To that end, for “meet the teacher” days at OCPS, there are face-to-face options for parents and guardians of the 206,000 students who want them, or “they can pop into a Microsoft Teams meeting and get to know teachers that way,” Milano says. Some teachers also use Microsoft’s Flip to share prerecorded videos of their classrooms and hold live chats. The district has also started using social media for general communication across the school community.
“For example, we’re about to roll out new student assessments,” Milano says. In the past, the district would have only sent out emails and printed notifications. Now, they have also scheduled a Facebook Live event that will make it easy for the entire district community to participate.
“All of our families will be able to go online, if they choose, to hear all about it and ask questions,” she says. “We’ll have team members from the assessment department in the chat box, and we’ll make everything available afterward for parents who can’t attend.”
WATCH NOW: Mariel Milano discusses parent engagement in the Focus on EDU podcast.
Desert Sands Schools Work to Make Parent Involvement Easy
Tiffany Norton understands the importance of allowing parents to choose how they participate in their children’s education. The chief innovation and information officer at Desert Sands Unified School District in California says technology has made a significant difference for families that struggled to engage with schools prior to the pandemic.
“Now, they don’t have to find child care or leave work to attend that assembly,” she says. “They can log in on their phones for 20 minutes and still participate.”
It’s a similar story for parent-teacher meetings, which can now take place via videoconference if a family prefers. All district classrooms include webcams, which teachers can deploy for remote meetups, and all students and staff have Chromebooks they can use for digital communication.
Norton says parents appreciate that the district has made school involvement relatively easy through tools like Zoom and Google Meet and through messaging apps like ClassDojo and Remind.
The pandemic may be winding down, she says, but virtual communication at Desert Sands is ramping up. “Better connectivity is better for everyone, but the biggest thing is that it’s what parents want.”
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