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5 Midyear Moves for Family Engagement: What to Keep, Shift, or Strengthen
Thursday, December 4, 2025 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm EST
Presented by Kate Pechacek, Former Teacher, Current K12 Strategic Advisor, TalkingPoints; and Amanda Ensor, Former Teacher, Current Senior Content and Learning Manager, TalkingPoints
Moderated by Heather Dooley, Senior Director of Brand Marketing and Communications, TalkingPoints
Sponsored by TalkingPoints
Learn more about viewing the live presentation and the recording, earning your CE certificate, and using our new accessibility features.
By midyear, the back-to-school dust has settled, and it’s the perfect time to pause, reflect, and recalibrate. What’s working well with families? Where are the gaps—in connection, in communication, in outcomes? And what small, strategic shifts could make a big difference?
In this edWebinar, we share five practical, research-backed strategies to help you pivot with purpose, strengthening family-school partnerships both around the classroom (culture, systems) and within it (teacher-family relationships, student support).
You walk away with clear, scalable ways to course-correct and deepen engagement across classrooms, campuses, and the district—better supporting educators, families, and students through the second half of the year. You gain strategies to:
- Reassess and adapt family engagement efforts
- Align systems to classroom realities and needs
- Reconnect with hard-to-reach families
- Help teachers reflect and adjust using family interaction data
- Sustain engagement through high-stress months
Whether your focus is attendance, academics, or morale, this session helps you refocus and keep families at the center of your second-semester success strategy. This recorded edWebinar is of interest to K-12 teachers, school leaders, district leaders, and education technology leaders.
About the Presenters
Kate Pechacek currently serves as K12 Strategic Advisor to systems-improving edtech organizations and school districts, including TalkingPoints, and is the founder and CEO of OpendoorsEd. Prior to founding OpendoorsEd, Kate served as Head of Impact at TalkingPoints, one of several roles she has held in education technology over the last nine years. She began her nearly 30-year career in education as a secondary math teacher. In addition to 15 years as a teacher, Kate has served in districts nationwide, holding multiple site and district leadership roles in curriculum, instruction, assessment, and MTSS. She is passionate about ensuring equity, disrupting predictability, and narrowing opportunity gaps.
Amanda Ensor is Senior Content & Learning Manager at TalkingPoints, an education nonprofit strengthening family–school partnerships through an innovative digital platform. A former elementary teacher and 2013 Queen Anne’s County Teacher of the Year, she has 20+ years in public education. She previously served as a Family & Community Engagement Specialist with Scholastic and as Title I Family Engagement Specialist for Queen Anne’s County (2018–22). Amanda also founded It Takes A Village, LLC, consulting with districts and early childhood providers. A nationally recognized presenter, she has led national sessions, including the 2024 National Assembly for Family Engagement. She holds degrees in Human Development and Learning and Elementary Reading and Literacy, plus an administrator certification. At the core of her work is a clear mission: to help schools and districts cultivate effective, equitable partnerships between home and school, ensuring every student receives the support they need to thrive.
About the Moderator
Heather Dooley is the Senior Director of Brand Marketing and Communications at TalkingPoints. She is driven by a deep belief in the power of education to help students realize their full potential and contribute to thriving, healthy communities. As a public school parent in a diverse district, Heather has seen firsthand the critical role that access, inclusion, and strong school-family partnerships play in student success. Her experience fuels her commitment to fostering meaningful connections between families and schools. Heather brings a strong background in digital marketing, with nearly a decade dedicated to the nonprofit education sector. Her work has focused on advancing effective school practices and empowering families with the information they need to support learning at home and in their communities.
Learn more about viewing the live presentation and the recording, earning your CE certificate, and using our new accessibility features.
Join the Creating a Positive School Climate community to network with educators, participate in online discussions, receive invitations to upcoming edWebinars, and view recordings of previous programs to earn CE certificates.
TalkingPoints is an edtech nonprofit dedicated to driving student success by unlocking the power of effective family-school partnerships. TalkingPoints’ communications and family engagement platform provides capacity-building guidance, time-saving tools, and universally accessible, two-way, text-first communication in more than 150 languages. This unique approach removes barriers like language, time, mindset, and capacity, fostering positive and purposeful family engagement. Unlike traditional communication tools, TalkingPoints is purpose-built to improve student outcomes by guiding partnership efforts toward the practices that matter most for student success. The platform empowers educators at every level—from district leaders to classroom teachers—to engage every family, in their home language, through barrier-free, multilingual communication.
