Cultivating Connections: Supporting Our ELL Families

Welcome to your Morning Boost, your daily shot of educational leadership wisdom from AWB Education. We'll explore the latest trends, share practical strategies, and inspire you to reach new heights. Stay to the end of the show for more information on our services. Now Here is your Morning Boost. Hello, good morning, Welcome to your Morning Boost. Happy Monday to you. I hope you had a great weekend. I hope you had a chance to recharge and reconnect a little bit. This week, we're going to focus on a topic all week long. Similar to what we did last week, We're going to break this down a little bit day by day, just so the week can dive a little bit deeper. And the topic that we're to talk about this week is how we support English language learners and their families. Now, depending on where you live, you may or may not have a large English language learning population. My particular school district that I'm a leader at, we've had a steady increase in our EEL population for many years now. In fact, we're one of the top ten school districts in our state with a population of non English speakers. We have over sixty languages spoken in our district alone. So we've had to prepare ourselves to be able to adjust as we know these families. This population increases and decreases all throughout the year like other demographics. Though, that partnership between the home and school is very very important, and we have to educate our families on what school looks like. Certainly when we have families coming from another country, that this may be something very different than what they experienced. And so having that opportunity to develop that strong connection is just going to build for a stronger future. So today we're going to discuss a few strategies that we can use to try to strengthen this connection, and it really kind of starts with that personal connection. That first step to supporting our new families is to build that personal connection. I would consider having a welcoming committee. Do you have something either at your district office if you're a large district or if you're a smaller district and probably will have to be at the building level, do you have a welcoming committee with some if possible, if there's some bilingual staff, that's great, but again, like in my buildings, we have sixty different languages, it just wouldn't even be possible for us to have that many different bilingual staff members. So having people that are able to use some translating devices or whatever else is needed to help families feel welcome, so they can get an opportunity to understand what their students and everybody is going to get involved in. It's a great way to start off on a great foot. Greet your new families. You introduce yourself, Introduce the people that are going to be most important for them, school secretary, school nurses, all of those people that they're going to maybe more frequently have contact with along with their students, teachers. Maybe it's a good time to think about a home visit, going out and get a chance to meet people where they are at, introduce yourself there, learn about their needs, learn about their concerns a little bit. Maybe they are a family that is with other family members, they may not have as many needs. They may also be on their own. Getting an opportunity to understand where they're coming from is going to help you better support them down the road. Another thing to think about is some cultural competence. Take some time to provide some training for you your staff to stand where this family is coming from and get an understanding of that diverse culture and what is important to them, and also what might be something that we unintentionally do that would cause harm in that relationship with the family. The other thing you want to think about is that language access. We want to ensure that all school communications going home they're translated into the languages of the families that you serve. There's a lot of technology out there that's making that even easier. Day by day we get new things that come out to try to make this even easier. We want to make sure that our families are informed, and we need to inform them in the language that they can best access. It's hard sometimes for families to be able to get enrolled get through that process. We want to try to simplify it for our families so that they not only understand it, but we try to eliminate some of those barriers so they get their children enrolled. We want their kids in school. We want their kids in school as soon as we can. This may be some need for some supported immunizations that are required by your state to be able to get kids into the door. Try to see what we can do to make that process easier and more understandable for our families. Also think about if we can translate some enrollment documents ahead of time or be able to make sure that we have those translating services available at meetings. Doesn't always have to be a person in the door. My district, we do a lot of our translation through an online service. We have people that are brought in via phone call or via virtual meetings, and this works for us to be able to get people there at the time that our families are there. And then also think about when you have your parent engagement opportunities, are those language friendly do we have support there as well. Again, it can be electronic, it doesn't always have to be people, it doesn't always have to be terribly expensive. We just want to make sure that our parents have an opportunity to join up with our school district and understand what's going on and feel connected, just like we want with all of our parents. These are just a few ways. There are lots of them out there, but it's a good way to kind of start that welcome with our new families. It does take a different approach, but if we start a strong partnership right from day one with or EO families, we are going to see success down the road, but with a little intentional planning, we can start off on the right foot and we can build that warm, safe place where all of our families feel welcome. Thanks for listening today. We will talk more on this topic again tomorrow. 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