Our group decided to send out a survey to see what engagement strategies the Hartford immigrants community would like to see. We found that collaborative homework assignments and field trips to different locations in the city had the most interest.
The survey included over 30 different engagement strategies that we grouped into the four categories of culture events, collaborative homework assignments, field trips, and online resources. The category with the most interest were the collaborative homework assignments. These projects ranged from the child interviewing the parent about a childhood memory to the parent teaching the child how to cook a dish from their home country.
We asked a total of 24 engagement strategies. These came from a literature review of best practices, talking with the Hartford Public Library and discussions and ideas that we had as a group. These strategies and the likelihood of participation can be found in the chart below.
The field trips that were shown to have a lot of interest ranged from going to the Wadsworth Museum to Bushnell Park. We wanted to make sure the places we advertised were close to downtown Hartford and were inexpensive to visit so that everyone could participate.
Using activities like this, we would be able to engage parents and students at homes, making it much more time and cost efficient. Approximately 13 out of the 19 people we interviewed stated that if they had time to attend the field trips or culture nights, they would but they simply cannot attend after school events. This was a key find and was a major reason why we included activities that could be done inside the home.
When reviewing who answered the survey questions and in what, our group found that there wasn’t much difference between parent and student, but there was a difference in opinions across cultures. 12 out of 19 people interviewed were from Latin America. Out of these 12, ten were not excited by online resources and preferred cultural nights and collaborative homework assignments. Five of the 19 were African, and all of them reacted positively towards the online resources.
Another interesting find was the difference between men and women. Six of those interviewed were men, and five of them said the best engagement strategy was the student and the parents learning about taxes and credit. Women usually (9 out of 13 people) usually gave these categories a 3 or below, and opted for more fun and exciting forms of engagement like field trips and culture nights.
Our group found it very interesting that the engagement strategies we produced had over 60% approval rating. This means that parents want to be more involved in their teen’s life- a very promising start to increasing parental engagement.