Reconceptualizing Family Engagement as an Improvisational Practice: Lessons from Pre-K Teachers’ Practices During COVID-19

Abstract

Scholars have argued against a post-COVID return to normality on the grounds that the pandemic offers an opportunity to break with the past and imagine a different, more just future. In this analysis of pre-kindergarten teachers’ reflections on teaching during COVID-19 in the state of Michigan, we take up the notion of the pandemic as a portal to consider how practices that emerged during the pandemic might be carried forward post-pandemic. Through a qualitative interview study with 25 public pre-K teachers in Michigan, we sought to understand how the pandemic altered the nature of family-teacher engagement. Our analysis led us to conceptualize teaching as an improvisational practice that was highly responsive to the circumstances and needs of families. We identified three central themes that animated pre-K teachers’ work during the pandemic: supporting families through new types of “offers” (a term from improv theory), making learning accessible, and fostering collectivity by partnering with families. Teachers’ practices during the pandemic reveal new avenues for conceptualizing family engagement as an improvisational practice. We draw on the principles of improv theory to outline a framework for this approach.

Introduction

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as many wondered when life would return to “normal,” some began to question whether going back to the way things were pre-pandemic was a desirable goal (Ladson-Billings, 2021; Love, 2020). In an April 2020 Financial Times article, novelist Arundhati Roy highlighted the dangers of a return to “normality,” to a past rife with injustice and inequality. An alternative, she suggested, was to view the pandemic as a “portal,” or a passage to a different kind of future. She wrote, “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next” (Roy, 2020). Arguing “nothing could be worse than a return to normality,” Roy urged us to view the pandemic as a rupture and embrace it as an opportunity to “imagine another world.”

Education scholars across the globe have similarly advocated against a post-pandemic return to normality—to an education system that was failing children, especially children who belong to minoritized racial and ethnic groups, long before the pandemic (Love, 2020; OECD, 2020; UNESCO, 2020). In keeping with the idea of the pandemic as a portal, Ladson-Billings (2021) called for a “hard re-set” of the education system (p. 68), and Souto-Manning (2021) argued for conceptualizing the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink and remake schooling to ensure all children thrive. Asserting that the pandemic shone a light on existing global inequalities, the UNESCO International Commission on the Futures of Education (2020) called for a renewed commitment to making knowledge and learning accessible for all and to a future where global solidarity would lead to the eradication of inequality.

Drawn to the idea of the pandemic as a productive break from the past, this article examines the reflections of 25 public pre-kindergarten (pre-K) teachers on their experiences during COVID-19. Through qualitative interviews with pre-K teachers in the U.S. state of Michigan, we sought to understand what their family engagement practices looked like during the first year of the pandemic. In this article, we analyze interview data through a lens of improvisational teaching (Lobman, 2006; Sawyer, 2004), which directs attention to the relational and responsive practices of teaching (Sawyer, 2004). This frame helps us to make sense of teachers’ practice during a time when there was no script to follow and no predetermined outcomes. Previous work has leveraged principles of improv theory to interpret teacher–student interactions (e.g., Lobman, 2006). We contend that principles of improv also can aptly trace the dynamics and possibilities in teacher–family interactions. Through an examination of approaches teachers developed in response to a global crisis of unprecedented magnitude, we seek to illuminate new possibilities for pre-K family engagement post-pandemic and to contribute to conversations about the educational change made necessary and possible through this moment of rupture.

Public Pre-K in the U.S. and Michigan

Early childhood education (ECE) in the U.S. has been characterized as a “patchwork quilt” (Rose, 2010) and a “non-system” (Kagan & Reid, 2008) because of the wide range of programs that have sprung up over time in response to crises and shifting goals, and because the U.S. lacks a national ECE policy in favor of state control. Historically, with the exception of the federally-funded Head Start program, which provides ECE services to a small portion of low-income three- and 4-year-olds, ECE in the U.S. operates as a private marketplace, funded by tuition dollars. Due to high costs and limited supply, high-quality ECE programs remain out of reach for many U.S. families, and particularly low-income families (Wilinski, 2017).

In the early 2000s, concern over academic achievement gaps, growing recognition of the early years as a critical time for brain development, and attention to the economic returns of investment in ECE sparked the introduction of publicly-funded pre-K programs in many U.S. states (Wilinski, 2017). After two decades of expansion, 44 states and the District of Columbia now provide state-funded pre-K programs, which enroll 34% percent of the nation’s 4-year-olds (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2021). In the U.S., state-funded pre-K is voluntary, and programs typically serve 4-year-olds, prior to entering kindergarten at age five. All state pre-K programs are guided by a set of early learning standards and share a goal of supporting children’s early learning and development. Beyond that commonality, states differ in the amount of funding they allocate to pre-K, the qualifications required of pre-K teachers, and which children are eligible to attend pre-K. In some states, pre-K is universally available to all age-eligible children; in others, like Michigan, state pre-K serves a targeted group of children, based on income and other criteria.

Michigan’s public pre-K program, the Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP), was established in 1985. It provides free full-day pre-K to 4-year-olds considered “at risk of school failure” due to factors including low family income, environmental risk, and developmental delay or disability (Michigan Department of Education, 2019). In the 2019–2020 school year, GSRP enrolled 32% of the state’s 4-year-olds. Most students (95%) were low income. Nearly half (47%) also experienced environmental risk, which can include loss of a parent loss, homelessness, and residence in high-risk neighborhood, among other factors; 11% had a diagnosed disability or identified developmental delay (Wu et al., 2021).

Funds for GSRP are allocated by the state legislature and administered to intermediate school districts (ISDs), county-level administrative units typically comprising several school districts. ISDs can operate GSRP classrooms themselves or subcontract with school districts, charter academies, and community-based organizations (CBOs). GSRP takes a play-based approach, with all classrooms, regardless of location, required to adopt an evidence-based early childhood curriculum. GSRP policy also requires programs to provide regular opportunities for family engagement through home visits, parent-teacher conferences, and committees that engage families in making decisions about their child’s pre-K classroom (Michigan Department of Education, 2014).

Family Engagement in Early Childhood Education

In its treatment of family engagement, GSRP policy considers parents central to the learning process: “Children who are successful in school have many healthy interconnections between family, school, and community. Parent involvement in the learning process strengthens learning at home and is directly linked back to positive child outcomes at school” (Michigan Department of Education 2018, 1). While recognizing that involvement can be either formal or informal, the policy text goes on to present two specific teacher-led mechanisms for involvement: home visits and parent-teacher conferences. The policy text, throughout, aspires for parents to be “active decision makers.” Yet, critical analyses of policy texts and enactments suggests that family agency is in tension with stakeholder expectations and policy landscapes, thus requiring creative adaptations by teachers, families, and policymakers alike (Wilinski & Vellanki, 2020).

Indeed, tensions around agency pervade existing literature on family engagement. Elsewhere, family engagement is termed “parental involvement,” referencing a more traditional—“doing to”—model of interacting with families (Wilinski & Morley, 2021). In this article, we use “family engagement” to signal the “doing with” dynamic of responsive practice, both imagined in GSRP policy and enacted by GSRP teachers.

Within existing family engagement literature, scholars have applied different lenses to understand how family engagement is supported and constrained. Epstein’s framework, for instance highlights typical ways families are involved in learning: volunteering at school, supporting learning at home, communicating with teachers, and making decisions about schooling (2010). Kim and Sheridan (2015) offer a model to organize the structural and relational dynamics of family engagement. Other scholars focus on how educator orientations to family engagement can alternatively center families’ strengths or emphasize their deficits (Adair, 2014; Souto-Manning & Swick, 2006). Informed by this past literature, our heightened attention to the relational dynamics of family engagement motivated us to consider improv theory as a productive analytical angle. Improv theory felt particularly meaningful given the nature of co-creation in an unusually uncertain time for ECE families and educators.

Family Engagement During COVID-19

The pandemic fundamentally altered the provision of education and the nature of teachers’ work in the final months of the 2019–2020 school year, as nearly all U.S. schools and early childhood education (ECE) programs (including public pre-K) closed their doors and shifted to some form of remote instruction (Bassok et al., 2021a, 2021b; Kuhfeld et al., 2020). In March 2020, 22 states required the physical closure of all pre-K programs. Fifteen states required only some pre-K sites to close, typically those housed in public elementary schools; eight states left decisions about closures to local authorities (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2021). In Michigan, all public school pre-K sites and most CBO sites closed in spring 2020, though some CBO programs remained open to provide care for children of essential workers. In fall 2020, decisions about whether to provide remote or in-person instruction in GSRP were made at the program level.

What pre-K learning looked like in spring 2020 also varied across and within states. Most states (28) required pre-K programs to provide remote learning to all students affected by school closures during the pandemic. Four states required remote instruction only for some pre-K sites (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2021). In Michigan, GSRP teachers were required to provide families with supplies and activities to support children’s learning at home. In this analysis, we examine how pre-K teachers enacted this mandate to provide children with learning opportunities during the first year of the pandemic.

Studies of family engagement in early childhood programs during COVID-19 point to new challenges connecting with caregivers that were multiple and varied over time. A study of Illinois Head Start programs found that immediately following shutdowns due to COVID-19, meeting families’ basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter became the top priority (Silver & Coba-Rodriguez, 2022). During the shutdown, teachers also experienced challenges connecting with caregivers, due to the loss of face-to-face contact, particularly at drop-off and pick-up times or during planned family engagement events (Ford et al., 2021; Levickis et al., 2022). Teachers compensated in a variety of ways: by instituting regular phone check-ins; sharing via text, Facebook Messenger, or similar two-way text-based app use; or sending email updates to the whole class or to individual caregivers (Ford et al., 2021; Plotka & Guirguis, 2022; Silver & Coba-Rodriguez, 2022). Eventually, some programs began to use interactive video-based platforms such as Zoom or WhatsApp for family conversations or events (Levickis et al., 2022), while others also adopted platforms designed for use in education (Levickis et al., 2022; Silver & Coba-Rodriguez, 2022).

As the pandemic progressed, many programs moved to online or hybrid instruction, which presented new challenges for teachers and parents. Surveys of educators and families revealed that both groups understood that distance learning for preschool children required caregiver involvement (Ford et al, 2021; Plotka & Guirguis, 2022; Stites et al, 2021)—involvement that both groups understood to be difficult for parents, especially when they had to work.

Although ECE teachers faced unprecedented challenges during the pandemic, some research suggests that the effect of the pandemic on family-school communication and engagement was not all negative. For example, one study in a major metropolitan area in the U.S. found educators and caregivers perceived that school–family communication increased during lockdown (Plotka & Guirguis, 2022). The Illinois Head Start study mentioned above also concluded that, despite the challenges associated with the pandemic, local programs had engaged families “in new and potentially more effective ways” (Silver & Coba-Rodriguez, 2022, p. 8). The present study adds to the limited literature on family engagement practices in ECE during COVID-19 and contributes a new theoretical framework to the conversation: teaching as improvisation.

Theoretical Framework

Teaching as Improvisation

Conceptualizing teaching as an “improvisational performance” (Sawyer, 2004, p.12) directs attention to the creative and responsive practice of pre-K teaching. The notion of teaching as improvisation is premised on the idea that teaching is a performative and relational practice. Teachers’ work is guided by a set of scripts—policies, curricula, building and classroom norms—that serve as a framework for daily life inside classrooms, shaping the contours of classroom activities and interactions. However, in order to be effective, teachers must be able to deviate from those scripts in response to students’ needs and ideas (Lobman, 2006; Sawyer, 2004). We found the concept of improvisational teaching particularly germane to this analysis because the conditions of COVID-19 mimicked an improv show. A pandemic does not come with a script or a set of instructions. During the early days of COVID-19, pre-K teachers, children, and families were forced to co-construct a performance whose outcome no one could predict or control. Teachers’ pre-existing agendas had to be set aside as the contours of their work shifted and as they became aware of new family needs resulting from the pandemic.

Sawyer (2004) asserts that effective teaching, like improv theater, requires in-the-moment responsiveness. Improv theater is necessarily emergent and collaborative—its direction and outcome cannot be determined either in advance or by a single performer. Rather, performers collaborate to construct a narrative in real time. Similarly, classroom interactions that enhance learning cannot be predetermined but rely on “collaborative emergence” (Sawyer, 2004). In other words, the process of teaching and learning is situated and relational; it depends on teachers’ ability to improvise and to facilitate collective improvisation through in-the-moment responsiveness.

Improvisation in Early Childhood Education

Teacher responsiveness is a critical element of quality in ECE; research shows that teacher–child interactions that build on, enhance, and extend children’s ideas are essential to young children’s learning (Cabell et al., 2015; Hong & Udommana, 2018; Mashburn et al., 2008). Because improv and ECE teaching are both highly relational, Lobman (2006) hypothesized that the concept of improvisational teaching could be a valuable tool in ECE research. She outlined an analytic framework for ECE research based on 4 principles of improv: giving and receiving of offers, avoidance of negation, “yes and,” and collectivity.

The principle of giving and receiving of offers is foundational to improv theater. An offer is defined as “anything that anyone says or does in a story” (Lobman, 2006, p. 457). The success of any scene depends on players making offers and then accepting and building on each other’s offers. In ECE classrooms, teachers enact this principle by “[building] directly with what children are doing and saying” (Lobman, 2006, p. 457). For example, if a child tells their teacher they are a doctor, the teacher might receive that offer by saying, “Oh, yes, I can tell by that stethoscope you are carrying.”

In teaching, as in improv, the scene develops as players accept and build on each other’s offers. To do this successfully, players must follow two linked principles: don’t negate and “yes and.” When an improv player does not accept another player’s offer, that negation often stops the scene from developing. In the classroom, teachers negate children’s offers when they “ignore, interpret, or attempt to dominate an activity that children are engaged in” (Lobman, 2006, 457). For example, the child playing a doctor may invite the teacher to eat breakfast at the doctor’s office. If the teacher responds by explaining, “We eat breakfast at home or at a restaurant but not at the doctor’s office,” they negate the offer made by the child.

In contrast, when players accept an offer and add something new, they adhere to the principle of “yes and.” Enacting “yes and” entails not only agreeing, but also elaborating on and extending the offer. In the doctor’s office example, the teacher could enact the principle of “yes and” by accepting the child’s offer of breakfast and offering to help with the cooking.

Finally, the principle of collectivity reminds us that successful improv theater requires that players interact and respond to one another. As Lobman (2006) notes, the players “cannot be invested in the scene going a particular way, because doing so does not allow for listening or building with their fellow performers” (pp. 457–458). In ECE classrooms, teachers demonstrate a commitment to collectivity by following the children’s lead and enacting in-the-moment responsiveness (Lobman, 2006). To return to the doctor’s office scene, the child might reject the teacher’s request to count the number of guests at the table (an attempt to reinforce math concepts) by announcing that breakfast is over and everyone has gone to school. At this point, the teacher is again faced with a decision about whether to accept and build on this new offer, which would reflect the principle of collectivity, or to maintain focus on the goal of reinforcing mathematical concepts. The former approach allows the scene to continue to develop, while the latter may result in an abrupt end.

This example, like Lobman’s (2006) work on ECE and improvisation, focuses on teacher instructional practices and teacher–child interactions. Our analysis builds on previous scholarship in ECE that has employed improvisational teaching as an analytic framework to examine teacher responsiveness (Graue et al., 2014), to theorize teachers as improvisers in the context of children’s play (Lobman, 2003), and to explore the relationship between teacher practice and opportunities to learn (Graue et al., 2015). We extend this work by examining the ways pre-K teachers improvised in their interactions with families at a time when they had no choice but to do so. Our goal is to identify methods and adaptations that hold promise for post-pandemic family engagement in pre-K policy and programming.

Methodology

Study Design and Data Generation

This analysis derives from a qualitative interview study focused on understanding GSRP teachers’ experiences during COVID-19. We sought to answer the question: What is it like to teach pre-K during a pandemic? Our analysis was guided by the sub-question: How, if at all, did teachers’ interactions with families change during the first year of COVID-19? From April to June 2021, we conducted interviews via phone and Zoom with 25 GSRP teachers across four ISDs in Michigan. In these interviews, we invited teachers to reflect upon teaching during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. In each ISD, we also interviewed one or more ISD officials responsible for overseeing GSRP to help us understand the broad context of teachers’ experiences.

We received ethical clearance from our university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) and ECE officials from the Michigan Department of Education assisted us in identifying ISDs to participate in this study. We sought ISDs of a range of sizes that represented different geographies in Michigan in order to capture diversity of experiences during COVID-19. Our sample included a large metropolitan ISD (Reynolds), a mid-size ISD (Calhoun), and two small, rural ISDs (Heritage Southwest; Heartland).1 Reflective of their overall populations, the ISDs varied in the number of students enrolled in GSRP. Reynolds ISD had largest GSRP population, with more than 7,000 students, while Calhoun served about 900 students. Heartland and Heritage Southwest each enrolled about 140 GSRP students. There was also variation in the student racial demographics across ISDs (Table 1).

Table 1.

Intermediate School District (ISD) Student Racial Demographics*

ISD Name/ Pseudonym	American Indian or Alaska Native	Asian	African American	Hispanic/ Latino	Two or more races	White
Calhoun	0.41%	3.07%	13.49%	7.89%	8.58%	66.40%
Heartland	35.67%	0.64%	1.68%	1.24%	1.68%	58.92%
Heritage Southwest	0.75%	0.39%	5.11%	8.66%	9.22%	75.83%
Reynolds	0.22%	4.14%	41.32%	8.88%	2.56%	42.81%

^*Data reflects racial demographics for all students from pre-K through grade 12 in the district

We recruited GSRP teacher participants with assistance from ISD officials, who distributed via email an online form we created. We contacted all 42 teachers who indicated an interest in participating and conducted interviews with 25 of them (Table 2). All teacher and school names used throughout this article are pseudonyms.

Table 2.

Teacher demographics

Location	Teacher name	Gender identity	Age	Racial identity	Years teaching	Setting type
Calhoun Intermediate School District
Adventure place preschool	Madison Krupp	F	31	White	8	CBO
	Laura Stieg	F	28	White	4	CBO
Timberland preschool	Clare Dempkey	F	27	White	4	CBO
Valleyview center	Christine Jones	F	39	White	7	CBO
	Ashley Miller	F	45	White	6	CBO
Village Pride	Hillary Arnold	F	33	White	7	Elementary school
Heartland Intermediate School District
Barrymore GSRP	Monica Parmenter	F	46	White	21	Elementary school
Great lakes GSRP	Sarah Flannigan	F	50	White	11	Elementary school
Templeton Preschool	Taylor Wozniak	F	51	White	11	Elementary school
Heritage Southwest Intermediate School District
Clement elementary	Kimberly Parker	F	40	White	2	Elementary school
	Missy Walker	F	46	White	11	Elementary school
Hillside elementary	Tracy Dickson	F	51	White	4	Elementary school
	Grace Madison	F	25	White	4	Elementary school
Millpond elementary	Deborah Fisher	F	46	White	3	Elementary school
Reynolds Intermediate School District
Glademont preschool	Amanda Douglas	F	34	White	2	CBO
	Maira Rodriguez-Castenada	F	31	Latinx or Hispanic	4	CBO
Heritage academy	Louisa Brooks	F	30	Black	3	Elementary school
	Jade Coleman	F	28	Black	3	Elementary school
Peace charter school	Patty Greene	F	60	Black	7	Elementary school
	Chelsea Smith	F	30	White	6	Elementary school
Shenandoah early childhood center	Rebecca Pineda	F	36	White	2	CBO
	Belinda Rolston	F	40	White	6	CBO
Waterford pines elementary	Heather Edwards	F	36	White	17	Elementary school
Worldview academy	Shireen Daudi	F	38	Prefer not to say	8	Elementary school
	Beverly Garnet	F	47	White	11	Elementary school

All teacher and school names are pseudonyms

Interviews lasting 35–75 min were conducted via Zoom and phone and were then recorded and transcribed. The first and second authors, along with a graduate research assistant, conducted interviews using a shared semi-structured protocol (Patton, 2005). Teacher questions focused on how teachers adapted their practice to the conditions of the pandemic and how the pandemic affected them professionally. We asked teachers questions including, “What changed about your daily work life with the onset of the pandemic? What new teaching practices or approaches have you developed during the pandemic? Has the pandemic changed anything about the ways you are able to connect with families?” Interviews with ISD officials focused on understanding state- and ISD-level responses to the pandemic, including pandemic-related changes to policy and programming and supports offered to GSRP teachers, students, and families. Questions included, “How has GSRP in your ISD changed during the pandemic? How, if at all, has the pandemic changed the way you work with and support GSPR teachers? How, if at all, has the pandemic affected teachers’ ability to connect with and support families?” In general, we found that teachers and ISD officials seemed eager to share their experiences at the beginning of the pandemic and needed little prompting.

Analysis with Principles of Improv

To analyze interview data related to teacher-family interaction, we created deductive codes using the principles of improv identified by Lobman (2006): giving and receiving of offers, don’t negate/ “yes and,” and collectivity. First, we developed analytic memos in which we defined and operationalized each principle (Emerson et al., 2011). Next, we created a data display (Miles et al., 2014) to link the principles of improv with data excerpts. We listed each principle of improv and its definition in one column and then, as we read interview transcripts, pulled out excerpts from the data in which teachers’ reflections or descriptions of their practices during COVID-19 reflected these principles. We sorted data excerpts by principle and wrote analytic memos about how the data reflected the principle. Through this process, we identified three overarching themes that characterized GSRP teachers’ work during the pandemic: maintaining connection and support, making learning accessible, and partnering with families. These themes also aligned with what we learned from interviews and focus groups with ISD officials. We describe each of these themes in the findings section below. In the discussion section, we explain how they exemplify the principles of improv and discuss implications for post-pandemic teaching. To ensure the trustworthiness of our analysis, we presented preliminary findings to a state-level GSRP advisory board that included ISD officials and GSRP teachers, who concurred that our findings aligned with their experiences during the pandemic.

Researcher Positionality

The way we made sense of teachers’ experiences during the pandemic is influenced by our identities as researchers. All three authors have a deep understanding of public pre-K through prior research in Michigan. The third author leads a statewide evaluation of GSRP, which contributed to our ability to gain access to sites and participants and provided an additional lens through which to interpret the data. As mothers of young children, all three authors had firsthand experience navigating ECE during the pandemic and this was a point of connection with participants. At the same time, none of us had taught preschool virtually during the pandemic, and we continually positioned ourselves as learners in order to counter the tendency to make assumptions about teachers’ experiences.

Findings

GSRP teacher descriptions echoed Roy’s (2020) observation that the early pandemic was a complete rupture with normality. As teachers recalled how they felt in March 2020, when schools were shuttered and in-person gatherings were restricted, teachers described feeling that “the rug was just pulled out from underneath us” (Monica Parmenter, Heartland ISD) and that everything was “crazy and uncertain…. [We] just didn’t know what anything was going to look like or for how long we would be in any of this” (Sarah Flannigan, Heartland ISD). Teaching pre-K during the pandemic resembled improv theater—there was no script to follow, and no one could predict the arc of the storyline. As Patty Greene (Reynolds ISD) put it, “[The pandemic was] new to everybody. It was new to the world!” Another teacher noted, “I didn’t have any training in this from my schooling. They don’t teach you how to teach when a pandemic hits!” (Laura Steig, Calhoun ISD). Even so, amid confusion, fear, uncertainty, and evolving directives from state officials, pre-K teachers maintained connection with students and families and continued to provide learning opportunities. They gave new “offers” to families and received offers in return, forming and reforming practices in dialogue with families. As we traced how teachers and administrators perceived these shifts, our analysis surfaced three themes that animated GSRP teachers’ family engagement during the pandemic: supporting families through new types of offers, making learning accessible through new pedagogical offers, and fostering collectivity by partnering with families.

Supporting Families Through New Types of Offers

At the beginning of the pandemic, GSRP teachers and administrators prioritized maintaining connection with families and helping to ensure their basic needs were met. Sarah Flannigan (Heartland ISD) summed up this priority when she said, “Our main goal was to make sure first that their needs were met and that somehow we could continue doing lessons with them.” She said that, early in the pandemic, she would drive around to children’s houses—sometimes as far as 30 min away—just to check in, have a conversation at the doorstep, and see if there was anything the family needed. Before the pandemic, GSRP students and families typically were marginalized due to low income and other factors. As COVID-19 ravaged the world, they were among those were most affected by illness, death, unemployment, and food insecurity. In interviews, GSRP teachers and administrators noted their awareness that families had experienced considerable stress and uncertainty due to COVID and described working to support families during the pandemic.

One of the ways teachers and administrators supported families was by connecting them with needed services. For example, Patty Greene (Reynolds ISD) described her efforts to ensure her students and their families had regular meals, which often required thinking “outside the box” and going above and beyond what was provided by the school district. She also spoke of helping a family secure housing when she learned they had no place to live. Terese Hoffman (ISD official, Calhoun ISD) worked with school districts to provide meals for families and with the local YMCA to distribute diapers. For Clare Dempkey (Calhoun ISD), attention to families’ needs often took precedence over teaching during the early days of the pandemic. She explained, “We did a lot less teaching in April [2020] and a lot more supporting families and providing families with resources as opposed to providing lessons to young children. We were just supporting their families.”

Maintaining connection while in-person interaction was highly restricted required teachers to develop new ways of communicating with families. Unable to conduct home visits or have informal conversations at drop-off or pick-up times, teachers developed a range of approaches that enabled them to maintain regular contact with families. Figuring out the offers that worked for families took time and responsiveness. Chelsea Smith (Reynolds ISD) explained that, at first, they were using Class DoJo (a communication application designed for educational settings) to communicate with families, but there was “no back-and-forth.” To facilitate bi-directional interactions, teachers developed a number of approaches: Facebook groups, providing their cell phone numbers so families could call or text them, and holding daily “office hours” where parents could just drop in on a Zoom call to chat. The Calhoun ISD administrator said that teachers became much more flexible in their communication with families during COVID-19, an approach that seemed to resonate with families:

Teachers [could] say to the families, “I can do a phone call. I can do Zoom call. I can do Facebook Live. I can come to you, I can...”, you know, whatever! And the families felt connected with that. And respected, I think.

In many ISDs, this more flexible approach to communication was supported by policy changes. Prior to the pandemic, district or program policies dictated which platforms (typically proprietary applications) teachers could use to communicate with families. When these policies were relaxed during the pandemic, teachers could use different platforms, such as Facebook. GSRP teacher Kimberly Parker (Heritage SW) believed these changes helped teachers find new ways of communicating that went beyond “a note in the backpack” and supported them in meeting families where they were, rather than limiting their interactions to particular platforms or types of communication.

Making Learning Accessible Through New Pedagogical Offers

When schools closed in March 2020, GSRP teachers also developed new strategies to ensure their students had access to learning opportunities during lockdown. Few GSRP teachers described providing online synchronous instruction at the very beginning of the pandemic. Instead, many teachers created and delivered packets of learning materials to their students. GSRP teacher Tracy Dickson (Heritage SW) explained:

We called it a “home learning kit.” So, we compiled a bunch of different things in, like, little bags, and delivered them to the families, like, pretty immediately.... So they could follow along with the lessons, and then have those ideas to do with their children later, with the materials right there in their bag or home kits.

In addition to giving children access to learning opportunities, Chris Whitmire, who oversaw GSRP for Heritage SW, saw paper home learning kits as a way to stay connected with families at a time of great shock and uncertainty. She attributed her ISD’s ability to keep families and children connected to GSRP during the pandemic to its ability to quickly provide points of connection through home learning kits.

Not all teachers were able to take this approach, however. Kayla Mitchell, an ISD official who provided instructional support to GSRP teachers in Reynolds, described the innovative ways teachers in her ISD adapted:

[When COVID came] they had to just immediately leave the school. No materials, no lessons. And [the teachers] were, like, “Now, what am I going to do?” So, we thought about ideas of sorting with the socks, the socks at home, with the laundry. Counting, making patterns with the utensils with the forks and spoons, things like that. So, there were so many things that we could do with math, literacy.

At a time when there was no script, teachers developed approaches to support children’s learning that demonstrated an awareness of families’ situations and drew on the resources available to them.

GSRP teachers found other creative ways to provide learning opportunities that aligned with families’ needs and realities. GSRP teacher Beverly Garnet (Reynolds ISD) thought synchronous online instruction was unrealistic for the children in her class because they did not have internet services, devices to access online learning, and adults who could help them log on. Instead of synchronous meetings, she created lessons and read-alouds, modelled after interactive children’s shows like Sesame Street, and posted them on YouTube. In the end, she made over 100 videos. Garnet explained, “I knew at a bare minimum my parents would let their kids on YouTube.” She said she heard from families that her YouTube lessons helped them keep children occupied during times when adults were engaged in household activities. Virtual lessons and read-alouds seemed to resonate with children, too.

Sincere engagement with family feedback was central to creating meaningful pedagogical offers. Christine Johnson (Calhoun ISD) described surveying families to learn what families were finding helpful. Some, she found loved the videos and read-alouds she was creating. Others would say, “‘Ehh, we couldn't access those very well, but the hands-on writing and hands-on learning was really great.’” Thus, Johnson’s approach was to create multiple types of offers that met different families’ needs.

In Calhoun, where teachers were required to record one read-aloud each day, ISD official Terese Hoffman explained that, when families were asked if they were using this content, over 20 indicated their children were watching the read-alouds as their bedtime story.

Fostering Collectivity by Partnering With Families

The shift to remote learning during the pandemic collapsed boundaries between home and school, requiring teachers and families to work together in new ways to support children’s learning. As GSRP teacher Laura Steig (Calhoun ISD) put it, teaching during the pandemic was a “really big team effort.” Teachers relied on families to facilitate asynchronous lessons provided in paper packets or pre-recorded videos and to assist them during live online meetings. Involving families in this way meant teachers engaged in what Belinda Rolston (Reynolds ISD) described as “double teaching,” or scaffolding families’ understanding of the purpose and learning goals of the activities so they could support their child’s learning:

I feel like I am double teaching because I am talking through, like, “This is why we are doing what we are doing. We are squeezing play dough and we are molding it; the children are doing this so we can strengthen their fingers so later on they can hold their pen or pencil.”

Sometimes double teaching occurred in the moment, during an online meeting; at other times it occurred through the information and materials teachers provided families to do at home with their children. Laura Steig (Calhoun ISD) explained that she would post activities to her class Facebook page for students who couldn’t attend a live meeting:

We would post, “Missed our Zoom? Here is what we talked about. If you want to do it at home….” So honestly, a lot of it I feel like we were also teaching the parents, and the parents were teaching their kids at home.

In the course of double-teaching, some teachers noticed families understanding teachers’ work more deeply. As Rebecca Pineda (Reynolds ISD) explained, families would casually ask questions about pedagogy that, absent virtual instruction, they may not have had a chance to inquire about. Pineda described a situation where a parent asked why students were playing with Play Dough. She replied to the parent, “‘Well, it helps with their fine motor [skills] and they are strengthening their fingers. We are making letters…so they are learning their letters too.’ Pineda explained, “[The families) were shocked…like, ‘Wow. Okay. It does make sense.’”.

Teachers had also to enlist families’ help to meet GSRP assessment requirements. Particularly at the end of the 2019–2020 school year when nearly all GSRP classes were remote, teachers needed families to provide them with photos or videos that could document their child’s learning and development. Involving families in assessment did present challenges; as Tracy Dickson pointed out, most parents “didn’t go to school to be a teacher.” Many families required coaching and frequent communication in order to administer the assessment. “It’s a struggle,” Dickson elaborated. Sarah Flannigan (Heartland ISD) questioned the validity of some assessments because she found that families evaluated children differently than she would. Sometimes, Flannigan explained, “scores were going up where we weren’t… seeing that performance in the classroom.” As such, the assessments became both more labor-intensive to administer and more challenging to utilize to inform instruction. However, the collaborative nature of assessment opened new possibilities for families’ involvement in their child’s schooling and blurred the boundaries between the roles of teachers and parents.

Although double teaching and relying on families to meet assessment requirements was challenging, many teachers also saw it as an opportunity to create a different kind of connection with families. Tracy Dickson (Heritage SW) viewed this process of “helping families learn how to learn with their children” as a positive development during the pandemic. She explained:

I felt a different kind of connection to families during the pandemic. I feel like, since we were helping [families] learn how to learn with their children, it gave us a connection. They would be more willing to ask more questions and answer things that we would ask of them because they’re more in the learning process with us, rather than just sending their children to school and just thinking it is all the teacher’s responsibility to do all of the teaching. They really became more engaged…. I feel like that has been a big plus for us, that we’ve really helped the families learn how to learn with their children.

Taylor Wozniak (Heartland ISD) echoed this idea: “I felt like we really developed deeper relationships with the families through this.” Although it seemed counterintuitive that relationships between teachers and families could flourish at a time when they had little or no face-to-face contact, many teachers described a new closeness with families because of the pandemic.

Although building relationships with families has always been a priority of GSRP, teachers and administrators expressed their sense that the pandemic led to unanticipated positive changes in these relationships. Teacher Clare Dempkey (Calhoun ISD) noticed how strong relationships provided a foundation for navigating difficulties; in light of this, she explained, she has “been intentional about building those relationships early and maintaining them.” ISD official Terese Hoffman (Calhoun) explained:

One of the things that I think truly, truly is a win, is the teachers’, one, comfort level [with families], and two, they didn’t have a choice other than to build those relationship with families…. Working with families is hard. Knowing what to say to parents is hard. It’s something that my preschool coaches spend a lot of time coaching around. [Typically] preschool teachers go in [and focus on building relationships with] preschool kids. And the families are kind of secondary. Because that’s scarier. It’s harder. They didn’t have a choice this year. And they did amazing! And we’ve seen some really phenomenal changes.

Chris Whitmire (Heritage SW), who observed similar changes in her ISD during COVID-19, asserted, “I have never in my 25 years seen the amount of family engagement that we have had this year. I think our communication modes with families will never go back [to the way they were pre-pandemic].” Embodying the improv principle of collectivity, teachers partnered with families in entirely new ways they might never have explored during “normal” times.

Discussion & Conclusion

This article highlights the improvisational practice of pre-K teachers during COVID-19. Our analysis reveals how GSRP teachers improvised in response to pandemic restrictions. That is, they deviated from their predetermined scripts and goals to support families through new types of offers, make learning accessible through new pedagogical offers, and foster collectivity by partnering with families.

The lens of education as improvisation (Lobman, 2006) reveals how the approaches teachers developed, which we conceptualize as “offers,” exemplify the in-the-moment responsiveness that is characteristic of improvisational teaching (Sawyer, 2004). Because teachers’ offers were responsive to the ways the pandemic had altered daily life for families, they reflect the improv principles “don’t negate” and “yes and.” In their efforts to maintain connection, support families, and make learning accessible, teachers took families’ needs as a starting point and built from there; they did not ignore or attempt to minimize the challenges families were experiencing in order to adhere to pre-pandemic scripts. Instead, they “received” families’ needs, unexpected as they were in a world that bore no resemblance to anyone’s plan, as a starting point for their practice. They didn’t negate families’ reality by, for example, delivering synchronous teaching to children who had limited ability to participate. Instead, they said “yes and”—Yes, and I can get you a paper learning kit. Yes, and I can help your parents teach number concepts with the contents of your laundry basket. Yes, and your parents and I can work together to assess how your learning is progressing.

The new ways teachers engaged families as facilitators of their children’s learning during the pandemic reflects the final principle of improv, collectivity. Although GSRP has always included a focus on family participation, the conditions of the pandemic created new opportunities for teachers and families to work together. School closures forced teachers to relinquish some of their control over teaching and learning and to develop new instructional and assessment practices that positioned parents as critical partners. The pandemic thus brought a new collectivity to GSRP teaching by engaging teachers and families in a process of co-construction. Study participants believed that this collectivity fostered deeper connections between teachers and families than they had experienced before the pandemic.

The pandemic necessitated improvisation: In March 2020, it was no longer possible to follow old scripts. Our analysis suggests the potential benefits of carrying GSRP teachers’ improvisational practice “through the portal” into the post-pandemic world. The experiences of teachers in this study highlight approaches that emerge when assumptions of practice are deeply disrupted. They show what is possible when “scripts”—policies, insular practice, relations of power, and so on—can no longer be taken for granted.

Our findings highlight the possibilities for school-family relationships if educators view the pandemic as a “transformative rupture” (Souto-Manning, 2021) that creates an opening for new approaches. The collectivity of navigating the unknown together revealed new examples of teachers being responsive to families’ needs and of true collaboration between teachers and families. GSRP policy includes a vision for authentic family engagement built on responsiveness and collaboration. However, our previous research has demonstrated that the ways in which family engagement was enacted often differed from the policy intent and did not always reflect parents’ preferred forms of engagement (Wilinski & Morley, 2021; Wilinski & Vellanki, 2020). During the pandemic, teachers stepped away from their predetermined agendas and engaged in practices that were truly responsive, recognized parents as teachers, and authentically engaged families in the teaching and learning process. Although these practices emerged out of necessity, they can be intentionally taken forward post-pandemic.

Reconceptualizing family engagement as improvisational practice can disrupt deficit-oriented approaches to parent involvement (see, for example, Adair, 2014; Doucet, 2011; Haslip & Gullo, 2018; Posey-Maddox & Haley-Lock, 2016; Souto-Manning & Swick, 2006). Rather than adhering to a predetermined set of objectives and approaches to working with families, teachers can take an improvisational approach, even when conditions do not necessitate improvisation. Rather than following a policy script that focuses on completing a set of tasks (for example, conducting two home visits per year), school leaders and teachers can prioritize relationship-building, collaboration, and responsiveness. Our analysis shows that teachers made this shift in priorities during the pandemic; both they and their administrators perceived that this improvised approach supported families’ engagement and resulted in deeper teacher–family relationships. Our analysis applied the lens of improvisation to what teachers did “on the fly” during a time of great uncertainty. Next, we apply the principles of theatrical improv as a framework for a dynamic and collaborative approach to family engagement going forward.

Enacting family engagement as an improvisational practice necessitates a commitment to collectivity. Rather than initiating engagement and predetermining the outcomes, teachers would approach interactions with families as the co-construction of an emergent practice. Collectivity requires an openness to uncertainty and to collaborative emergence, that is, a process in which outcomes are determined collectively (Sawyer, 2004).

An improvisational approach to family engagement requires giving and receiving offers that align with families’ needs and values. As our data illustrate, teachers give and receive offers by taking families’ needs and circumstances as a starting point, enacting the principles don’t negate and “yes and.” In the context of family engagement, “offers” are invitations for interaction initiated by teachers or families. When teachers make offers that respond to families’ needs and align with families’ values and preferred modes of engagement, they are enacting don’t negate and “yes and.” Then families can receive those offers, and the “scene”—the evolving relationship centered around children’s development—continues to develop. This type of responsiveness is critical to building strong home-school relationships, which, as research has shown, play an essential role in supporting young children’s learning and development (Epstein, 2010; Henderson & Mapp, 2002; Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995). Conceptualizing family engagement as an improvisational practice can support teachers in developing authentic and responsive relationships with families.

As we complete this article, the pandemic continues to significantly and unevenly affect schooling and daily life. The world is still moving through the pandemic portal into the next normal; educators and policymakers are imagining what a post-pandemic educational landscape might look like. We hope that these examples of highly responsive teaching and family engagement that center on the needs and well-being of children and families can help form that vision. Reconceptualizing family engagement as an improvisational practice can help to transform pre-K teaching in a post-pandemic world.

Study Limitations

There are limitations to what can be learned from interviews with a small number of teachers, so our findings are not generalizable. We attempted to account for some of the range of experience during COVID-19 by sampling ISDs of different sizes, locations, and demographic characteristics. A large proportion of the teachers interviewed self-identified as White (about 80%) and did not necessarily represent the student demographics of their ISD. This discrepancy is a pattern in GSRP across the state, where 74% of GSRP teachers are White, while White children make up 57% of the GSRP student population.

Additionally, staff at the Michigan Department of Education and in the ISDs assisted us in recruiting participants for this study. Although these entities did not play any role in data analysis, relying on them to refer us to participants may have biased our findings toward positive stories. Another limitation of the study is that we did not interview families about their experiences, data that would have enabled us to say more about how families received offers from teachers during the pandemic. Families’ experience is an important area for future research.

Funding

This study was supported by the Michigan Department of Education through the State Evaluation of the Great Start Readiness Program grant (Award Number: 215081-GSRPEV4).

Declarations

Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.