Family, School, & Community Partnerships

The purpose of this facilitator guide is to provide you with support in fulfilling your responsibilities as a facilitator. If you find as you are going through the course that you need additional information or guidance to complete a task, please feel free to reach out.  

Important note for this course: In EdTech, there is a Learning activity with this number—LA 1.0. Please notify those taking this course that they need to do that activity prior to coming to the first session. 

Materials for this course 

Time Requirement 

Your students will receive 3 credits for completing the eight sessions. This means that you need to assure that the students have met the time demands for the credits earned.  You will do this by: 

For this course, we use EdTech Books. This is an open access online platform. For this reason, please encourage students to bring their electronic devices (tablet, laptop, etc.) to class. Within the book, you will find active viewing guides, directions for learning activities and directions for homework assignment (descriptions of these assignments are found below). When students are asked to complete worksheets or other kinds of consumable materials, there are links within the texts that will take them to those resources. If you find the use of links problematic, you can open the link yourself and print the materials for you class. This will depend on internet accessibility for you and your students.  

Links--*****Pay special attention to the bolded and underlined sentences in this paragraph! 

There are links embedded throughout the course. They are often part of the instructions and simply look like blue words. You can click on these words and it will open a new webpage to Box Online (this is the online storage place that we use). Once you see the document in Box, students will need to download the document to their device and then they can fill it out. Because this document is a resource for all to use, Box will not allow them to fill out the document if the document has not been --you or print it out (if there is access). If you would like to provide them with the paper copy, and bypass having each student download and email or print to turn it in, you can download it to your computer and make copies for them. There are also other links throughout the course that will take you to different online resources that you will need (videos, etc.).  

Types of Activities in the Course 

Active Viewing Guides: Active Viewing Guide (AVG): These refer to videos or power points students need to watch and participate in (if viewed during class time). There are links to the object to be viewed and the notetaking sheet in the materials. 

 There are 2 kinds of active viewing guides (AVG) for this course: 

Learning activities (LA): These are the activities you and the class will complete during the session.  Some are stand-alone activities, and some tie to homework from the previous week, and others may build on the previous activity.  Pay attention to the number of minutes allotted and make every effort to stay within that time limit. 

Homework activities (HW): These comprise 5-6 homework activities students need to complete to prepare for the next week’s activities.  If someone is absent from a week, be sure to remind them to do their homework, as often they give the background for the next session’s learning activities.  The first one is always a reflection on changing their practice and is explained in HW 1.1. Be sure to save enough time at the end of each session to briefly go over the homework for that session. 

Information of this chapter informs you of the materials you will need and basic explanations of what you should do. However, you greatest resource will be getting to know the content of the actual course in EdTech.  

Session 1 Community, Assumptions, and PTA StandardsSession 2: Preparing to Cross BordersSession 3: Family and Community EngagementSession 4: CollaborationSession 5: Exploring Community ResourcesSession 6: High Expectations for English LearnersSession 7: Responding to Student and Family NeedsSession 8: Advocating for Students and Families

This content is provided to you freely by Equity Press.

Access it online or download it at https://equitypress.org/tell_facilitator_guide/family_school__commu.