9 Strategies for Addressing the Unexpected Challenges of This Year Through Family-School Engagement

Presented by Donnie Belcher, Director of Communications, Minneapolis Public Schools (MN); Brooke Beiting, Crisis Communications Manager, Cincinnati Public Schools (OH); and Kate Pechacek, Senior Director of Partner Success, TalkingPoints

Sponsored by TalkingPoints 

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Closed captioning will be added to the recording within 2 weeks of the live presentation. Get a CE Certificate for this edWebinar Learn more.

Schools and districts have learned a great deal during the past 21 months of pandemic-influenced learning. Much of this learning has led school staff to understand that dealing with the unexpected has become the new normal. The pandemic reinforced the need for effective, real-time communication between families and schools, and the importance of strong family-school partnerships in supporting students and navigating a climate of ongoing change.

In this edWebinar, we review strategies and solutions districts around the country are embracing to address the top challenges of this moment in their schools—from transportation, attendance, contact tracing, and supporting student mental health, to reaching and engaging non-English-speaking families, and more. As pivots and challenges continue to emerge, districts and schools are finding it critical to enable all school staff, including those who provide vital wraparound support, to connect with each and every family. Viewers hear perspectives of district leaders who are addressing some of the unexpected challenges of this year head on and leave with strategies and resources they can use in their school communities.

This recorded edWebinar is of interest to K-12 school, district, and education technology leaders. Your CE certificate for this edWebinar will include ESL/ELL as a category for your professional learning.

About the Presenters

Donnie Belcher brings 20 years of youth development and program design experience to her role as Director of Communications at Minneapolis Public Schools. She started her career as a high school English teacher with Chicago Public Schools and taught for 12 years in Chicago at Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep and Whitney Young Magnet High School. Donnie’s personal mission is to help others “close the gap between their reality and their dreams” and she works tirelessly as a communications professional, educator and wellness advocate to advance that mission. Donnie also co-founded Art of Culture Inc., a nonprofit that provides free access to the arts for youth, served on the board of Know Your Chicago at the University of Chicago’s Graham School, served as Program Director of the Ann Bancroft Foundation, and co-founded Camp Equity, a virtual camp that provides social justice education for youth.

Brooke Beiting has spent nearly fifteen years supporting the Cincinnati community through dedicated work as a media relations and communication leader. In October 2020, Brooke made the decision to bring her experience, skills, and dedication to the Cincinnati community to Cincinnati Public Schools as the Crisis Communications Manager. In her time at CPS, she has supported strong, equitable family engagement and effective crisis communication for all of the families and students the district supports at a time when strong engagement and communication have never been more important.

Kate Pechacek has over 20 years’ experience in education. She taught secondary math for 15 years in Iowa, Oregon, Texas, and Minnesota and has 10 years of experience working at the district level in curriculum, instruction, assessment, professional development and MTSS. She served as Director of Secondary Ed for Minneapolis Public Schools before moving to the edtech sector. She then spent almost six years helping districts leverage edtech solutions to support equitable outcomes for students before joining TalkingPoints.

At TalkingPoints, Kate leads the Partner Success team in supporting school and district partners to ensure they are able to leverage the TalkingPoints solution with impact. Kate earned her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction and worked with the developers of an equity-based learning supports model developed out of the UCLA School Mental Health Project. She is driven to ensure schools move toward an equity-focused, asset-based approach for all students.

Closed captioning will be added to the recording within 2 weeks of the live presentation.

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TalkingPoints is the leading K-12 two-way translated family engagement and communication platform, offering the highest-quality, contextually relevant, human- and AI-powered translation in 100+ languages. Grounded in research-based practices, TalkingPoints has fundamentally redesigned family-school partnerships to shift mindsets and build capacity to support students in a scalable, equitable, and low-cost way.