Last year, staff and families at Kodiak Middle School looked at their School Climate & Connectedness data together during a community cafe. One question jumped out as scoring particularly low: Only forty percent of families responded favorably to (in this case, disagreed with) the statement that “The school only contacts me about my child when there’s a problem.”
We know that one-on-one communication about a family’s child is one of the most powerful family engagement strategies. Perhaps KMS was sharing generic information about schedules and events, without focusing on individual students’ strengths and needs. In other instances, school staff may have contacted families about a student only when they were late, absent, at risk of failing, or fighting. Either way, the school’s leadership recognized the need to shift their practice.
Principal Rena Rankin and Vice Principal Judith Bruns (both still with the district but in new roles this year) devised a plan to give staff ten minutes during their weekly staff meeting to make positive phone calls to at least two families.
How did it go? For some teachers, it was awkward at first. But Rena and Judith knew they were on to something when one teacher came into the staff meeting and said, “I just had the best conversation!”
Families that have been on the receiving end of these phone calls in other school districts have reported crying – with happiness. One parent who had been moved to tears said, “No one from the school has ever called to say anything good about my kid.”
Relationship researchers know that five positive interactions are needed to balance out every one negative interaction. Making positive phone calls home at the start of the year is like putting money in the family engagement bank.
Leadership from the school – setting up the expectation and a structure to ensure teachers had the time and were compensated to do what was asked – helped make it happen.
And the results showed: this year the Kodiak Middle School’s score on the same School Climate and Connectedness Survey question jumped 17 percentage points.