Our team is ready for a fantastic school year supporting schools, teachers, and education leaders to grow REAL Family Engagement in public and charter schools in DC (and across the country!) We are excited to introduce some of the most critical members of our team – our School Partnership Coaches! Coaches work closely with a portfolio of Flamboyan’s partner schools to ensure that the REAL Family Engagement model is embedded within the school’s culture and way of being. Deeply committed to racial equity, coaches are always focused on elevating the agency and voices of people and communities most impacted by inequity. We sat down with our coaches to find out more about them and their hopes for the upcoming school year.
Meet Tenea, School Partnership Coach
As a School Partnership Coach at Flamboyan Foundation, Tenea coaches schools in DC to ensure REAL Family Engagement practices are embedded within each school’s culture and systems. Tenea is committed to working in education because she wants to help cultivate the leaders of tomorrow.
Tenea began her career as an after-school camp teacher for a private school in Washington, DC, where her love of teaching began. After deciding that early childhood education was her niche, she became a preschool teacher at a charter school in DC and, soon after, a mentor teacher for other educators working towards their Master’s in Education. Through this position, she discovered the importance of family engagement and how it was a critical factor in students’ success – and she knew her next step would be coaching others in developing trusting family-school partnerships.
Outside of Flamboyan, Tenea is the proud parent of a toddler and dog mom to a Yorkie named Dolce. She loves to travel and explore as much of the world as she can with her family and hopes to one day open her own early learning center for toddlers.
What drew you to Flamboyan?
Before joining Flamboyan, I had the pleasure of being on the Family Engagement Leadership Team at my previous school. That experience changed my outlook on family engagement and what being a teacher and leader in my organization meant. Thanks to Flamboyan, family engagement has become a passion of mine. I’m thrilled at the opportunity to share with other educators the knowledge I’ve gained from my 15 years of teaching.
Why does REAL Family Engagement matter to you?
Relationships are at the center of the connections you need to make as an educator. Teachers that take the time to build relationships and foster trust between the parent and the school help families to play those five essential roles in their child’s education and increase their impact on the child, academically, and otherwise.
What are your hopes and dreams for the schools you’re coaching this year?
Our goal at Flamboyan is to ingrain REAL Family Engagement in each school in our partnership, whether we are coaching them or not. I want to first build lasting relationships with all the members of each team so that we can develop strategies that will support them in building trusting bonds with each family they serve. When the five-year partnership is complete, I hope and dream that each of my schools will be experts in REAL Family Engagement.
In your role as a coach, what are you most excited about in the coming school year?
I am so excited to get to know each Family Engagement Leadership Team member at the schools in my portfolio. I hope our relationship leads to a new, stronger approach to family engagement.