The School Leader Tool | Domain 2: Fostering Asset-Based Beliefs About Families

• Model an asset-based stance when talking about and interacting with students and families.
• Provide staff opportunities to share stories highlighting the multitude of ways families engage in their child’s education.
• Encourage staffs’ use of asset-based language when discussing students and families.

• Allocate time in routine meetings, such as staff meetings or grade-level team meetings, to reflect on beliefs about families and students.
• Equip staff to feel confident challenging colleague’s biases towards students and families.
• Provide staff with opportunities to learn about cultural competency, cultural humility, and how to challenge deficit beliefs about families and students.

• Prioritize time and space to have reflective conversations about identity, bias, and beliefs about students and families.
• Establish a common language to engage in conversations about the way in which identity and personal experience shape individual biases.
• Facilitate conversations about implicit bias and its potential impact on students and families.
• Follow-up with individuals after conversations in which they modeled vulnerability or engaged in an honest conversation. Recognize that these conversations are hard and offer continued support.
• Pay attention to staffs’ expressed beliefs about students and families, and use observational data to drive reflective conversations with staff, both individually and in groups.
• Use Flamboyan’s Challenging Assumptions Reflection Tool.
• Gather data on beliefs about families and routinely use this data to drive reflective conversations.
• Use family voice to challenge deficit beliefs, such as asking families to share their experiences and perspective at a staff meeting.

• Ensure staff engages all families in their children’s education in respectful and affirming ways [see Domain 4].
• Include questions gauging staff beliefs about families on staff surveys, such as:

My school helps teachers be conscious of their biases towards families.

My students’ families are invested in supporting their children’s learning.

My students’ families want me to reach out to them.

The time I spend engaging families is worth it.

• Celebrate positive staff-family interactions and name them when you see them.
• Describe the positive interactions and name the impact that interaction might have had on the family and child.