It can be powerful to use examples that tie to the community or experiences that showcase how your curriculum helps prepare students for their daily lives and futures.
  • Create bi-directional learning.Consider having caregivers sit in a circle to encourage sharing and equity of voice. Classroom gatherings may also be a time to get feedback on what caregivers may have learned about their students during remote learning or how the teacher and school can best meet their students’ needs (verbally or through a quick written survey).
  • In schools with homerooms, consider having sticky notes inside each student’s desk where caregivers can leave “love notes” for their students. For students whose caregivers are unable to attend, offer opportunities to email notes or have peers also leave notes for one another.
  • Collaborate to build deeper connections to the local community. For example:
    — Organize community/neighborhood tours. Create opportunities for parents and caregivers to identify the places they’d like school staff to see to better understand their interests and needs.
    — Use the night to schedule visits to homes and community centers or ask for upcoming events that staff and caregivers can enjoy together.
    — Partner with the local library to explore local history together.

Optimistic Close

How can you end your time together in a way that leaves participants feeling connected and encouraged to stay in partnership with school staff and one another?

End your back-to-school night by inviting caregivers to share something positive they have heard this year from their student or something they are curious to learn more about in the coming months. Share opportunities for caregivers to sign up for newsletters, roundtables, and volunteer opportunities and to partner with you on the design of these experiences and resources.

Just as we hope that SEL and academic growth are intertwined throughout our students’ school experiences, we see back-to-school nights as opportunities to model those connections for caregivers as well. Wishing you all a beautiful year ahead!

Karen VanAusdal serves as Senior Director of Practice at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). She oversees multiple initiatives to support and scale SEL in service of equity and excellence in school districts and with collaborators in the field.

Joining Transcend and the American Association of School Superintendents on the Road to Reinvention

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By The BELE Network

In the coming months, our schools will continue to make decisions that affect the trajectory of student learning and the student experience for countless young people across the country. Instead of reverting to a status quo that never worked for everyone, there are jobs that schools can tackle in order to meet the moment and move forward stronger.

On October 22nd, Transcend Education and the American Association of School Superintendents (AASA) held the first webinar in their “Road to Reinvention” bi-monthly webinar series on how schools can equitably respond, recover, and reinvent in response to COVID-19. Featuring Rowan-Salisbury Schools Superintendent Lynn Moody, this webinar explores the “leaps” that need to happen in order to shift our education system from the status quo to one that allows all young people to thrive.

Watch this highlight reel of Superintendent Moody in conversation with student Ali Khatib about how they were able to leverage the Transcend Leaps into a meaningful conversation about how schools can work better for students.

School leaders: keep abreast of AASA + Transcend offerings on behalf of your school community today by registering for free using this form.

You can view the full webinar below, or dive in further and learn about the steps necessary to respond, recover and reinvent from their full resource. Once you have, tell Transcend and AASA about your experience and perspective using this survey.

Finally, keep an eye out for upcoming webinars in this series in December, February, April, and June on Transcend Education’s event page. Please share these opportunities widely with others in the education community — by preparing now, we can position ourselves to take the necessary leaps to create equitable learning environments in the near future.

Transcend Education’s work with school communities and the larger ecosystem is guided by five fundamental beliefs: all children have infinite potential; to realize this potential, we must reimagine “schooling” as we know it; the work is most successful when pursued through a rigorous, community-driven R&D process grounded in equity; while never easy, innovation is absolutely possible, accelerating progress requires strong local leadership, surrounded by a conducive ecosystem.

The BELE Network is dedicated to reimagining our inequitable school system that has failed too many for too long, and is committed to transforming our classrooms into learning environments that nurture the intellectual, emotional and cultural growth of all students — especially students of color.

Learn more about BELE on our website, and access our resource library to get the best and most up-to-date thinking on how to make learning environments more equitable.

Joining Transcend and the American Association of School Superintendents on the Road to Reinvention

by

By The BELE Network

In the coming months, our schools will continue to make decisions that affect the trajectory of student learning and the student experience for countless young people across the country. Instead of reverting to a status quo that never worked for everyone, there are jobs that schools can tackle in order to meet the moment and move forward stronger.

On October 22nd, Transcend Education and the American Association of School Superintendents (AASA) held the first webinar in their “Road to Reinvention” bi-monthly webinar series on how schools can equitably respond, recover, and reinvent in response to COVID-19. Featuring Rowan-Salisbury Schools Superintendent Lynn Moody, this webinar explores the “leaps” that need to happen in order to shift our education system from the status quo to one that allows all young people to thrive.

Watch this highlight reel of Superintendent Moody in conversation with student Ali Khatib about how they were able to leverage the Transcend Leaps into a meaningful conversation about how schools can work better for students.

School leaders: keep abreast of AASA + Transcend offerings on behalf of your school community today by registering for free using this form.

You can view the full webinar below, or dive in further and learn about the steps necessary to respond, recover and reinvent from their full resource. Once you have, tell Transcend and AASA about your experience and perspective using this survey.

Finally, keep an eye out for upcoming webinars in this series in December, February, April, and June on Transcend Education’s event page. Please share these opportunities widely with others in the education community — by preparing now, we can position ourselves to take the necessary leaps to create equitable learning environments in the near future.

Transcend Education’s work with school communities and the larger ecosystem is guided by five fundamental beliefs: all children have infinite potential; to realize this potential, we must reimagine “schooling” as we know it; the work is most successful when pursued through a rigorous, community-driven R&D process grounded in equity; while never easy, innovation is absolutely possible, accelerating progress requires strong local leadership, surrounded by a conducive ecosystem.

The BELE Network is dedicated to reimagining our inequitable school system that has failed too many for too long, and is committed to transforming our classrooms into learning environments that nurture the intellectual, emotional and cultural growth of all students — especially students of color.

Learn more about BELE on our website, and access our resource library to get the best and most up-to-date thinking on how to make learning environments more equitable.