By Tate Papworth
A trio of teachers from Sunshine have taken their ideas for family engagement in education to the other side of the world.
The Sunshine Family School Partnership Cluster, which is comprised of representatives from St Bernadette’s, St Paul’s and St Peter’s schools was asked to present at the 2019 National Family and Community Engagement Conference in Reno, Nevada.
During the conference the Brimbank educators presented the findings of a project they undertook in 2018 with Deakin University, which explored using social media to promote conversations at home about learning.
St Peter’s School family school partnership leader Grace Frazzica said the Sunshine school’s engagement methods are world class.
“We are constantly thinking of ways to engage families in their children’s education,” she said.
“A main one we’re using at the moment is engagement via Twitter. It’s hard to physically get parents into the school during the day because they have work, so we tweet photos and post guided questions for parents to ask when they get home.
“A lot of the time when you ask a child what they did at school, they’ll say ‘nothing’, but by asking a guided question, it gets a conversation happening in the home.”
The cluster, which was formed 10 year ago, meets about four times a year to discuss how to engage families in their child’s education.
Ms Frazzica made the trip with Gillian Baxter and Mareta Parsons from St Pauls and said the trio were in high demand.
“The space we were talking at had about 70 seats and those were all full, we actually had people spilling out onto the floors.
“They seemed really impressed with our ideas and what we’re doing – we were even invited back for next year.
“It was a good time to share some of our achievements with a wider audience.”
