Nothing like motherhood to change your perspective It was about 3 days into being a mom that I thought, “How could I have ever asked a mom to go to a PTO meeting!?” I laugh at myself now because I was clearly not inviting any newly postpartum parents to an event, but that moment was… Continue reading Nothing like motherhood to change your perspective
A gut check While I am lucky that I get to consult with schools and districts in their work with families, it isn’t often that I get to engage with students and families directly (especially since COVID derailed my weekly mentoring sessions at a high school here in Columbus). So I was especially delighted this… Continue reading A gut check
Reframing data analysis as meaning-making This summer on the Engage with Data blog, I’m exploring different ways to answer the question: “So what?” My goal is to remind us of the human element of data — we are in the field of student and family engagement, after all! But I do get it – data… Continue reading Reframing data analysis as meaning-making
Whose Evidence Is It? I’ve been talking a lot about evidence lately, but I feel I’ve been missing a crucial piece. As a reminder, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), our country’s primary federal education legislation, requires that programs and interventions purchased with federal education dollars must have be evidenced-based. Most people know these federal… Continue reading “Whose Evidence Is It?”
Numbers Can’t Tell the Whole Story You should know by now that I’m a bit of a data nerd. I love spreadsheets. I love organizing data and using it to illuminate patterns. I love the “ah-ha” moments when clients realize how much their own data can tell them about the kids and families they’re serving. … Continue reading Numbers Can’t Tell the Whole Story
We can’t let them fall through the cracks. I started writing a completely different blog post for this week, but when I read the news this morning, I knew I had to shift gears. CNN featured a story yesterday called “Teachers and social workers search for students who are ‘missing’ in the pandemic.” The word… Continue reading We can’t let them fall through the cracks.
Now is the time. Fear. Uncertainty. Frustration. Isolation. In recent conversations with districts across the country and in analyses of surveys for clients, these words have come up a lot. Families, educators, and community members are feeling a whole lot of unpleasant things as we grapple with how – or if – we can simultaneously… Continue reading Now is the time.
Why is it so hard to get a survey translated? I admit: I didn’t think it was that hard to get a survey translated. Over the past few weeks, I learned just how wrong I was — and ate a big piece of humble pie in the process. With colleagues, I’m working on a landscape… Continue reading Why is it so hard to get a survey translated?
We have to do better. I still remember how scared I was during the 2015 riots/uprising in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray. I understood the pain and outrage in the black community over the death of a young, black man in police custody, but looking back, I didn’t really get the depth of the collective… Continue reading We have to do better.
The COVID Slide Last week, I watched a powerful webinar from Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center about health inequity and COVID-19. One of the first speakers, Dr. Nwando Olayiwola, started to talk about vulnerable populations but quickly corrected herself. She called them, “populations that have been made vulnerable.” What a difference such a small change… Continue reading The COVID Slide
