"When schools, families, and community groups work together to support learning, children tend to do better in school, stay in school longer, and like school more"
-Anne Henderson & Karen Mapp
What do we help you with?
When families and community members are involved in student learning, students improve their academic performance and gain advocates that promote their success, helping them feel more confident at school and in taking on more rigorous classwork. The benefits of community engagement in schools create a snowball effect, influencing all aspects of student and school achievement. During the Leadership Meeting, we provide you with guiding questions that lead to identifying the community groups that are most invested in the success of your students and your school, ways to improve the communication with them using technology, and opportunities for your students and teachers to address community challenges with local organizations.
What does it lead to?
Identification of Stakeholders
Identifying all the stakeholders and community groups that are most invested in the success of your students and your school is the initial step. This may include students, teachers, parents, Leadership team, Board, and local community groups.
Momentum towards innovation
Though the spark of innovation is ignited by the Vision of the Leadership team, it is the community that builds momentum behind the commitment to continuous innovation. When the Leadership teams build consensus around their vision, the entire school community, including students, teachers, parents, local community, owns and strives to progress towards innovation.
community engagement strategy
Rethinking about the existing ways, frequency of communication between stakeholders, the excellent opportunities that technology would provide would pave the way for a new community engagement strategy.
Solve community problems
Community participation is a crucial resource not only for individual student achievement, but also for catalyzing and sustaining school improvement and betterment of the society. Creating opportunities for students to solve community problems together with local organisations, working with local startups to support students with entrepreneurial interests empowers learners with real-world experience and skills.
prime components of an institution
Leadership Meeting
This phase of the Leadership meeting involves capturing a snapshot of all the stakeholders in the school, the information that they would wish to know about, the current ways of communicating with them, and opportunities for your students and teachers to address community challenges with local organizations. It would help to identify the current stage of the institution’s community engagement – Define, Develop or Sustain.
Identifying the Current state of Community Engagement
Community Engagement Strategy
Stakeholders in the community would be interested in knowing about the progress towards innovation, concerning learning, teaching, and environment. Understanding what each category of stakeholder would like to know, exploring new communication methods that could be established and sustained, using technology is a part of this strategy.
Outcomes of the Leadership Meeting
- Document the stakeholders of the school community
- Define new ways of communicating with stakeholders using technology
- Articulate your community engagement strategy for various categories of stakeholders in a way that everyone in your community can understand and support
- Identify the lead person and the people on the community engagement team
- Document further steps to enhance community engagement
