Professional Development

Family & Community Engagement

Elevate your family engagement practices with sustained professional learning grounded in the latest research.

Professional Development

Family & Community Engagement

Elevate your family engagement practices with sustained professional learning grounded in the latest research.

Get Started or Grow Your Practice

Wherever you are on your family engagement journey, our experts can meet you there—from assessing your engagement capacity to implementing high-impact strategies districtwide.

The Dr. Karen L. Mapp Workshop Series

Build your team’s family engagement capacity with a comprehensive 3-day workshop series created in partnership with Dr. Karen L. Mapp of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Assess Your Engagement Capacity

Measure your capacity to build effective family-school partnerships with the Scholastic Family Engagement Assessment. Our experts review your current practice and deliver a data-rich report with recommendations in four areas:

WELCOMING

From the parking lot to the front lobby, how welcome are families in your school?

COMMUNICATION

How frequent, clear, and inviting is your school’s communication with families?

INFORMATION

Are families receiving the information they need to support their child’s learning?

EMPOWERMENT

How well do you empower families to be active and equal partners in their child's education?

There is no doubt that when family engagement is developed
in true partnership, it has the ability to positively impact
students’ academic, social, and emotional growth.

—Kelli Cedo, Virginia Beach Public Schools

Program Implementation Training

If you're using My Books Every Day, R.E.A.L., or Read and Rise, these sessions are a must! Participants will learn about the research behind the programs and how to use them to cultivate and sustain strong family-school partnerships.

Getting Started with My Books Every Day: Fostering Literacy-Rich Home Environments

3 Hours | In -Person or Virtual | Up to 30 Participants
Discover effective strategies for leveraging the high-quality titles and hands-on activity sets from the My Books Every Day program.

Getting Started with R.E.A.L.: Promoting Literacy Through Mentorship

3 Hours | In-Person or Virtual | Up to 30 Participants
Prepare step-by-step plans for recruiting and celebrating mentors, training teachers and families, and ensuring children’s academic success through interactive read-alouds and book discussions.

Getting Started with Read and Rise: Cultivating Literacy-Rich Learning Communities

3 Hours | In-Person or Virtual | Up to 30 Participants
Learn about the latest research and how to foster the valuable assets that families bring to educational spaces!

The Dr. Karen L. Mapp Workshop Series

This comprehensive workshop series is designed for school-based action teams, including school staff, families, community members, district leaders, and other educational partners, ensuring a diverse range of voices and perspectives are represented in planning and implementation.

Session 1: Reframing Family Engagement

This session provides foundational family engagement training to district and school teams. We’ll introduce the research and practices that lead to effective family engagement.

Session 2: Engaging Families in Learning Throughout the Year

This session will help your school team design and implement a yearlong plan for family engagement by evaluating your recent outreach initiatives and determining the next steps to best serve your students.

Session 3: Redesigning Family Engagement Events

This session will introduce you to the Dual-Capacity Framework through a series of expert-guided interactive exercises. We’ll explore how to integrate the framework’s five process conditions and effective practices into any family engagement event.

Professional Learning Sessions

For educators, administrators, parent coordinators, and family engagement staff. These sessions build the capacity of every team member to cultivate and sustain positive family-school relationships.

Foundations of Family Engagement

6 Hours | In-Person or Virtual | Participants: PreK–12 administrators, teachers, and parent coordinators
In this session, we’ll break down the research and the conditions that must be present in your school to provide a solid foundation for effective family outreach.

Effective Practices to Welcome All Families

6 Hours | In-Person or Virtual | Participants: PreK–12 district leaders, principals, teachers, and support staff
In this session, we’ll explore how to welcome families into your school and have dialogue that empowers them to become active participants in their children’s education.

Implementing Capacity-Building Literacy Events

6 Hours | In-Person or Virtual | Participants: PreK–5 directors of instruction, literacy consultants, administrators, and teachers
In this comprehensive two-part session, participants will learn how to transform a traditional literacy night into a capacity-building literacy event for families.

Reaching All Families

6 Hours | In-Person or Virtual | Participants: PreK–12 district leaders, principals, teachers, and support staff
Learn how to individualize your approach to family engagement and co-construct learning experiences that celebrate every family’s unique strengths.

Leading Family Engagement Initiatives for Parent Coordinators and Family Engagement Staff

2 Full Days | In-Person | Participants: PreK–12 parent coordinators, family coaches, family engagement staff, and administrators
Discover new ways to transform your support staff into confident family coaches focused on elevating student achievement.

Increasing Student Attendance through Effective Home-School Partnership Practices

6 Hours | In-Person or Virtual | Participants: PreK–12 district leaders, principals, teachers, parent coordinators, and family engagement staff
This session focuses on addressing chronic absenteeism by implementing a tiered system of family support and proven strategies for helping students to attend school regularly.

Consultative Planning

Work with a specialist to develop a shared vision, define your family engagement mission, and align on core beliefs. An ongoing partnership drives meaningful change and transforms practice.

Ready to Elevate Your Family Engagement Practices?