Chapter 9: Family Engagement In The Digital Age: Relationships First

It's March 2020. COVID pandemic public health measures encourage masking, cancel large group gatherings, and move schools to distance learning. Educators worldwide face finding new ways to instruct learners and engage parents in their children's learning and development.

For the educators in Minnesota's Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) program, distance learning meant having to adapt an over 40-year-old model of teaching young children and their parents through weekly in-person interaction. With minimal technology integration up to that point, ECFE educators were “thrown into the deep end,” using the internet and digital media to not only continue instruction, but to maintain an essential component of their engagement: relationships.