When the teachers at the Ballard Center tell their 1- to 5-year-old students to “catch a bubble,” they aren’t urging the kids to scramble after soap bubbles floating in the air. They are instructing them to sit quietly and listen. Like most schools, Ballard has unique vocabulary and procedures for its students. But when you are a parent who is not privy to the lingo or the expectations set for your child, you can feel like an outsider, making it difficult for you to connect with the school and provide your child with the support he or she needs to continue learning at home.

Enter Shawn Hough, Ballard’s family connections coordinator, a position funded by the United Way of Douglas County to engage Ballard parents in their children’s early education experience. Hough’s mission is to ensure the children’s transition between school and home is seamless, so they have the family support they need to succeed throughout their educational career.

Children at the Ballard Early Childhood Center spend some time on the playground Wednesday, March 25, 2015. The United Way of Douglas County is funding a program to make sure the children’s transition between school and home is seamless, so they have the family support they need to succeed throughout their educational career.

“We know that family engagement is one of the key predictors of academic success. When families are engaged, students are more likely to be successful,” stated Erika Dvorske, president/CEO of United Way of Douglas County. “At an early childhood program like the Ballard Center, where families are working hard to provide all the best opportunities for their kiddos, we want to offer more tools that help the kids launch into kindergarten – and the rest of their lives — ready to succeed.”

Many of Ballard’s families are initially disinclined to connect with their children’s school, said Megan Stuke, director of development and administrative services at the Ballard Center. They may have had a bad experience in school when they were kids, or they just don’t want to take the time. So Hough works to establish a trusting relationship between school and home by personally visiting each student’s home twice a year. That’s been 90 and 100 home visits a year. During these visits, he conducts an Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ), a point-in-time assessment that gauges whether a child is on track developmentally and academically, so both parents and teachers know where the child is doing well and where they need to partner to help the child improve.

It’s easy for the busy parents to just drop off their kids at school and rush to work every day, never getting to know other parents at Ballard Center. So Hough organizes monthly activities, where Ballard families can gather to have fun, make friends and learn new skills, like healthy cooking or parenting techniques.

“We are trying to build as much community as possible, so parents can go to each other for help, to give their kids playmates, discuss their children’s development, and give each other ideas,” Hough said.

It’s working. Since the family connections coordinator position was created in 2012, participation in parent-teacher conferences at Ballard has skyrocketed, said Stuke. “We used to have maybe two parents from each classroom participate in conferences. Now 98 percent of parents do.”

Participating in parent-teacher conferences, working with their children’s teachers as teammates and applying their school’s learning techniques at home are all habits Stuke wants to help parents develop so that they will remain actively engaged in their children’s education until the students graduate from high school.

“Research has shown that the connection between home and school, especially in early childhood, is key, and the effects are long term,” Stuke said. Students who are not ready for kindergarten are half as likely to read well by 3rd grade, and four times more likely to drop out of high school, she reported.

Through its education community goal, United Way is focused on providing students in Douglas County with the support they need to come to school ready to learn, and to achieve their full potential in school and in life, Dvorske explained.

“This is where it all starts; this is the foundation of how children will be introduced into schooling and education,” explained Casey Pittel, education director for the Ballard Center. “If children have positive experiences, it will help them progress through the rest of their school career. If we don’t do this, there are a lot of repercussions.”