Tell Your Story: Helping Families Become Art Room Advocates

Okay, thank you to Jen for coming on and talking about all of these ideas with me.

I think the biggest takeaway from our conversation is just that there are a lot of different ways to build stronger connections with people.

the families who have a stake in your art room you know whether that's something simple like just sharing what students are learning or whether you actually want parents in your room helping with some tasks or you know being a part of an art night or supporting your art club or anything like that you know there are a lot of approaches a lot of ways that you can get families involved and And a lot of ways you can get them to help advocate for your program.

And I think you just need to decide what the best approach is for you and for your art room and how much time and how much energy you have available.

But thinking about where do we take it from here? What can we do from here? I would say just start with...

one small step that feels realistic.

It might be something that Jen suggested, something you come up with on your own.

Maybe you're just sharing one project or you're asking one parent or one family member about their interests or their connections.

Or maybe you're inviting a bunch of people to support an arts night or another event that you have coming up.

know whatever it is just make sure that you are finding a way to express and show people the value of your art program and hopefully you can get some families to also share and show the value of your program as well because when you are consistently telling that story like jen talked about when you are consistently showing what happens in your art room You're giving families a reason to get invested.

You're giving them the information and the support that they need to send that support back to you.

And they can become your partners.

They can become your advocate when it comes to sharing out all of the great things that are happening in your program.