Panelists included Stephanie Sharp of Overdeck Family Foundation (moderator), Dionne Aminata of Illustrative Mathematics, Adrienne Austin of New York City Department of Education, Alejandro Gibes de Gac of Springboard Collaborative, Heejae Lim of TalkingPoints and Vidya Sundaram of Family Engagement Lab.

This learning conversation centered on how the pandemic has helped elevate family engagement to a higher, more meaningful level, creating stronger partnerships between parents and their children’s schools — and how technology, curriculum and other efforts are paving the way to further shatter the wall between home and school, all in an effort to improve student outcomes.

The panel — social entrepreneurs, practitioners and school system leaders — covered a wide array of topics, including overcoming common barriers to strong family engagement; how technology has opened up the possibility for cost-effective and impactful family engagement strategies; the role that curricula can play in engaging families; and how to expand and sustain strong school-home connections to support student learning. Panelists also shared highlights of their programs, curriculum and technology tools such as FASTalk, Family Educator Learning Accelerator (FELA), Illustrative Math and TalkingPoints. The chat discussion and Q&A session allowed webinar participants to engage further with the panel on issues related to chronic absence, measuring impact, return on investment and how New York City DOE intends to sustain family engagement from pre-pandemic numbers of 300 to 90,000 families during the pandemic — a potential model for the nation.