This is an Eval Central archive copy, find the original at engagewithdata.com.

Use your data to celebrate families

Educators: you’ve made it! It’s finally the end of the school year.

And what a school year it was.

I’m sure that there are all kinds of celebrations happening as this confusing, exhausting, stressful, and probably scary year comes to a close.

But if you’ve been tracking your student and family engagement data this year, there can be even more celebrations in store as you wrap up SY 2020-2021.

I often talk about using your data to identify needs, uncover gaps in services, and understand exactly who you are reaching and how.

However, there are lots of other things you can do with all of the rich data you’ve collected, especially now that you have a year’s worth of information.

One of the benefits of tracking your data is that you also can quickly identify your engagement all-stars and recognize their amazing efforts!

Here are a few examples:

Think of the parents and family members who come to EVERYTHING you’ve planned.

You know exactly who I’m talking about, right? They’re your biggest supporters!

Of course, if you have a family engagement data tracker, sorting by the highest total engagements is a great way to identify this list too.

The end of the year is a great time to show these families that you see them and appreciate how much effort they’ve put into supporting their kids and the school.

If you have the funds for gift cards or other small gift, that’s great! If not, even printing out a certificate for them or mentioning them in your end-of-year school newsletter shows them how much you care.
If your teachers and staff are also tracking their engagement efforts, you can celebrate them too.

I’ve helped some of my clients build shared tracking sheets for their whole school to document how they’re engaging families.

With some quick sorting and filtering of their spreadsheet, they can see which teachers have gone above and beyond their minimum monthly outreach.

These staff members should be celebrated too!

Not only do they deserve a shout-out in a staff meeting or an award at your end-of-year staff party, but they should also be lifted up as leaders who can inspire and guide other staff who may struggle with engagement.
Don’t forget to recognize improvements!

Those of you on attendance teams know that there is a lot of debate about only recognizing perfect attendance because it’s not always a realistic goal for all of our students and families.

With family engagement too, we know that not all parents or family members can attend every event, answer every phone call, or work with their kids at home each night.

That’s why it’s super important to recognize those who have improved over the course of the year.

In your spreadsheets, you can quickly add columns to add up the number of engagements for each quarter. You can also add one at the end that finds the difference between those quarterly totals.

Sort by that column to see which families or staff have the greatest positive difference from Quarter 1 to Quarter 4, and give them a shout-out, gift, or certificate, too!

Let’s be honest – celebrating kids, families, and staff is the fun part of the job!

With a simple data tracking sheet, we’re able to maximize our impact on the tough stuff but also spend even more time on the fun parts.

End your year on a high note by sharing all of the amazing growth your staff and families have demonstrated (and that you now have the evidence to prove!).