1. FACILITATED BY CHERYL ANDERSON, RECE QCCI PD & TRAINING COORDINATOR SEPTEMBER 2014 Family Engagement

2. What does family engagement mean to you? What does it look like?

3. Engagement goes beyond involvement. Your thoughts on this statement?

4. How do you know when families are fully engaged? How can we help families to experience a sense of belonging?

5. Families are engaged when they are motivated and empowered to identify their strengths, needs and resources. When motivated, they move from just attending to offering ideas, contributing time and energy and take a more active role in making positive change.

6. What are the motivators and barriers?

7. Things to Remember! Every family has its own story! Takes time to move from cautious interest to full engagement Parents have strengths and experience which can benefit our programs Parents will want to be engaged in different ways Parent’s interest and involvement may fluctuate Parents have feelings too! We are role models for how staff may treat parents

8. What contributes to engagement? Relationships! “Fostering good relationships with children and families is the single most important priority for educators in early years programs.” How Does Learning Happen? Ontario’s Pedagogy for the Early Years

9. Relationships Families to families Families to staff Families to program (environment, display & documentation) Program to home (connections) Program to community (connections)

10. Why do we do what we do? Look beyond what you have always done! Look to deepening relationships (look at what it takes to build a true relationship) Look at your processes not just your product (how do we share our lives with each other vs. what activities do we have?)

11. Relationship Building Choose a relationship: Family to family Family to staff Family to program Program to home As a community of practice explore the following: What does this relationship need? How can I provide these elements? What ideas do I have to build this relationship?

12. Supporting Family Centred-care To support family centred-care, we need to consider changes on the program level: Adequate staffing so that teachers can have daily communication with families at drop-off and pick-up time Time for staff to complete documentation Time for staff to share their ideas and theories about family engagement Creativity, flexibility and a positive attitude!

13. Think and Act Positively!