Professional Learning

Family Workshops to Go is a series of six pre-planned workshops for practitioners to use to provide positive literacy experiences for children ages 3 to 8 and their caregivers in community and school settings. These sessions support children’s literacy development and positive outcomes in the following areas: oral language, concepts of print, reading comprehension, and developmental writing. They provide families with an opportunity to participate in hands-on, intergenerational learning experiences that help transfer learning to school and home. 

In the six-hour, interactive training for these workshops, practitioners will receive a facilitator guide that includes a planning guide, agendas, content for six workshops, and reproducible parent handouts. The objectives for the workshop include:

• Explore the Family Workshops to Go resource.
• Learn the components of each workshop, including Parent Time, Parent and Child Together (PACT) Time ®, and Child Time.
• Experience and practice workshop activities.
• Plan for Workshops to Go implementation.

Effective partnerships between families and practitioners improve student outcomes (Mapp & Bergman, 2019). There is a critical need for practitioner-facing professional learning in order to create opportunities necessary for families to be equal partners in their children’s education. NCFL offers Foundations in Family Engagement—a six-hour, in-person professional learning opportunity for family-facing practitioners including but not limited to early childhood teachers, elementary and secondary educators, school and district administrators, public librarians, and staff at community-based organizations.

 In this interactive workshop, participants will build capacity for implementing effective family engagement practices. This session supports practitioners as they explore personal experiences and build a deeper understanding of family engagement. Participants will engage with colleagues, reflect on mindsets, use tools to assess practice, and consider best practices for effectively engaging families.

The session seeks to build knowledge while also setting participants up to apply strategies effectively. Objectives include:

• Build a common understanding of family engagement.
• Assess participants’ family engagement practice.
• Set a goal to improve family engagement practice.
• Consider opportunities for practices and action steps to achieve goals.
• Practice using an asset-based mindset.

This workshop is designed to help districts, schools, and community-based organizations that have a desire to deepen partnerships with families in order to improve outcomes for the children and young people they serve.