Presented by Dr. Cristina Melendez, Former Deputy Chancellor of Family, Community, and Student Empowerment, New York City Department of Education; Windy Lopez-Aflitto, Senior Vice President of Professional Learning, Learning Heroes; and Samantha Fils-Aimé, Assistant Vice President, Curriculum and Instruction, Springboard Collaborative Moderated by Keo Chea-Young, Ed.D., Academic Success Partner, Springboard Collaborative This edWeb podcast is sponsored by Springboard Collaborative. The edLeader Panel recording can be accessed here. Families want to support their children’s learning. Yet many do not have access to clear information about how their children are doing academically or what they can do to support progress. Educators value strong family partnerships but may lack the time, training, tools, and systems needed to build them consistently. In this edWeb podcast, Dr. Cristina Melendez, former Deputy Chancellor of Family, Community, and Student Empowerment at New York City Public Schools, shares lessons from leading family partnership work across a large, diverse school system. Learning Heroes shares insights from its just-published national parent research, including what families understand about their children’s academic progress, how they want to support learning, and where opportunities remain to better connect families with actionable information and support. Building on these findings, Dr. Keo Chea-Young and Samantha Fils-Aimé of Springboard Collaborative introduce the Family Enablement Domains, Essential Pathways, and Standards (DEPS) Framework, an open-source, evidence-informed framework that focuses on the conditions that help families build the knowledge, confidence, tools, and agency to support learning. Samantha is a former District of Columbia Public Schools literacy leader, bringing additional practitioner and system-level perspectives to the conversation. Listeners will: Examine what national parent research reveals about families’ experiences, needs, and desire to support their children’s learningIdentify the conditions that help effective family engagement build families’ knowledge, confidence, capacity, and agency to support learningConsider how schools and systems can build educator capacity and create structures that support strong family-educator partnershipsHear lessons about building trust, addressing mindsets and beliefs about families, and sustaining authentic family partnershipsIdentify ways to make information about student learning more understandable and actionable for familiesListeners will leave with research, a ready-to-use practical framework, and actionable strategies for strengthening family-educator partnerships in support of student learning. This edWeb podcast is of interest to PreK-12 teachers, school and district leaders, instructional leaders, and family engagement leaders. Learn more about viewing live edWeb presentations and on-demand recordings, earning CE certificates, and using accessibility features.
