If schools want parents and caregivers to chaperone field trips and cook hot dogs at the fall carnival, then a parental involvement plan should be their course of action. However, if schools want those same parents and caregivers to actively participate in decisions regarding their child’s success in school, then their best bet is a parental engagement plan.

Involvement vs. engagement. I have often been asked, “What’s the difference? Aren’t these two terms interchangeable?”  To draw a comparison that resonates with many of my colleagues, I point to the time in our lives where a personal relationship moved from “being involved with a significant other” to becoming engaged. Being involved in a relationship usually meant we did things together, but steered away from “counting on each other” or the promise to share the ups and downs of life. With engagement came the commitment to making the relationship a success, with listening to each other critical and compromise inevitable.

So it is with parents in our schools. Schools with parent involvement plans direct their parents; they tell them what to do. Schools engaging their parents, on the other hand, establish two-way communication and believe compromise is essential.

At Step Up For Students, we’re focusing on engagement.

Over the last year, we’ve worked with 10 partner private schools, providing tools and strategies to help them better understand their responsibility for creating a culture that establishes and sustains parent-school partnerships. We know engaging families in all aspects of their children’s education yields positive results. So the staffs at these schools are actively engaged in learning with and from each other, sharing and reflecting as they identify and establish processes, conditions and structures needed to meet their goals.

Now in the second year of our work, we are supporting teachers and administrators as they learn how to engage in intentional study of their relationships. Educators identify significant elements of the partnership with parents, frame questions they want to study, consult relevant research, implement changes, collect and analyze both quantitate and qualitative data – and then codify their study to share with other educators. We’ve also expanded the effort this year and now have 28 schools on board.

The difference between “involvement” and “engagement” isn’t hair splitting. Quite simply, involvement is more of a “doing to” the parent while engagement is a “doing with.” Engagement establishes the need to listen first, asking thoughtful questions to better understand the assets and strengths of the family. (more…)