Seeds for the Future: Skills Training
Parents who step to serve on a district group or board may be new to leadership. Understanding how to use the group’s strengths or individual member’s skills are key to having an effective group. Educators, administrators, school committee and community members may also be new to many roles and can benefit from understanding the role parents can play in advising the district. Family engagement best practices highlight the need to work with families in co-designing events and activities. The goal is to develop a true partnership based on a trusting relationship.
APPLE Workshops
Pre-Institute Asynchronous Learning
The following short recorded presentations are available on the FCSN YouTube channel:
Virtual Group Trainings
Leadership Compass: Every member brings strengths and skills to a team. Understanding how individuals approach teamwork, leadership and communication will help a team function better. The Compass activity will help team members learn that while everyone has a predominant style, all styles are effective leadership styles and important to a team. This activity allows team members to consider their own working styles as well as the styles of others, as a tool for self-reflection and leadership growth. A goal is to have teams deliberately build skills in all directions to enhance personal and team performance. Watch the video on The Leadership Compass- Understanding your “Style”
Co-Design: A Force of Creativity and Collaboration: Co-design is a process of partnering and decision-making that engages diverse peoples to collectively identify problems of practice and innovate solutions. Co-design has the potential to foster change-making that is responsive, adaptive, and equity-oriented. The purpose of co-design workshops is to discover unique perspectives through collaboration and to include user and stakeholder opinions in key decisions.
Using an Equity Lens: The purpose of an equity lens is to be deliberately inclusive as a school community makes decisions. It introduces a set of questions into the decision that help the decision makers focus on equity in both their process and outcomes.
Introduction to the Team Planning Process:
Creating a Team Vision: FCSN Facilitators will lead the district team in a vision brainstorm session to identify key elements, activities and initiatives that could help increase family engagement in local parent groups, councils, advisory boards and in school activities in general.
SWOT Analysis: A SWOT analysis is a tool used as a strategy for describing the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that may impact a school district community. The purpose is to generate a broad description of the stengths and what may be barriers to implementing new innovations or changes in a system.
Developing an Action Plan: The district team will decide what action steps they will need to take to make their vison elements come into fruition. The group will choose one or two easy action items to gain early success, one or more difficult action items which will take 6-8 months to accomplish, and a challenging one that may take a year or more.
Optional Online Learning:
Serving on Groups: A guidebook for individuals who want to make a difference in their community by serving as a member of a decision-making group. Free Guidebook/Learning Modules
