Sam Bartlett’s first slide in the beautiful, warm desert setting in Tucson was of several feet of snow on his back porch in southwest Virginia. Sam, CEO of Family Friendly Schools, mentioned that it was 7° when he left home on Tuesday. I had left home in a pouring rain so I was also enjoying the 85° Tucson weather. Neither of us was outside much since our focus was the 80+ teachers, administrators, support staff, parents, and counselors attending our day long workshops on how to encourage Family Engagement in Schools.

Folks from all over the state were treated to a day of training by the Arizona Department of Education. The underlying focus of most workshops school staff attend is to develop new ways to engage learners and to increase student performance. This workshop was no exception, but our suggestions focused on engaging families in the process.

Participants enjoyed exchanging ideas that worked at their school, hearing a myriad of new ideas, focusing their attention on 101 more ideas from the book 101 Ways to Create Real Family Engagement and finishing up by beginning an action plan to take back to their school.

Some schools are just beginning to realize the power of parent involvement in learning. They are making their school user friendly and welcoming. Others have parents volunteering for fundraisers and bake sales and are seeling they could enjoy more learning from kids if they directed the parents energies to learning activities.

An interesting questions arose as we talked "..looking at the rest of the activities, some of our seem superficial. Perhaps we’re not doing it right." My answer: "Nothing is superficial if the activities result in the goal you want. If your goal is to have parents at school and they come for the school play you got it. If your goal is to have parents help with learning, then you need to include them in what and how you teach. They’ll help. Just ask and show them how."

Thanks for a great time Tucson and ADE for sponsoring the event.