Latest / Partnership Work / Partnership is Our North Star: Family-School Partnerships with Dr. Karen Mapp

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Partnership is Our North Star: Family-School Partnerships with Dr. Karen Mapp · Partnership Work

0:00
Karen: My mom had her Sunday best clothes on. I was like, uh-oh.
0:06
Karen: And she's like, Karen, I'm going to drive you to school. She had her little
0:09
Karen: hat on, her pocketbook. I was like, oh, man, this is trouble.
0:14
Karen: And we show up at the middle school, and she goes to the principal.
0:19
Karen: Luckily, he took her in, and they were in there for about 15 minutes.
0:23
Karen: And when she came back out, she said, you're all set. And I got transferred
0:27
Karen: to the college track, right?
0:29
Karen: But, you know, Paul, I think about that because I think about how many other
0:32
Karen: families may not have known to do that, right?
0:36
Karen: And I probably wouldn't be talking to you today if it wasn't for the fact that
0:40
Karen: my mom intervened at that very critical moment.
0:52
Paul: Hey, welcome to Partnership Work, where we explore what it takes to move from
0:57
Paul: isolation to action. I'm Paul Kuttner.
1:01
Paul: When you were growing up, how connected were your family and your school?
1:05
Paul: Did your teachers reach out to your family? Did your family feel welcome at school?
1:09
Paul: Did your family and your teachers make decisions about your education together?
1:14
Paul: The answers to those questions may have had a real impact on your experience in school.
1:20
Paul: The extent to which schools and families collaborate as partners is central
1:23
Paul: to educating young people and improving schools.
1:27
Paul: But despite advocacy from organized families, decades of research showing the
1:31
Paul: impact of family engagement and some major policy wins, most schools still struggle
1:36
Paul: with this piece of the puzzle.
1:38
Paul: Today I talk with Dr. Karen Mapp, who has been studying and teaching about family
1:42
Paul: school partnerships for more than 25 years.
1:45
Paul: She is a professor of practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and
1:49
Paul: the author or co-author of several books, including Powerful Partnerships,
1:53
Paul: A Teacher's Guide to Engaging Families for Student Success.
1:57
Paul: Her dual capacity building framework for family school partnerships is used
2:01
Paul: by school districts across the country.
2:03
Paul: She spends much of her time training teachers, administrators,
2:06
Paul: and district leaders about how to partner equitably with families.
2:11
Paul: Karen was one of the mentors who set me on the path to partnership work.
2:15
Paul: Serving as her teaching assistant and working with her on research projects
2:19
Paul: had a profound impact on how I understand partnerships, community engagement,
2:23
Paul: and the power of relationships.
2:26
Paul: In our conversation, we start by defining family-school partnerships and why they matter.
2:31
Paul: Karen explains what schools that excel at family engagement do differently,
2:35
Paul: and the results it can have for students.
2:37
Paul: She shares how her own family supported her education and why that was so critical to her success.
2:43
Paul: We also talk about this political moment, why teachers receive so little training
2:47
Paul: in engaging families effectively, the deep-seated biases that get in the way,
2:52
Paul: and some hot-off-the-press research.
2:54
Paul: If you enjoy the show, please share it with a friend or rate and review us on
2:58
Paul: your favorite podcast platform.
3:00
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3:03
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3:10
Paul: And you can find all our episodes, transcripts, show notes, and more at partnershipwork.org.
3:17
Paul: And now, Karen.
3:24
Paul: Dr. Karen Mapp, thank you so much for joining me on Partnership Work.
3:29
Karen: It's good to be here, Paul. I know we've been trying to pull this together for
3:32
Karen: a while, so we finally did it. Hooray!
3:36
Paul: Yeah, I know it's really good to see you. We're going to spend some time today
3:38
Paul: talking about family-school partnerships.
3:41
Paul: You are the queen of family-school partnerships in my mind, and so I'm really
3:46
Paul: excited to ask you about it.
3:48
Paul: But before we get into all the stories and details, I want to just get the definitional
3:53
Paul: questions out of the way. So what are family-school partnerships and why are they important?
4:00
Karen: So, you know, there's a long and deep research history now on what this,
4:09
Karen: what do we mean by partnerships between home and school?
4:14
Karen: And what we're really talking about is where these two entities,
4:19
Karen: so we'll stick with school and family for now,
4:23
Karen: where they really work together in a very reciprocal, sharing,
4:29
Karen: two-way relationship where both parties are respected.
4:36
Karen: And their knowledge, whether it's the knowledge about the curriculum and then
4:42
Karen: the family side, the knowledge about their child and the community in which
4:45
Karen: they're situated, is really valued and seen as
4:51
Karen: Really, really important to support the child in every way possible so that they can succeed.
4:59
Karen: And we talk about partnership because when you think about what's required,
5:05
Karen: In a healthy partnership, there's a lot of things.
5:09
Karen: There's trust, there's respect, there's accountability, there's integrity, there's integrity.
5:17
Karen: And there's vulnerability. So all those things that, you know,
5:20
Karen: when we think about having a healthy partnership with someone in our lives,
5:24
Karen: all those pieces go into this partnership between home and school.
5:30
Karen: And so that's our North Star. That's what we want. That's the kind of partnership we want.
5:35
Karen: Now, getting there, you know, we'll be talking about that probably,
5:39
Karen: is a whole other story because in many cases,
5:42
Karen: this definition of partnership that I just laid out isn't quite what a lot of
5:49
Karen: educators and families have experienced.
5:52
Paul: So you mentioned there's a lot of research on this. Why do we care about family
5:55
Paul: school partnerships? Why are they important? Why do we need them?
5:59
Karen: Yeah, well, we know now from the research that these partnerships are actually not a nice to have,
6:07
Karen: but they're actually an essential strategic move that you must have in order
6:15
Karen: for your schools to succeed.
6:17
Karen: We just did a wonderful study with Learning Heroes. It just got launched a couple
6:21
Karen: of weeks ago where we followed up on something that I had noticed that happened during and after COVID.
6:31
Karen: I do some work with superintendents and get to talk to them quite a bit.
6:35
Karen: And they told me that one of the things that they noticed was that their schools
6:40
Karen: that had had strong partnership cultures before COVID were the same schools
6:46
Karen: that fared better during and after COVID
6:50
Karen: In terms of grades and test scores and in terms of attendance, right?
6:56
Karen: And so I happened to be on a webinar and said this. And luckily,
7:01
Karen: somebody from Chan Zuckerberg heard me and said, we'll fund a study.
7:07
Karen: So over the last two and a half years, we've been doing a study.
7:10
Karen: And guess what? We found out that the schools that maintain these partnerships
7:15
Karen: throughout COVID, we do see that. And we isolated for all other variables.
7:21
Karen: And what we found out that the family engagement piece was one of the key indicators
7:27
Karen: of resilience to, you know, any kind of chaotic circumstances that may happen in schools.
7:36
Karen: So when we talk about why partnerships, it's a huge big deal in terms of your
7:41
Karen: school's ability to thrive during
7:45
Karen: chaotic circumstances like a COVID disruptor and then period when it comes to anything else.
7:51
Karen: So these schools do better.
7:54
Karen: Their grades were higher. Their test scores were higher. And what we saw is
7:58
Karen: that they did not suffer from the type of chronic absenteeism that a lot of
8:02
Karen: schools actually still are dealing with post-COVID.
8:08
Paul: And do you have a sense of why that was true? What was it about those relationships
8:12
Paul: that helped the school thrive during COVID?
8:15
Karen: Well, you know, I think we've learned, and this isn't just family and community
8:19
Karen: engagement research, it's research that actually even comes from sort of the
8:23
Karen: business community, that relationships are the key to everything.
8:27
Karen: I don't know if you remember, I think when you were a student with me,
8:30
Karen: we read a book called Trust in Schools by Tony Bryk and Barbara Schneider.
8:35
Karen: And when they were trying to unpack what makes schools thrive and what makes
8:41
Karen: schools do well, the key piece, the foundational piece was the relationships
8:46
Karen: between the staff and the families.
8:49
Karen: And relationships really drive everything else.
8:53
Karen: When you have these strong relationships, particularly of trust,
8:57
Karen: and they talk about this concept called relational trust in the book,
9:01
Karen: When you have that, everything else works.
9:04
Karen: And they use the metaphor of the oil in the engine of a car.
9:08
Karen: For those of you out there who have electric cars, you don't have to worry about this anymore.
9:11
Karen: But for those of us who are still driving hybrids and gas guzzlers,
9:17
Karen: The oil makes everything else function.
9:19
Karen: And boy, oh boy, if you forget to put that oil in or change the oil,
9:23
Karen: it really causes some pretty major and significant problems with your engine running smoothly.
9:29
Karen: So what they found was that these relationships of trust, where there's respect
9:34
Karen: and there's integrity and personal regard for each other and where we see each
9:40
Karen: other as competent human beings,
9:43
Karen: that those places function well.
9:45
Karen: Everything else rests on top of this foundation of relational trust.
9:51
Paul: Could you give us an example maybe of what a really high quality,
9:55
Paul: thriving family school partnership looks like?
9:59
Karen: Well, before I do that, let me just say this. I don't want people listening
10:04
Karen: to think I'm throwing shade on educators.
10:07
Karen: Because here's the deal.
10:09
Karen: We've done a lousy job in higher ed and all of our training programs of building
10:16
Karen: the capacity of our educators to do partnerships.
10:20
Karen: The kind of partnerships I'm talking about where we know how to cultivate trust
10:23
Karen: and relationships with families, where we know from the research what actually
10:29
Karen: works to make a thriving partnership, which is what I'll get to in a minute.
10:35
Karen: You know, when I do speaking engagements around the country and the world,
10:39
Karen: a lot of times I ask this question. So I was just at a wonderful conference
10:44
Karen: called Playing Talk where there were 3,000 educators, mostly teachers.
10:47
Karen: It was absolutely spectacular.
10:50
Karen: And I was really honored to be their keynote. And I asked all these folks,
10:54
Karen: I said, okay, how many of you in this room during your pre-service training
11:02
Karen: had a course on family and community engagement?
11:05
Karen: And of the 3,000 people in that room, only two people raised their hands.
11:10
Karen: So, you know, this is why people don't have the mindsets because first of all,
11:14
Karen: we haven't really told them the truth that knowing how to do this work is integral
11:20
Karen: to their success as an educator.
11:23
Karen: We made them think that this is just something that's nice to do when you have time.
11:28
Karen: When you get a moment, maybe connect with the families of the children that you're teaching.
11:35
Karen: We haven't told them, this is a part of your pedagogical success.
11:38
Karen: This is a part of your pedagogical strategies.
11:41
Karen: Because now we know that that's the case, right?
11:44
Karen: So that's why I say I don't throw shade on educators because we haven't really
11:47
Karen: shown them how to do this work well.
11:50
Karen: And I'm proud to say here at the ed school, got a full 12-week course,
11:54
Karen: people leave with those skills.
11:57
Karen: So when I look around the country at the schools that are doing this well,
12:01
Karen: and this is the other thing that we found from the Learning Heroes study,
12:06
Karen: we found that there are four things that what we call bright spot schools do
12:13
Karen: When they're doing partnership well.
12:16
Karen: The study just came out, so I might not get all four of these right.
12:19
Karen: I might have to look it up. But one of the things is that the leadership,
12:24
Karen: there's a mindset there that family engagement is important.
12:28
Karen: So people in that school community, it's almost a part of their DNA.
12:32
Karen: It's part of their culture. Families are
12:34
Karen: important, and we've put in the infrastructure. That's the second part.
12:39
Karen: We put in the infrastructure structure to make sure that family engagement happens.
12:44
Karen: So for example, we showed a slide where we showed the master schedule at a typical school.
12:51
Karen: And that tells you for each segment of the day, what's happening,
12:56
Karen: what courses are being taught.
12:57
Karen: Well, a principal at a school in Baltimore actually put the family engagement
13:03
Karen: time on the master schedule for his teachers.
13:07
Karen: So it's built into the schedule. So at that place, everybody knows that at this
13:12
Karen: school, family engagement is a part of our strategic plan.
13:17
Karen: And we actually provide time for that to take place. We provide time for that to happen.
13:25
Karen: So that's another thing that we see at these schools.
13:30
Karen: One of the other things that we see is that the school really takes time to
13:36
Karen: prioritize sort of one-on-one meetings with families.
13:42
Karen: So there's a really intense communication strategy where they want to make sure
13:48
Karen: that they do some one-on-one meetings with families, and a lot of times it is in person.
13:54
Karen: So they try to capitalize on any time that maybe families are doing drop-ups
13:58
Karen: or pick-up, or they do home visits, or they make sure that they at least do
14:04
Karen: maybe Zoom calls where they can talk to families one-on-one
14:08
Karen: So there's a real intentional strategy to make sure that, you know,
14:12
Karen: they know the families of the children in their schools.
14:17
Karen: And then the last piece is that, again, it's that relationship piece.
14:21
Karen: They make sure that the relationships are personal. There's conversations,
14:24
Karen: two-way conversations where people, you know, share their stories,
14:29
Karen: Where, you know, everybody knows everybody.
14:32
Karen: People know each other's names and they pronounce them correctly.
14:37
Karen: I mean, it's all these little things that these schools are very strategic about
14:42
Karen: and very intentional about. So that's what we found at these bright spot schools.
14:46
Karen: Again, that the mindset of everybody in the building is that families are equal partners.
14:51
Karen: You know, the leadership provides really clear vision about the importance of
14:55
Karen: family engagement and creates like an infrastructure.
14:58
Karen: And actually, there's high expectations for family engagement.
15:01
Karen: But there's sometimes, you know, some sort of accountability strategy or measure that they use.
15:08
Karen: Again, one-on-one communication is prioritized.
15:12
Karen: And then the development of these relational trust partnerships is really important to them.
15:18
Karen: So those are the four things. Now we see this is different at different schools, right?
15:22
Karen: At high schools, they do it differently than elementary schools,
15:26
Karen: you know, maybe with high school parents, you know, they may go into the community
15:30
Karen: and do it there, because you know how freaked out kids get at the high school
15:33
Karen: level about having the families in the building.
15:37
Karen: So maybe they do something in the community.
15:41
Karen: But those are the four sort of characteristics we see of schools that are really
15:45
Karen: prioritizing family engagement and doing it really well.
15:49
Paul: Great. What do you think are the biggest things that get in the way of that
15:55
Paul: kind of effective family engagement?
15:59
Karen: So, you know, I always try to assume good intentions, right?
16:04
Karen: So I start from the place of the lack of training.
16:08
Karen: So that's, that's really where we started. It's okay. Folks haven't been trained,
16:11
Karen: but what happens is that when folks haven't been trained, you know,
16:15
Karen: there's a years ago, there was a Survey of the American Teacher that was done by MetLife.
16:20
Karen: And, you know, what we found out is that teachers are actually afraid of parents.
16:24
Karen: You know, they go into these jobs and because they weren't trained on how to
16:28
Karen: communicate with families, that first parent teacher conference,
16:31
Karen: or that first open house, a lot of new teachers are terrified because they haven't
16:37
Karen: been trained on how to talk to families.
16:39
Karen: I have a lot of students here that say to me, oh, Dr. Mapp, I love teaching because I love kids.
16:44
Karen: And I say to them, well, you got to love the whole ecosystem that surrounds the child, right?
16:50
Karen: And when we say families, obviously we mean all adult caretakers.
16:53
Karen: So it could be grandma, grandpa, auntie, uncle, et cetera.
16:56
Karen: So I assume that it's that they haven't been trained.
17:01
Karen: And you know, our colleague and friend, Soo Hong, has done a lot of research
17:05
Karen: in this area about what teachers need to be able to do this work well.
17:11
Karen: And they do need to be trained, they need to be mentored, they need to be coached.
17:15
Karen: Under some of that is bias. So,
17:19
Karen: you know, when you have educators who are teaching in schools where the school
17:24
Karen: community population is very different from what they are familiar with or where
17:30
Karen: they come from, you know, again, a lot of times there's fear.
17:34
Karen: And let's face it, with all that
17:37
Karen: we hear in the media, all that we get bombarded with and social media,
17:43
Karen: all of those things that we breathe in every day will sometimes cause us to
17:48
Karen: have biases about people who are different than us.
17:51
Karen: So some of the work that we do with educators is like, let's be honest.
17:56
Karen: Let's sit down and talk about what are some of the biases that we might have?
18:00
Karen: What are some of the ghosts? You know, Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot wrote that wonderful
18:03
Karen: book, The Essential Conversation.
18:04
Karen: And one of the chapters is called Ghosts in the Classroom.
18:08
Karen: And it's about what's that baggage that we bring to this relationship?
18:13
Karen: What are those things that we really need to address about how we may think
18:19
Karen: of our families that we've really got to interrogate?
18:35
Paul: That's super helpful. I want to come back to some of those ideas,
18:39
Paul: but I want to spend a little time talking about you, if you don't mind.
18:45
Paul: So what was your experience when you were a young person in school?
18:53
Paul: How were your family members involved in schooling and how do you think those
18:57
Paul: early experiences might be shaping the way you do this work today?
19:01
Karen: So it's interesting, you know, everybody in my family was involved in my schooling.
19:08
Karen: I come from a big extended family and my mom was very much involved.
19:16
Karen: She was very much in the PTA.
19:18
Karen: I think she was the PTA secretary. Some of this, you know, I didn't really see until I got older.
19:25
Karen: Um, but you know, the teachers all knew me, they knew my family.
19:31
Karen: I had several educators. My godmother was a teacher in the school that I went to.
19:37
Karen: Um, my other godmother was, was a preschool teacher and I was in her preschool.
19:43
Karen: So a lot of the women in my family were very, very much engaged in
19:52
Karen: My coming along as a student. Again, some of it was invisible to me.
19:57
Karen: But now when I look back, I realize that some of the extra attention that I
20:02
Karen: got from teachers and my mom kind of knowing what to do and knowing how to support
20:09
Karen: me at home was because she was in communication with my teachers.
20:12
Karen: And she knew, you know, okay, she should be able to do this XYZ task,
20:17
Karen: you know, by the end of this quarter. And so my mom was like,
20:20
Karen: okay, Karen, let's, let's try this reading drill at home.
20:24
Karen: And unbeknownst to me, the reason why my mom was able to do that was because
20:30
Karen: she was in communication with my teachers.
20:33
Karen: Uh, and, and I also had a bit of an incident when I transferred.
20:38
Karen: So I, I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut until sixth grade,
20:43
Karen: we moved to Bramford, Connecticut.
20:45
Karen: And I was a really, really, really good student.
20:48
Karen: And when we moved to, so, so New Haven was a very integrated community.
20:52
Karen: In fact, there's books that have been written about New Haven.
20:55
Karen: My dad went to an integrated high school, right? in the 1940s.
21:01
Karen: And that's unheard of for a lot of people. So very integrated community.
21:07
Karen: And then when we moved to Brantford, I was one of maybe five or six African-American
21:13
Karen: kids in the whole school.
21:15
Karen: And so the first day I got to school, seventh grade, all excited.
21:19
Karen: And they had big time tracking back then.
21:22
Karen: And even though I had all A's from my primary school, I was tracked into the
21:29
Karen: lowest grade at the school.
21:32
Karen: And I didn't know what was going on. I came home.
21:35
Karen: I was really upset. I told my mom, you know, I'm in class with a lot of special
21:41
Karen: needs kids. And in fact, the teacher kind of recognized that I shouldn't be
21:45
Karen: there. And she asked me to be her assistant that day.
21:49
Karen: But she didn't do anything about it. So I told my mom and the next morning,
21:54
Karen: My mom had her Sunday best clothes on. I was like, uh-oh.
22:00
Karen: And she's like, Karen, I'm going to drive you to school. She had her little
22:03
Karen: hat on, her pocketbook. I said, oh, man, this is trouble.
22:08
Karen: And we show up at the middle school, and she goes to the principal.
22:13
Karen: Luckily, he took her in, and they were in there for about 15 minutes.
22:17
Karen: And when she came back out, she said, you're all set. And I got transferred
22:21
Karen: to the college track, right?
22:23
Karen: But, you know, Paul, I think about that because I think about how many other
22:26
Karen: families may not have known to do that. right?
22:30
Karen: And I probably wouldn't be talking to you today if it wasn't for the fact that
22:34
Karen: my mom intervened at that very critical moment.
22:38
Karen: So that's how, you know, when I started doing this work, I remembered that story.
22:42
Karen: I remembered that moment where my mom, and probably in conversations with my
22:48
Karen: dad, completely changed the trajectory of my life, right?
22:54
Karen: So that's partially why I do this work because I know how important it is for
23:00
Karen: families and staff to really be in sync with each other.
23:05
Paul: So what,
23:08
Paul: was the first position you had connected to family engagement?
23:13
Karen: The first position I had was when I was an admissions officer at Trinity College
23:18
Karen: in Hartford, Connecticut.
23:20
Karen: So I got that job in 1986. I had been working for corporate.
23:24
Karen: I had worked for AT&T right out of college and decided that that was not my
23:28
Karen: calling and I'd left that job.
23:31
Karen: And it was really sort of luck and serendipity that I got the job at Trinity
23:37
Karen: because I actually was an active alum and found out that this job was available and applied for it.
23:43
Karen: So in that position, I got a chance to travel all over the country and talk
23:49
Karen: to usually juniors in high school
23:54
Karen: And actually be at college fairs where their families would show up.
23:59
Karen: And I began to figure out that families need to know about what their child
24:05
Karen: should know and be able to do in the fifth and sixth grade
24:09
Karen: in order to make them ready for colleges like Trinity, Wesleyan,
24:13
Karen: Yale, Harvard, you know, cause there's, there's,
24:16
Karen: there's courses that kids have to take really in seventh and eighth grade,
24:21
Karen: like algebra in order to get them ready for the kinds of courses that colleges
24:27
Karen: look like that they need to take in high school.
24:30
Karen: So I said, oh, you know, I need to start talking to parents of kids when they're
24:33
Karen: young. So at Trinity, I did this program where we invited the children to come
24:40
Karen: to Trinity and make them college students for a day. It was really cool.
24:44
Karen: And the kids got Trinity College backpacks. They got IDs.
24:49
Karen: We had the college students, we would assign one kid for, we had kids,
24:55
Karen: college students that volunteered to do this.
24:58
Karen: We talked to the faculty and so it was okay to have these fourth graders in
25:02
Karen: their classes with them.
25:04
Karen: And that night we invited all the parents to come to Trinity and I had someone
25:09
Karen: from the college board come and they were going to talk about like how to prepare
25:13
Karen: for financing and also for testing.
25:15
Karen: So at all the schools that I went to, where we invited them to this,
25:19
Karen: the one thing that was a common thread was that they said to me,
25:23
Karen: we're going to give you the kids, but you're never going to get the parents
25:26
Karen: to come to an event at night.
25:29
Karen: We don't have, you know, this was done with, you know, Trinity College around
25:33
Karen: Trinity is, you know, population of sort of marginalized folks in terms of socioeconomics.
25:40
Karen: And, you know, I did hear that, well, you know, our parents don't care.
25:44
Karen: And so, you know, we have activities, two parents show up.
25:49
Karen: So what I did was when I sent the invitations home, I told all the parents that
25:53
Karen: the kids were going to be featured in a movie.
25:56
Karen: So what we did was we had, you know, the kids that videotaped the football games,
26:01
Karen: I had them go around campus and videotape these kids all day.
26:05
Karen: And then at like three o'clock, they ran back to the whatever video studio they
26:10
Karen: had, and they put together this five-minute video for me.
26:13
Karen: I told them, make sure you get every single kid in that video.
26:18
Karen: Like even if it's for two seconds and they did.
26:23
Karen: And Paul, we got like 200 parents to show up.
26:26
Karen: We had, we had dinner, but they were so charged up. My kid's going to be like in a video.
26:31
Karen: And then once we got them in there and, you know, I told them about why we were doing this.
26:37
Karen: And we had my buddy from, from the college work come and we broke them up into
26:43
Karen: small groups. And you know me, we did some turn and talk and all that stuff.
26:48
Karen: And man, those parents called me for months after that. One woman made me cry.
26:52
Karen: She said, you know, my child runs home every day now and says,
26:56
Karen: mom, I'm going to college. So I got to be a better student.
26:59
Karen: And she said before that, he was like, didn't really care.
27:03
Karen: So that was my first experience with
27:08
Karen: Sort of hearing school people say, oh, these folks don't care,
27:13
Karen: and then seeing the exact opposite.
27:16
Karen: And that's when I started asking questions about, okay, how can I fix this?
27:21
Karen: Because I see what happened with me with having such an engaged,
27:27
Karen: you know, my family was so engaged.
27:31
Karen: I really think it's important. And I went and talked to one of my mentors,
27:35
Karen: Edgar Beckham, who was at Wesleyan at the time, and he said,
27:40
Karen: looks like you need to study this.
27:42
Karen: You know, you haven't taught, and so you're not going to have any credibility
27:47
Karen: unless you get your doctorate.
27:49
Karen: And that sort of launched this whole thing.
27:54
Paul: So those questions eventually led you to the Harvard Grad School of Education,
27:58
Paul: where you were teaching family school community partnerships for many years now.
28:03
Paul: Now, when you first started teaching this, what were some of the early mistakes
28:07
Paul: you made or what are the things you had to learn about teaching educators about engagement?
28:13
Karen: Let's see. Let's see.
28:17
Karen: Well, I think that I was not
28:24
Karen: Aware at the time, or I didn't have words to describe the resistance that I
28:35
Karen: saw, even in students who signed up for my class.
28:38
Karen: Okay, so you sign up for my class. I figure, all right, you're eager to learn how to do this well.
28:46
Karen: But what I found was that many of my students still had these mental models
28:55
Karen: of involvement with families versus engagement with families.
29:00
Karen: So it was these models where the families were still kept at a distance where,
29:06
Karen: you know, communication was one way.
29:09
Karen: We give you stuff to do. And if you do it, you're a good parent.
29:13
Karen: And if you don't, you're a bad parent.
29:15
Karen: We don't reveal anything about ourselves, God forbid.
29:20
Karen: We keep you at arm's length and the relationship is very transactional or we do it out of compliance.
29:28
Karen: So we get Title 1 money, which requires us to do some family engagement.
29:33
Karen: So we're going to have three or four programs, whether you show up or not,
29:37
Karen: doesn't matter. Just as long as we had it, we can check it off and say we're done.
29:41
Karen: So I had folks in my class who thought, okay, I'm, I'm here to just learn how to do that better.
29:48
Karen: But this woman is talking about me really sharing of myself,
29:55
Karen: being vulnerable, you know, sharing power. What?
30:04
Karen: What do you mean sharing power? What are you, nuts?
30:08
Karen: You know, I even had school principals who were in my class and looked at me
30:12
Karen: and said, what are you talking about?
30:15
Karen: Parents helping me make decisions? Parents being involved in trainings?
30:22
Karen: And so I realized I had to have people come into class who had actually done it.
30:28
Karen: They needed to see it. Because I think, Paula, we'd read all this theory,
30:33
Karen: and we'd read all these studies, and we'd even read case studies of schools that had done it.
30:39
Karen: But until they actually saw live human beings talking about how they had transformed
30:46
Karen: their school into one of these places that would count as a partnership school,
30:51
Karen: I think they thought it was all aspirational and not real.
30:55
Karen: You know, after that first year, I made sure that I, you know,
30:58
Karen: brought people in, did panels with families, did panels with principals.
31:04
Karen: You know, we even would go to some of the schools here in Boston that were doing
31:07
Karen: it well. They had to see it to believe it.
31:11
Karen: And, you know, I still try to make sure I do that now. With Zoom,
31:15
Karen: it's a lot easier, right, to bring people in and have folks talk to my students.
31:21
Karen: And I actually have my students work with schools. I just didn't realize that,
31:25
Karen: you know, to unlearn some of the bad habits people had learned,
31:30
Karen: you know, you really need to have them feel and experience a different model.
31:48
Paul: This is something I'm super curious what you're going to say.
31:51
Paul: You know, education is always very political and it's very fraught.
31:55
Paul: It's a battleground always.
31:56
Karen: Especially now.
31:58
Paul: Yeah. Right now it seems really vicious. And I also noticed
32:02
Paul: that the right in particular has really been pitting parents and teachers against
32:07
Paul: each other as part of that.
32:11
Paul: But has the current political climate, the last decade or so,
32:16
Paul: changed the work of family-community partnerships?
32:21
Paul: What have you seen that's changed, that changed how you teach your students?
32:26
Karen: So, you know what's really interesting, Paul, is that,
32:32
Karen: you know, the National Association for Family School Community Engagement has
32:36
Karen: done a lot of work with, you know, some of the policy stuff around family engagement.
32:42
Karen: And they were very much involved in conversations about this Parents' Bill of
32:46
Karen: Rights that had come up a couple of years ago, you know, very much pushed by,
32:54
Karen: you know, Moms for Liberty and things like that.
32:57
Karen: You know, and the thing of it is there's some stuff in that Parents' Bill of
33:00
Karen: Rights is that we can all say, yeah, we want that. We want family voice to be honored.
33:08
Karen: Some of the other stuff that was in there was not stuff that we could support
33:12
Karen: because it was about limiting the voice of some people based on their backgrounds.
33:17
Karen: And it's just, you know, it's the opposite of everybody being seen,
33:23
Karen: right? So that part we couldn't lean into and say that we agree with.
33:30
Karen: What I'm finding is that
33:34
Karen: A lot of my educators are more interested in how to do this well because they
33:39
Karen: have realized that one of the things that makes them vulnerable to the more extreme points of view
33:48
Karen: is when they haven't engaged their families
33:51
Karen: and all their families.
33:53
Karen: Because what I have found is that a lot of these pretty extreme views are held
33:57
Karen: by a minority in the schools.
34:01
Karen: Um, and so what happens is that if you're a school who hasn't been respectful
34:07
Karen: to families and you haven't tried to build, build partnerships with all your
34:12
Karen: families, you are vulnerable
34:14
Karen: to an outside group coming in and saying, Hey,
34:17
Karen: we understand that you are feeling excluded.
34:20
Karen: We're going to make it so that you're included because we're going to use a
34:23
Karen: hammer, uh, uh, instead of a carrot to, to get the schools to talk to you. Right.
34:30
Karen: So I have found that there's been more openness to this type of,
34:37
Karen: you know, building strong partnerships with families more now than ever before.
34:45
Karen: I think that one of the good things that's come out of these parents' bills
34:49
Karen: of rights is a recognition that we need to honor our families. Right.
34:54
Karen: But it's the way we do it. We don't want an adversarial relationship between
34:59
Karen: our educators and our families. In fact, there's been some research that I've
35:04
Karen: heard about that I actually have to follow up on that shows that kids suffer.
35:10
Karen: When school and home are not on the same page.
35:14
Karen: Kids suffer when they see this very sort of negative relationship between home and school.
35:22
Karen: So what we're looking for is, again, partnership. We're not looking for this,
35:26
Karen: you know, vitriolic relationship between home and school. That doesn't work.
35:31
Karen: But yeah, like I'm busier now than I've been in a long time.
35:36
Karen: The busiest when I was really bombarded was during COVID because that's when
35:41
Karen: people realized we can't do education without our families.
35:44
Karen: And so I got really bombarded during COVID about, okay, how do we do this well?
35:50
Karen: But I'm still seeing a real interest. I think we just have more and more educators
35:55
Karen: who understand that this partnership and this engagement is important.
35:59
Karen: So we're seeing a lot of them say, okay, we've got to train our staff to understand
36:06
Karen: what's the difference between involvement and engagement, and then how can we do this better?
36:12
Paul: What's one or two things that you're most proud of as you look back on this work over the years?
36:22
Karen: I have to say, I think that the Dual Capacity-Building Framework, I'm very proud of that.
36:28
Karen: And thanks to you, Paul, and my other former student, Eyal Bergman,
36:35
Karen: who really helped me work on that.
36:37
Karen: And that actually leads me to the second thing I'm most proud of.
36:40
Karen: I'm proud of all of you because there's quite a few of you that I taught that
36:47
Karen: are now doing this work well.
36:50
Karen: Dr. Shadae Harris, Dr. Eyal Bergman, you know, Dr. Stephany Cuevas,
36:57
Karen: Marissa Alberty. I mean, I've got a long list of people, Keith Catone, you know,
37:04
Karen: Su Hong, and all of our folks that were in our program, our project with Mark
37:10
Karen: Warren for A Match on Dry Grass.
37:13
Karen: So I think I'm most proud of the community that
37:19
Karen: I've been a part of and helped to hopefully cultivate, that really warms my
37:24
Karen: heart and brings me a lot of joy when I see all of you out there doing this
37:28
Karen: work because I know that the work will continue on
37:32
Karen: and you all will continue it and it's a quite spectacular fashion.
37:37
Paul: Well, we owe you a lot. So that's all my questions. Thank you so much for coming
37:43
Paul: on today. It's just been so much fun to talk to you.
37:47
Karen: Well, thank you. Because these things, believe it or not, these little,
37:50
Karen: these things make me nervous. And I'm like, oh my goodness, you know,
37:54
Karen: what am I going to say? Am I going to say something and mess it all up and everything?
37:59
Karen: So you made this very easy, Paul. I appreciate it.
38:03
Paul: Thanks, Karen.
38:10
Paul: Thank you all for listening. For transcripts, show notes, and links to subscribe
38:14
Paul: to the podcast and our Substack newsletter, go to partnershipwork.org.
38:19
Paul: Partnership Work is an independent podcast produced with the support of Urban
38:23
Paul: Media Arts here in my hometown of Malden, Massachusetts.