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Session 5. Partnership: Involvement at School and at Home
Objective. Build a one-page partnership plan for your class that asks families what works, removes barriers and offers several ways to take part at school and at home.
Partnership is where everything in this course comes together. A plan for working with families should be small enough to carry out and honest about what stands in families' way. It should ask before it tells, offer more than one way to take part, and give every family, including those who cannot come to school, a place. This lesson helps you turn what you have learned into a one-page plan that you can review after a month.
Key ideas
Involvement is more than attending
- Families take part in many ways. Joyce Epstein described six: parenting support, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making and working with the community. A parent who cannot come to school may do a lot at home.
- Partnership is two-way. The school does not only send information; it also asks for ideas, listens to the answers and shows what changed.
- Do not measure a family's care by how often it comes to meetings.
Find and remove the barriers
- Barriers include working hours, distance, caring for younger children, cost, reading difficulty, language, and feeling unwelcome after a bad experience.
- Low turnout tells you there is a barrier, not that families do not care. Ask a few families: which day and time, which place, which language, what format (talk, note, call)?
- Guidance from the Education Endowment Foundation points the same way: review how you work with all parents, and make support for learning at home practical and simple.
Home learning that needs no materials or reading
- Offer five-to-ten-minute ideas in any language: tell a story from your childhood, count steps on the way home, sing a song and teach it, measure ingredients for plov and talk about the amounts.
- Ask the child: 'Teach someone at home one thing you learned today.' The child becomes the teacher and the family does not need to know the school topic.
- Value every family's way of helping, including a grandmother who listens, a brother who asks questions and a parent who makes quiet time. Never make a pupil feel ashamed of how little help is possible.
Families as partners in the classroom
- Invite families to share what they know, if they wish: a job, a craft, a Navruz tradition, a recipe, a song, words in their language. This can be a visit, a recorded message, a written note or a story told to the child.
- Give families a real voice in some decisions, such as the date of a class event or the topics of a parent talk, and thank them in a way they can see.
- Close the loop: tell families what you did with their answers, and ask again after a month. Partnership is a habit, not an event.
A simple ladder of partnership
Ask, offer, review
Start every plan with questions to families: when, where, in which language and in what form can you take part, and what would you like to share or learn? Offer several small options rather than one big event: an open hour, a phone call, a story told at home, a note in the diary. Different families will choose differently, and that is the point. An EEF blog on weekly parent sessions reports that only about a third of invited parents attended even once: offering is not the same as reaching.
Review after about a month: which options were used, who did not respond, what barrier might explain it? Change one thing and ask again. Tell families what you changed because of their answers; people keep taking part when they see that their words had an effect.
Home learning that fits real homes
Good home learning ideas are short, free and possible in any language: tell a story, count, cook, sing, ask the child to teach one thing. They should not require the adult to know the school topic or to read well, and they should never be a test of the family. Offer a choice of two or three, and say clearly that doing nothing at all one week is not a failure.
Think also about what families give. A grandfather's knowledge of gardening can support a science unit; a mother's work at the market can support mathematics; stories in Tajik, Karakalpak or Russian enrich a literacy week. Invite, never expect, and say thank you in a way the child and the family can see, such as a line in the class news or a note home.
Examples from the classroom
The Saturday open hour
Scene. Malika teaches Grade 3 in Fergana, 28 pupils. Three parents came to her Tuesday 6 p.m. workshop. Instead of giving up, she sends three questions home. Several families ask for Saturday morning. She runs an open hour from 10:00 to 11:00 with tea, children reading to relatives and a phone option for those who cannot come. Nine families take part, and at the next review three more ask to join.
Insight. Ask, offer several options, review; low turnout was information, not a verdict.
The grandmother's story
Scene. Dilnoza teaches Grade 2 in Samarkand. Each Friday a child may bring a 'story from home' in any language, told by a family member and retold by the child in class. Aziz's grandmother tells a Navruz story in Tajik; Aziz retells it in Uzbek and the class draws the scene. The grandmother later asks if she may tell another. No materials were needed, and the grandmother never had to come to school.
Insight. Home participation can be spoken, in the home language, and still count fully.
Plov by the kilo
Scene. Jasur teaches Grade 6 mathematics in Tashkent, unit on ratios. He asks families, in a short note, whether anyone wishes to share amounts from a family recipe or prices from their work. A mother who sells carrots at the market gives him prices per kilo. The class uses her numbers to scale a recipe from 4 to 12 portions, and Jasur writes 'thank you to the market' in the class news.
Insight. Families' work and knowledge can become real lesson material when they are invited and thanked.
Common pitfalls
- Judging a family's care by how often it attends meetings.
- Relying on one big event instead of several small ways to take part.
- Giving home tasks that need reading skills, special materials or money.
- Collecting families' ideas and never telling them what changed.
Our Partnership Plan
- Read the sample plan in your Activity Kit (Grade 3, Fergana, 28 pupils). Then take the blank one-page template.
- Alone (15 min): write the plan for your own class: one goal for the term; three questions you will ask families; three ways to take part at school and three at home; the channel and language for each family; how you will hear back; a review date.
- In pairs (15 min): swap plans and review them with the checklist: Is it two-way? Does each idea remove a barrier? Can the teacher really do it? Is anyone left out? Write two changes on your partner's plan.
- As a group (10 min): each person reads out one idea they will try and the date. Choose one idea to share with your director.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which idea in your partner's plan would you borrow, and why?
- Which family in your class is most likely to be left out by your plan, and what could you add?
- What is the first question you will ask families, and when?
Reflect
- Which families in your class do you hear from least, and what might stand in their way?
- What does your school ask of families more than it gives to them?
- What is one thing a family taught you this year?
Try it tomorrow
- Send the three-question note (when, how, what could you share) to every family this month, in the language each one prefers.
- Add one home idea that needs no materials and no reading to next week's homework, and say that it is optional.
- Invite one family member to share something short, and thank them in a way the class can see.
Further reading and links
Ask families what works, remove one barrier at a time, and offer several small ways to take part at school and at home.