September 21, 2017

You’ve worked hard to make your 21st CCLC program feel like a second home to children and youth. So how do you ensure that their families feel the same way? Try the three R’s of family engagement: Be a resource, be a refuge and help families refuel! 

These tips and the linked tools can help you put family-friendly practices in place right away. Also be sure to visit the Y4Y Family Engagement course!

- Assess family needs. When family members pick up students, ask them to complete a brief survey or have a brief conversation to learn about areas where they need help. 

- With your program team, map community assets. Find agencies and organizations that target unmet needs. 

- Set up a family information center. Offer brochures and application forms for free or low-cost services, such as food pantries, housing support and children’s health insurance. Put information and forms where family members will see them when they pick up their children. 

- Hold an evening or weekend information fair. Invite students’ families and people from the service agencies and organizations to come learn about one another. Be prepared to help family members complete applications or schedule appointments. 

- Start by welcoming families, learning their names, using translators if they speak a language other than English, and doing other things to build trust.  

- Help families learn about the school system. Families want their children to do well in school, but cultural or personal factors may make them reluctant to approach school personnel. Help families understand education jargon, how the school system works and how to get help for challenges their children face. 

- Make connections to the school day. You see family members several times a week, so you can show parents what students have done on their homework, and suggest ways family members can help continue the learning at home. Make an opportunity for a casual, friendly introduction to a school-day teacher or principal. 

- Offer a safe space. Work with your facility manager or a local partner and local law enforcement to offer a community recreation space that adults can share with children. 

- Nurture social and emotional connections. Hold regular (perhaps monthly) events such as coffee hours where families, program staff and school-day staff can get acquainted in a relaxed setting.

- Create opportunities for physical activity. Arrange for occasional yoga, dance or exercise classes that welcome all family members, including seniors and those with mobility issues. 

- Feed the intellect. Tell families about free or low-cost adult education and job training programs in the community. Connect parents and students to workshops about college financial aid and testing.

- Recognize financial needs. Coordinate with schools and local employers to hold a job fair, so family members can learn about local work opportunities. Provide information about housing support, unemployment benefits and other programs that help to meet basic needs. 

A Word About Respect

In all that you do, treat students and their families with dignity and respect. Take time to hear their voices, and to understand their strengths as well as their needs. Whenever possible, schedule program events at times that are convenient for families, and coordinate with school-day activities and community events. Respecting others never goes out of style. In fact, it might be considered the fourth R of family engagement — resource, refuge, refuel and respect

June 8, 2017

Whether or not you offer a summer learning program, you can partner with families to use strategies that keep children’s brains active during the summer. We know that all students run the risk of summer learning loss, and children in low-income communities have the highest risk. Here are some ideas to involve your 21st CCLC families in helping students hold on to the skills they learned in the past school year. 

1.    Connect With Family Members

Work with school-day teachers to create tip sheets so families have ideas about how to help their students. Then, deliver the tip sheets when you can have a conversation, so you make personal connections and can answer questions. 

•    Meet at the program site. If you operate a summer learning program, provide the tip sheets when family members pick up their children at the end of the day, or during a family event that’s tied to program activities.

•    Make home visits. If you don’t run a summer program, plan a short visit to deliver the summer learning tips.

•    Meet in the community. If you hold a community-based event, use email, a postcard or phone call to invite families to come pick up their summer learning tips. You might do this at a book swap (see below) or when you have an informational event — perhaps at a local street fair or a local market.

2.    Promote Literacy

When students lose reading ability over the summer, they rarely catch up during the school year, and summer losses can really add up. By fifth grade, if learning stopped over the summers, a student may be two or more grade levels behind. Here are ways that families and programs can help students maintain their reading and writing skills:

•    Share books with families and encourage reading out loud every day. Your program can hold a monthly book swap — arrange a place and time (just half a day) when families can bring books to trade so everyone gets something new to read and enjoy. Ask a community partner to provide the location, and even to conduct a book drive to expand the reading choices. 

•    Use story starters to encourage writing and reflection about summer activities. In your program or at home, a sheet of paper with simple prompts can start student writing about summer activities. Thinking of family members as the audience, students can “tell about today’s adventure” or “explain what you learned when…” At the dinner table, everyone can read the story and discuss the activity.

3.    Practice Math Skills

When families know which math skills their students need to reinforce — fractions, multiplication, measurement or something else — they can involve students in everyday activities that require math:

•    Do the math when grocery shopping and preparing meals. Students can help their families by reading price tags and nutrition information to make good decisions at the grocery store. When cooking together, students can learn how to read recipes and measure ingredients, and how to expand or reduce recipe amounts to serve a different number of people. 

•    Make good home fix-up decisions. Students can help adults do the math to answer questions like these: How much paint does it take to give my bedroom a new look? How much lumber should we buy to fix the fence in the back yard? 

Y4Y Resources

Family Engagement course. Take advantage of this free online course to brush up on many aspects of engaging with families. Don’t miss the Coaching My Staff section if you want ready-to-use materials for your fall training.
 
Family Engagement Strategies. This tool includes some of the above ideas, and more. 

Family Engagement Implementation Planner. This tool offers strategies for welcoming family involvement in your program.

April 18, 2017

Effective out-of-school time programs partner with families, students and schools to achieve the best possible educational outcomes. As you plan your programming for this summer and beyond, make sure to get the input you need to keep those partnerships healthy. Here are some ways to get input: 

•    Informal “hallway conversations”
•    Formal meetings with individuals or groups
•    Structured small-group discussions
•    Suggestion boxes
•    Surveys

Not sure where to start? Check out our ready-to-use Y4Y stakeholder surveys!

If you’re planning a summer program, use the Family Survey and Student Survey from our new Summer Learning course. By administering these surveys at the start and end of your program, you can demonstrate your program’s impact, and find what you’re doing right and where you can improve. 

Y4Y’s new STEM surveys for grades K-1, 2-3, 4-6 and 7-12 can help you design STEM programming that engages students’ minds by focusing on subjects that already interest them. 

You can align your program with school-day learning by using the Survey of Teacher Programming Needs to find out where students are struggling and could use extra support.

Finding out what families, students and schools think about your program (and ways they can contribute) can make it more effective. Y4Y stakeholder surveys can do some of the work for you. It’s the perfect place to start!

March 16, 2017

Students need to feel safe, encouraged and welcome to keep their stress levels down and their minds open for learning. But creating a positive, inclusive environment is easier said than done. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone! In fact, it’s often best to enlist the help of school-day staff, parents and community members. Here’s how you can start:

Take positive steps to prevent bullying. 
The first step to stopping bullying is knowing how to spot it. Know how bullying is defined and learn about warning signs that can tip you off if a student is being bullied or is bullying others. When you see bullying happening, intervene immediately. Then follow up by finding out what happened and supporting the students involved.

Work with school-day teachers. 
Coordinating bullying prevention efforts is an important part of sharing responsibility with school staff. Align policies with schools to send a consistent message to students that bullying is never okay. Improve your connections to schools with the Communication and Collaboration Checklist.

Engage parents and family.
Including family members in bullying prevention can help students feel safer and more secure, and make parents worry less. Help parents and family develop the skills needed to talk about bullying with youth in productive ways, and share ideas for how family can be part of the solution. These efforts can support your goals for family engagement.

Get the community involved. 
Bullying affects entire communities. Taking the lead on prevention can be a service learning project for students, and a great opportunity to demonstrate the value your program brings to your community. Consider which of your existing partners might help, reach out to new ones and recruit volunteers.

Share knowledge and resources with others. 
Online or in person, bullying causes misery now and can lead to unhealthy behaviors in the future. The website StopBullying.gov offers many free, research-based resources and strategies to help young people and adults stop aggressive behavior and build a positive community climate. For example, learn about the different roles: students who bully, students who are the targets of bullying, students who assist and reinforce, students who defend, and students who want to help but don’t know how. Also see The BULLY Project website for ideas about how to take action.

When students don’t feel safe, you can’t possibly expect their full attention. Don’t let bullying-related stress be an obstacle to their happiness and their ability to learn!

June 14, 2016

Help students hold on to their literacy skills by trying some or all of these easy tips:

During a summer program:

- Build literacy into your summer program. For example, if your curriculum has a STEM focus, use the Y4Y STEM Vocabulary Builder. It can help students learn math and science language and reinforce understanding of the concepts. Get other ideas from the Literacy Everywhere tool.

- During one day of the program, hold a “book swap.” Invite everyone to bring used books and take different ones home.

Outside a summer program:

- Hold a family literacy event. Use this Y4Y checklist to help you organize.

- Enlist family members to lead read-alouds several times a week. One way to structure this is with a “family book review” activity. Learn about it on the Reaching Out to Families tool. 

- Partner with your local public library to help students sign up for library cards. Families get free access to books (including digital ones that download to a tablet or computer) and a professional librarian to help readers select ones they’ll enjoy.

- Find a local partner to help you send books home to your students and their family members.

For more ideas, visit Read Where You Are and keep learning alive all summer long!