Caitlin Martinez & Lauren Blanton

Dr. Koch

ELM 375

5 December 2019

Social Action Plan

Introducing the Social Issue

We chose to make a social action plan designated to the issue surrounding caregiver and

community involvement within the school. Because education is so important, students need

extra support from their families to improve, and Caregiver involvement in schools is essential

when supporting a child's education. When families of students become engaged and involved,

there is typically a higher rate for student success. Many schools face the challenge of caregiver

involvement and student engagement, this directly impacts students. Children whose families are

involved within the school typically earn higher grades, develop self-confidence, and have better

social skills.

Without caregiver support, children tend to have a higher rate of absences, lower test

scores, and less emotional support. Increasing caregiver engagement will positively impact the

school, and the student. Providing opportunities for caregivers to connect, volunteer, and become

involved within the school and their child's classroom will keep them updated on the mission of

the school, and their child's progress.

Caregivers, teachers, and administrators provide children support to lead them to

academic and personal success, which is a goal we would all have in common. That is why it is

vital to increase caregiver engagement, so students can succeed, and be supported with each

individual need.
Action Plan That Addresses the Social Issue

To respond to the issue, we would first gather data from other teachers in the school and see if

they have had any previous experiences involving families within the schools and classrooms.

We will then follow along our plan represented in our timetable below.

Timetable:

Week One: Brainstorm and collaborate with mentor teacher to find suggestions and current

implementations of communicating with caregivers to establish involvement. Observe our

mentor teacher making contact with parents for a future even and see the turn out for the new

event.

Week Two: After identifying strategies to get caregivers more involved in their students'

schooling, try to monitor feedback from caregivers to see if they are on board with the new

attempts to get them more involved.

Week Three: After receiving feedback from the caregivers, begin to implement the new

strategies to get them to come to the school and be able to see their students work. If caregivers

are still not showing up, trying to schedule a meeting to see if there are any issues can help us

take the next steps.

Week Four: Our strategies should be in full effect and caregivers should be totally involved or

beginning to get more involved. The time availability and flexibility of the school, teachers,

students, and caregivers is essential to implementing a permanent solution to the social issue.

We will collaborate with other teachers, students, caregivers, administrators, the

principal, and the community to build engagement. We would collaborate with other teachers
since this would be implemented by their student’s caregivers as well. It would be beneficial to

discuss this issue with students’ so they themselves can try to motivate their caregivers to

become involved. Ultimately, relaying our plan to administrators and the principal would be very

helpful to see if they had any other ideas to increase caregiver and community involvement. We

would discuss promoting events with flyers, creating more event nights at different times to help

provide more inclusive time frames, and ways to better communicate with students’ caregivers.

Promoting events, and engagement within a school can not only be done at that school, but in the

community surrounding it. Since there is a neighborhood right outside of Bugg Elementary

School, posters, banners, and flyers can be put in mailboxes or taped on posts to try to get

everyone in the community involved.

Ultimately, the constituents that we need to engage are the families of our students.

Promoting events and making personal calls or emails to get them involved might help them

understand the importance of caregiver engagement. We will engage them by creating more

feasible lines of communication. If a caregiver doesn’t have internet, we would figure out the

best way we could contact them and let them in on what is happening with the school, and their

child. Making caregivers comfortable to form an open line of communication will help them be

more involved. Maybe the best way to reach them is through an app, email, mail, or phone call,

but we will do whatever we can to incorporate communication that works for every family. We

need from constituents to be open to whatever opportunities we give them, and show effort to

become involved within the school, all for the benefit of their child.

Those that may resist this change are busy people who feel that their students are doing

just fine. They may be shy or not like big crowds. With this, it may just be best to use phone

communication and not meet in person with this caregiver. These caregivers may not want to
volunteer, meet other parents, or spend their free time at the school. With this you cannot force a

caregiver to be involved with their students’ school and their classwork, so we will have to adapt

to the lowest level of communication to ensure we are not crossing any boundaries or offending

any caregivers.

Resources that exist in our surrounding area is the newspaper, school television, radio,

social media, and handouts. We can make great use of these because it will help spread the word

of events we are doing at our school. Some caregivers may not have internet or a cellular device,

so the use of televisions in the school and flyers for events will help them see what is

happening. If the caregiver does not come to the school, the use of mail and the radio could be

beneficial. We would only use the radio and the newspaper if our school is having a major event.

There are many outsources we can use to help spread the word to reach all caregivers no matter

what.

Our desired outcome is total involvement of caregivers. With this, communicating and

getting forms signed would be easier. Students could work on their skills and get more

homework done because their caregivers know what is going on and what is due for the day or

week. We will show empathy towards students and caregivers that want to be involved but do

not have the means to. We will come together as a classroom community and fully support each

other so our students can grow and us as teachers and caregivers can grow together to provide a

better and more beneficial future for our children.

Implementation of Action Plan

 We began to implement many ways for caregivers to get involved in their students’ lives

and more involved in their schoolwork and community. Bugg is one of the lowest performing

schools in Wake County and it takes a team effort to turn that around. The team consists of

teachers, students, parents/guardians, administrators, and the community. We collaborated to

give caregivers multiple opportunities to be able to come into the school and see what their

student is doing or to embrace the culture of the school. By providing caregivers the opportunity

to pick from multiple time slots we are guaranteed to have more involvement and participation in

our scheduled events. We implemented communication through various media platforms such as

SeeSaw, text messaging, phone calls, and email. With every caregiver not having access to this,

we decided to also provide volunteer opportunities to get to know caregivers more. If all else

failed, we had planned to visit the caregiver or meet them somewhere that would make them

comfortable to talk or discuss their students’ progress. With this new implementation, caregivers

see that we are taking the extra step to conform to them and get them involved or communicate

with them. They really appreciate the extra mile, but they feel a little overwhelmed by the many

events going on and trying to balance everything and still be able to provide for their families.

Our future steps and changes to our plan is to continually assess the progress that is being

made by tracking attendance to events and showcases put together. We understand the busyness

of the world and that not everyone's home situation is the same, so we are not trying to police

caregivers. We are implying that the involvement of caregivers has a significant impact on their

students' learning. When the caregivers come by, they will see how their child acts, how they are

performing, and get a chance to interact with other caregivers and the teacher. With the new

implementations of involvement and communication, if caregivers still do not want to get

involved then we need to schedule a conference to see if there is an issue in the home or with the

school that is making the caregiver uncomfortable or unable to go to school.