When families thrive, students rise

In today’s rapidly shifting educational landscape, one truth remains clear: When parents and caregivers are supported, students succeed. Their well-being isn’t an add-on. It is foundational. As educators, we often speak about the whole child, yet we overlook the whole ecosystem in which that child grows. The most powerful predictor of long-term student growth is not just academic rigor, but the strength of the relationships between school, home, and community.

To truly nurture these relationships, we must begin with intentional language. The terms we use set the tone for how inclusive and equitable our practices will be. That is why, throughout this article, I will be using the word “family” rather than “parent.”

Why we say ‘family,’ not just ‘parent’ Language matters. When we talk about family engagement rather than parent involvement, we are choosing words that reflect the diverse realities of our students’ lives.

Not all children are raised solely by parents. Many are supported by grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, foster guardians, extended kin, or close family friends. Using the term “family” affirms the many different adult caregivers that play a significant role in a child’s life, including those who love, nurture, and advocate for a child’s well-being.

By saying “family,” we acknowledge that families come in all forms in our communities. We also avoid excluding those whose role may not be officially titled “parent” but whose impact is just as vital. Moreover, we communicate that every caring adult in a child’s life is welcome, valued, and included in partnership with the school.

This linguistic shift is more than semantics as it reflects our commitment to equity and belonging. It signals that we see and honor each student’s full support network, and that engagement should be inclusive, responsive, and representative of our community’s cultural and familial diversity.

From involvement to authentic engagement Too often, schools design events for parents rather than with them. These well-intentioned efforts — open house nights, coffee chats, back-to-school nights, parent newsletters — are common and important, but they fall short of the kind of authentic, reciprocal engagement that today’s students and families need.

This is especially true for families from historically marginalized backgrounds. Nondominant families, such as those who may speak a home language other than English, represent diverse cultural values, or have limited familiarity with U.S. school systems, often feel like outsiders in school spaces. Not because they care less, but because the structures in place were not built with their voices in mind.

Authentic engagement begins with humility, builds through collaboration, and leads to transformation. It demands that we move beyond “involvement,” which often focuses on doing things to families, and toward engagement, which is about doing things with families. The distinction is not just a matter of wording or semantics. It signals a deeper, systemic shift in how schools build relationships.

If we consider the difference between involvement and engagement, we can reimagine our school culture. Involvement is one-way communication within exclusive spaces that is indicative of families holding passive roles while engagement is a two-way dialogue fertile with co-created opportunities and shared decision-making power.

We must evolve toward a family-school-community partnership model, grounded in the belief that all families have the capacity to support their child’s development and that schools have a responsibility to build the capacity for partnership.

Why family well-being matters The question isn’t whether families care. The question is whether they feel cared for by their child’s school. Caregivers today are juggling more than ever — economic stress, shifting work schedules, systemic inequities, and the mental health fallout of ongoing crises.

In schools, we often speak of the “backpack” students carry. Their backpack is full of responsibilities and stressors beyond their academic day. But there’s also a backpack that caregivers carry. When that emotional load is heavy, children often carry that burden with them into the classroom.

Conversely, when caregivers feel seen, valued, and empowered, their children thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. Family well-being isn’t just a matter of compassion but rather it’s a matter of strategy.

Research consistently shows that students with engaged families earn higher grades and test scores, attend school more regularly, demonstrate stronger social-emotional skills, and graduate at higher rates, leading them to be more likely to pursue post-secondary education. Thus, supporting family well-being is not a “nice to have.” It’s essential to the success of any whole child initiative.

A whole child approach requires whole partnerships The whole child approach, promoted by and embraced by educators across the country, affirms that students learn best when they are healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. It reminds us that academic outcomes cannot be separated from the physical and emotional well-being of students.

But here’s the critical insight: You cannot support the whole child without also supporting the whole family. I’m reminded of a powerful analogy shared by Dr. Steve Constantino during one of his book presentations. He likened the burden that schools often place on students to a barbell — where all the weight is unevenly loaded on one end. In this image, students are forced to carry the full weight of expectations, while families hang in the air, disconnected and excluded from the learning process.

This image has stayed with me because it captures the imbalance so many students experience. When schools fail to engage families as equal partners, students bear the brunt of systemic pressures alone. But when we invite families into the process — grounding them alongside educators and students — we create a more balanced, supported, and resilient educational experience. This is what shared responsibility looks like, and it’s how we move from survival to thriving.

Children are deeply influenced by the emotional, mental, and logistical stability of their caregivers. A whole child framework must be paired with a strategy for family engagement that acknowledges this interconnectedness and builds relationships accordingly.

This is where Dr. Karen Mapp’s Dual Capacity-Building Framework becomes essential.

Building capacity on both sides of the partnership Dr. Mapp’s framework challenges us to stop thinking of family engagement as outreach or event planning. Instead, it reframes it as mutual growth: developing the knowledge, skills, confidence, and belief systems needed by both educators and families to work together as equal partners.

For educators and administrators, this means:

• Practicing cultural humility.
• Communicating in ways that are two-way, not top-down.
• Valuing family strengths and lived experiences.
• Acknowledging systemic barriers and shifting school culture.

For families, this means:

• Building knowledge of academic systems.
• Developing confidence to advocate for their children.
• Seeing themselves as co-educators.
• Participating in leadership, planning, and problem-solving.

This mutual capacity-building leads to what Mapp describes as “efficacious partnerships” — where families and educators believe in each other’s ability to make a difference.

A culture of care as the foundation At Chaffey Joint Union High School District, we’ve embraced this framework by embedding it within a broader commitment to a “culture of care” — an intentional environment of relational trust, emotional safety, and shared responsibility.

Culture of care is not a slogan. It’s a way of being. We’ve learned that when schools lead with authentic listening, mutual respect, and consistent presence, families begin to trust again. When they are invited into genuine conversations outside of presentations, they stay. And when they feel that their goals are our goals, they rise to lead alongside us.

Creating this culture has meant designing spaces and experiences that honor family identity and voice. From parent book clubs to co-created student and family murals, our schools are making visible their commitment to connection, belonging, and shared humanity.

Culture of care shapes everything — from how we greet families at the door, to how we follow up after meetings, to how we measure success. It also becomes the fertile soil where collective efficacy grows.

Collective efficacy: The heart of family engagement Collective efficacy is the shared belief that, together, we can improve outcomes. This has emerged as a central driver of student success. When educators and families trust each other, see value in collaboration, and share ownership of goals, student outcomes improve.

But collective efficacy is fragile. It requires constant nurturing through relational practices. It breaks down when families feel judged, excluded, or tokenized. It is especially harder for high school districts such as ours as we only have our families for four years to build trust, create continuity, and engage meaningfully with families — compared to unified or elementary school districts that often partner with families across a much longer span of a child’s life.

By the time students reach high school, families may already carry feelings of disconnection or hesitancy based on previous school experiences. Some may mistakenly believe that their role diminishes as their child matures. This makes our efforts to connect even more vital. We have to work with urgency and intentionality to ensure families understand they are essential partners, even in the adolescent years.

These four years are not just a countdown to graduation — they are an opportunity to reengage, restore trust, and reimagine family-school collaboration. When we lead with clarity, care, and consistency, we make every moment count.

We’ve seen how collective efficacy can transform entire campuses when families are included not just as participants, but as co-leaders. Our FACE (Family and Community Engagement) Team, which includes parents, site staff, counselors, EL advisors, and administrators, meets regularly to analyze site data, design engagement opportunities, and lead professional development together.

From data collection to co-creation: The CJUHSD FACE Survey A key strategy that has helped us build relational trust is our CJUHSD FACE Survey. It’s not just a tool for collecting information. It’s a reflection of what we believe about families and their place in our schools. There are nine questions that are translated into the top seven languages other than English spoken by our students and families: Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Vietnamese, Urdu, and Pashto. The survey asks our families if they have any cultural artifacts they would like to share, what skills/talents they have, their availability for school involvement, and what interest they may have in leadership, providing translation, tutoring, or advocacy.

Our intent is not only to gather information, but to identify the cultural wealth and capacity that already exists within our community. From this data, we’ve co-developed programming, invited families to co-lead workshops, and created schoolwide projects rooted in community identity.

Families who once attended events silently are now helping facilitate them. This is how we move from transaction to transformation.

Adult education as a family engagement strategy One powerful yet often overlooked way to support family well-being is through adult education. Chaffey Adult School is our district’s only adult school, and it serves over 3,000 students annually, many of whom are caregivers of high school students. Through active listening to our students and community, we are always updating our program offerings. These include English as a Second Language, U.S. Citizenship Preparation, Computers, Career Technical Education, and High School Diploma and Equivalency, along with various workforce readiness and digital literacy programs. As part of our effort to build bridges between family goals and school systems, our registration form includes whether the student is a parent or caregiver of a CJUHSD student, and which K–8 district their child attends. These questions do more than gather data — they help us see our adult learners not just as individuals seeking educational advancement, but as caregivers deeply invested in their children’s futures.

This connection allows us to align resources, tailor programming, and build cross-district partnerships that support the whole family. It also creates a meaningful pathway to reengage caregivers who may not have previously seen themselves reflected in school spaces. Adult education, in this way, becomes not just a personal journey but a collective one that strengthens the entire learning ecosystem.

Parents are learning English while their teens study for college. Grandparents are earning their HSE/GED after decades. Families are attending graduation ceremonies together — each empowered by education. When we invest in the goals of caregivers, their belief in the school system deepens, and their children reap the emotional and academic benefits.

This is the Whole Child + Whole Family strategy in action.

Embracing an asset-based approach to family engagement When working with immigrant families or those who speak a language other than English, it is important to move away from deficit thinking and embrace an asset-based approach. Too often, schools view language differences or unfamiliarity with U.S. systems as barriers to engagement. But what if we chose instead to see these qualities as sources of strength?

Families who have navigated immigration systems, rebuilt their lives in new environments, or preserved cultural traditions across generations possess resilience, determination, and rich cultural knowledge. These are not deficits but rather are assets that can enrich our school communities.

An asset-based approach means recognizing multilingualism as a resource, not a limitation; inviting cultural storytelling, traditions, and perspectives into classrooms; validating families’ lived experiences as forms of expertise; and celebrating rather than “remediating” difference.

At CJUHSD, we’ve learned that when we view our families through a lens of abundance rather than lack, everything changes. Our engagement shifts from “How do we get them to show up?” to “What strengths are they already bringing that we can elevate and build upon?”

This mindset invites schools to co-create — rather than simply accommodate. It leads to culturally sustaining strategies, inclusive practices, and deeper relational trust. When immigrant families and those with linguistic or socioeconomic challenges are viewed as co-educators and contributors, schools become more dynamic, diverse, and whole.

As districts reflect on family engagement strategies, adopting an asset-based approach is not just more equitable; it is more effective. It affirms the truth that every family, regardless of background, carries gifts that can transform a school community.

Final thoughts: We shape ecosystems As educational leaders, we are not just shaping students. We are shaping the ecosystems in which students are raised. That means investing in the whole child and the whole family.

When we move away from shallow involvement models and toward engagement rooted in trust, equity, capacity-building, and care, we redefine what partnership looks like. We foster schools where caregivers are not merely guests, but co-architects. We build districts where culture reflects community. And we create futures where students rise because the people who love them most are rising too.

Nora Hourani-Farraj, Ed.D., is district director of Community Relations & Chaffey Adult School assistant principal in Chaffey Joint Union High School District.