Family Engagement/Family Leadership Pilot Opportunity Building Collaborative Leadership Capacity
Facilitated by UNM’s Family Development Program
As Contracted by New Mexico Children, Youth and Families
Department (CYFD) in Support of New Mexico TQRIS FOCUS
The Family Development Program is creating a Family Engagement/Family Leadership approach as an Early Childhood Framework for guiding the full participation of families as essential partners in New Mexico’s early learning system. We are inviting early childhood partners from 3 communities (Raton, Valencia County, Gadsden) to participate in a pilot learning opportunity with us over this coming year. The pilot will investigate a process for strengthening family engagement that leads to family leadership, based on national best practices and on the Family Development Program’s Guiding Principles for authentic partnership with families.
Empowering Families: A Co-Learning Approach
| LEARNER | FIRST TEACHER | PARTNER | ADVOCATE | LEADER |
| Understand how my child learns and grows |
Support my child as a powerful learner |
Partner with my child’s teachers and programs |
Advocate for my child’s learning and healthy development |
Participate in planning and evaluating programs that serve my child |
Overall Pilot Process Design: 6 sessions for Community Partners – 4 sessions for Families
Family Learning Series (#1-4):
#1: Seeing Your Child as a Strong, Competent and Powerful Learner
• Key Concept #1: Overview of Pilot: You know your child the best
• Key Concept #2: Relationship Building/How we learn
• Key Concept #3: Reflection & Discussion of how to promote Self-Directed Engaged Learning in
your child
#2: Supporting Your Child’s Learning
• Key Concept #1: Why Self-Control is important & how to support it in everyday moments
• Key Concept #2: Why Perspective-Taking is important & how to support it in everyday moments
• Key Concept #3: Strengths & Challenges to supporting your child’s learning
#3: Partnering with Your Child’s Program in Support of Great Learning
• Key Concept #1: Why Communicating is important & how to support it in everyday moments
• Key Concept #2: Why Making Connections is important & how to support it in everyday
moments
• Key Concept #3: How to use these skills to partner with your child’s program
#4: Advocating for Your Child – Participating as a Leader with Your Child’s Program
• Key Concept #1: Why Problem-Solving is important & how to support it in everyday moments
• Key Concept #2: Why Taking on Challenges is important & how to support it in everyday
moments
• Key Concept #3: How to use all 7 skills to advocate for your child
Learning Series: The Learning Series will intentionally adapt Mind in the Making and other essential child development resources to explore how children learn and grow, and how families can support this powerful process of learning. The Family Learning Series will integrate the following topics (based on the Seven Essential Life Skills) as well as selected resources from the Family Development Program’s Collaborative Leadership Tool Kit
Nurturing Self-Control for Your Child and
Yourself
Raising a Caring Child
Building Relationships through Good
Communication
Watching Your Child Make Sense of The World
Recognizing Your Child Is Creative and a
Problem Solver
Guiding Your Child to Take On Challenges
Seeing Your Child as a Powerful Learner
Thank you to The Center For Sustainable Community & Growing Great Kids of Raton. You may find more information about their efforts and programs for our community at https://www.sustainraton.org/growing-great-kids. For more information on UNM’s Family Development Program please visit https://fdp.unm.edu/
