Seattle, WA

Hawthorne’s Hangout

Hawthorne’s FEAT (Family Engagement Action Team—partnership team) has worked for several years to increase connections to ensure that parents with different racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds feel welcome at school, take leadership roles, and have opportunities to share their ideas and concerns.

This year, the school planned to continue a series of cultural- and language-based coffee chats—Hawthorne’s Hangout—to meet with and hear from diverse groups of families. In March, life changed instantly when COVID-19 closed school doors. This required all teachers and all parents to communicate with each other about how to support students’ remote learning activities.

Seattle district leaders organized procedures to distribute free meals to eligible students and obtained Chromebooks for some students from community partners.  The school’s leaders, teachers, staff, and parents conducted many outreach activities to support all families and student learning. They communicated with families in multiple languages about how to help their children “attend” classes via Zoom and MSTeams, or to obtain paper packets of weekly learning activities.

Hawthorne did not forget about enrichment activities for students. They provided links to story time at the library, art projects on YouTube, weekly music and singing lessons, and learning games. Special classes were provided for students with special needs and English language learners. A community partner offered free online yoga and mindfulness classes. Other business partners provided books for K-5 students to read during the summer to prevent the loss of reading skills.

Hawthorne’s prior group chats for parents with diverse backgrounds set an important base on which to build communications during COVID-19. During COVID closures, the partnership team conducted a Hawthorne Hangout for families to join online. Families asked the partnership team to conduct these chats on a regular schedule, which they did every two weeks through the end of the school year.

See more about Hawthorne’s Hangout in Promising Partnership Practices 2020.