As a means of boosting family engagement, consider applying the goal setting practice to your work with families. You can create group goals and individual goals with the families enrolled in your program. The goals can be related to the needs of children or the needs of the adults in the family.

In order for this process to be successful, you will need to establish strong communication with families, which is a good idea for a goal to set for yourself, by the way. You can set goals with families during family/teacher conferences or during family committee meetings.

Group goal setting with families:

• Create a fundraising goal
• Create goal to boost the number of families who participate in program activities
• Establish a goal for the number of volunteer hours you want to reach
• Create a teacher appreciation goal
• Set a goal for the number of books read to children in a given month

Individual goal setting with families:

• Help families set goals for healthy living related to improving meals and snacks or reducing television time
• Encourage families to access community resources or educational supports
• Work with families to establish self-care practices for themselves and their children
• Help families set goals meant to support child development at home
• Create a goal to use new vocabulary words with children

If you are unable to put goal setting with families into practice, it is still a great idea to encourage families to set goals for themselves and their children through newsletters and other program communication tools.