Florence, South Carolina
Tammy H. Pawloski, Director and Professor of Education
Online FLASH Workshops to Renew Family and Community Partnerships
The director of the Center of Excellence (COE) at Francis Marion University delivered a keynote address at a South Carolina state conference on practical strategies for family engagement linked to the NNPS Framework of Six Types of Involvement. This led to a series of online FLASH Workshops for key contacts in COE’s 29 Partner Districts to help them meet their goals to engage all students’ families at school and at home. Then, the workshops were offered to leaders in all districts in the state. COE designed the online, fast-paced, goal-linked, and free workshops to provide ideas that could be immediately implemented or adapted in all districts and at all grade levels from pre-K through high school.
Teachers, administrators, parents, and district leaders for partnerships attended the Zoom workshops that included time for questions and discussions. Lottery-style drawings for gift cards and free registrations for COE’s 2022 Online Summer Institute were conducted during each workshop to increase attendees’ interest and participation.
The workshops reviewed the theory underlying family engagement activities and guided attendees to implement clear and useful strategies to support and improve students’ academic, social, and personal goals. All of the workshops stressed the importance of building positive, trusting relationships between home and school.
Over 750 teachers, administrators, staff, and many parents, caregivers, and community partners attended one or more of the workshops in the FLASH series. Participants positively evaluated the format, content, and presentations of FLASH workshops. A district leader commented, “Thank you for conducting the workshops and for recording them. I shared this information with my district colleagues.” Wrote another, “Thank you for helping our staff understand the six types of engagement so we can plan [our program] in a more goalbased way.”
Like other educators across the country, COE leaders were eager to return to pre-COVID practices of in-person meetings and workshops on school, family, and community partnerships. But there was a twist. They and many attendees discovered the benefits of using Zoom to enable more participants to attend workshops without travel and expenses.
Read more about Online FLASH Workshops to Renew Family and Community Partnerships in Promising Partnership Practices 2022.
