What we are learning from the Family Innovation Network: Blog Post 1

TL/DR: Families care a lot about increasing the relevance of what their children learn, improving motivation and enthusiasm for learning, and helping their children self-regulate and self-manage. They will be trying strategies in these three areas (relevance, motivation/enthusiasm, self-regulation/management) over the next few weeks. We got to these insights by including diverse perspectives, making sure everyone felt valued, and by doing authentic work together. 


We have held two meetings of the Family Innovation Network, on December 3 and 17. The APS Office of Innovation and the Center for Innovation in Education partnered to create the Family Innovation Network to help families to learn from each other and support positive practices in learning and healthy development while they are supporting remote learning. The Family Innovation Network also creates a conduit for the district to learn about the innovative practices that are emerging from families and schools across the district.


Over the course of those meetings, what have we learned about creating a community of inclusion, belonging and learning? And what are we learning about the priorities and innovations of families? 


Inclusion: 

We believe that the best ideas come out when you bring together people with diverse perspectives. We have an incredible group of participants. Our Family Innovation Network is racially diverse and represents most schools in our cluster. On our journey to building an inclusive group, we have learned a few things. 


We found that people recruit their friends when the quality of the experience is good and the purpose is clear. Between our first and second meetings, we had friends suggest other friends to be a part of the network. 


Belonging: 

Even if you have a group where many perspectives are included, it doesn’t mean that everyone feels equally valued and invited to contribute. We needed to make sure that everyone felt like a valuable member of the community. We spent time on community building by using activities like “Family Crest” and “That’s Me” to share personal stories and to start from a place of assets and strengths. We took time to build connections between members through a mix of large group and small group discussions. 


Learning: 

We think that adults should learn the way we want young people to learn: through authentic work done in a joyful community. We mixed community building with work time. During the work time, family members worked together to identify their biggest challenges with supporting their young people’s learning and development. 


Our network identified three big areas where families wanted to develop innovative ideas to support their children’s learning and development: 


Motivation and Enthusiasm

Relevance 

Self-regulation and self-management 


The network developed strategies they could try and committed to testing them before our next meeting on January 21st. You can see the list of the amazing ideas they came up with here. We are so proud of the work we are doing together, and hope that it is useful to school and system leaders to hear about what families are focusing on and experimenting with! Stay tuned as we continue to innovate and learn together!

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