Announcer (00:01):
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Baeder.
Justin Baeder (00:12):
Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio. I'm your host, Justin Baeder, and I'm honored to welcome back to the program Keith Shoemaker. Keith is the founder and executive director of the National Alliance for Father Friendly Schools, which we've talked about here on Principal Center Radio in the past. And he's the creator of school-based father engagement, a practical framework designed to help schools build meaningful year-round connections with fathers and father figures. With over 18 years of experience working alongside schools and districts across the country, Keith has trained and supported hundreds of campuses in creating environments where male role models feel welcomed, valued, and involved. His work focuses on helping school leaders move beyond one-time events and build sustainable systems through structure, training, accountability, resources, and trust. Before entering the education world, Keith served 28 years with Atlanta Fire Rescue Department, retiring as a captain and EMS supervisor.
(01:03):
And today he brings that same leadership mindset into education, helping schools strengthen family engagement in ways that directly impact student success. Keith is the author of the new book, After The Donut: An Introduction to School-based Father Engagement, which we're here to talk about today. And now, our feature presentation. Keith, welcome back.
Keith Schumacher (01:23):
Well, thank you, Justin. It's an honor.
Justin Baeder (01:25):
Well, I'm excited to talk about the book because you've really laid it all out for school leaders and for anyone who wants to work on this issue of father engagement in schools. Talk to us a little bit about the need you saw for the book. You've worked with lots of schools. Why a book?
Keith Schumacher (01:43):
Well, I can tell you that over the years, I have worked with a lot of principals, a lot of school leaders that are just frustrated. They know that they want to engage fathers and father figures, but they just keep falling into the same old, same old trap. And even though we love the moms and the support that they do in volunteering with the school and how much they do, it's still kind of ... We're struggling in our culture, in our society, that moms are the only ones that are welcome. And we know that's not true. We know that our educators and our educational leaders want to engage fathers and father figures, but there's still just that stereotype and stigma. And even if they are intentionally inviting "family" or parent, that messaging still just winds up getting to mom. And we need to look at our communication systems and understand that in the most cases, and we've got a really good study that I feature in the book that came out of BYU that were even fathers who stated that they were very interested, they were engaged, they wanted to be involved.
(02:51):
The school still never contacted them and still reached out to only the mom even when the mom said that the dad was the person that they wanted the school to contact. So it's just cultural norms and kind of challenging those cultural norms and saying, "You know what? We really need to look at how we invite and include fathers and father figures." And of course, I always throw in the term father figure because not all kids have a dad. And we want to make sure that all students feel supported and that all family members feel welcome to offer that support.
Justin Baeder (03:30):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Keith Schumacher (03:32):
Okay.
Justin Baeder (03:34):
Well, Keith, I know you talk a lot in your work about going beyond individual events and we tend to do things like donuts with dads or donuts for dads or dads and donuts. I'm sure I did a couple things like that as a principal, but there were one-time things. What is so hard about going beyond that one-time event? Because anybody can get a fire under them and put on a one-time event, but then it takes a lot out of us and maybe that's it. Why do we get stuck after one event?
Keith Schumacher (04:04):
Well, it's interesting this time of year, and we're of course recording this toward the end of the school year. School leaders are looking at, "Oh, we have testing and all of everything that encompasses that. " And then it's a full-on sprint to summer. And what I'm noticing now is that all of these schools, "Hey, we're having donuts with dad now. We're having donuts with dad now." Well, let's look at why. Let's look at why would they do that now? The thing is they've wanted to do something. They've wanted to be inclusive all year long, but with all of the responsibilities in school leadership when it comes to managing people, managing testing, managing all of the things that a principal has to deal with, it just keeps getting pushed further and further down the list. It gets pushed further and further down the priorities. And then now we're at the part of the year, it's like, "Oh, we wanted to do this.
(04:59):
We got to get it done." So now they're having these events, they're getting these guys in the building, and it winds up only being a checkbox and a photo op for social media post. So what we really want to look at is let's look at this as a year round thing. And I see a lot of principals that really want to do something, but they're not quite sure where to start. They're not quite sure how to make it happen. And it's easy to say, "Hey, let's throw a few boxes of donuts on the table, get a bunch of guys in the building, snap some pictures." Everybody smiles, says cheese, and we throw it up on social media and say, "Hey, we're a father-friendly school." Well, that's just a step in the direction, but what do you do when two weeks later that dad hasn't heard anything from the school.
(05:52):
All of those RSVP slips that someone filled out to say, "Hey, I'd like to be involved. I'd like to volunteer at the school." They're on a shelf somewhere in the office that nobody's taken down and actually accumulated that data. A lot of school leaders don't even realize they can use that data for things like their section 11-16 compliance reporting, and they don't think about that. And they think donuts with dad, I use that terminology, is nothing more than a cutesy photo op. And we really need to get them to understand that if we communicate this correctly, we can actually see the number of fathers and father figures in the building equal to, and I don't want to make it this competition, but make it normal for a dad to walk into the office, make it normal for the front office to not look up and see a dad come in the door and say, "Okay, what's the problem?
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What do we need to deal with? " And say, "We're used to seeing you. This is a regular thing. You're going to go to these classes. You're going to volunteer in these classrooms. We're glad you came." Instead of what we see these days of, it's unusual. We want to make this a normal thing. And the schools that have done this have tremendously been successful in doing it.
Justin Baeder (07:06):
Well, Keith, I think a lot of maybe school's hesitation comes from some concerns about what's going to happen if we invite dads in. I think certainly there is a concern that not every kid lives with their dad. It might feel like we're singling people out or we're making people feel bad if they don't live with their dad, or there's some awkwardness around fatherhood that just reflects the reality that not everybody has a relationship with their father, has a great relationship with their father. I think also as men, we recognize that we commit a huge proportion of the crimes compared to women. So it feels safer to just default to moms. How do you think about those issues that lead people to be hesitant to really say, "Hey, maybe we should do something serious for dads?"
Keith Schumacher (07:52):
Absolutely. And the thing that I've found is that when schools are more inclusive of fathers and father figures, when those guys come into the building, that benefits all of the students. Because if you think about it, if we're concerned about a child that doesn't have something, doesn't have that father figure in their life, why does it make sense to create less of an opportunity for them to have something that they need that they don't have? So by excluding these role models coming into the building, we are creating a worse situation. Now, the other thing that I'm really supportive of is when a school decides to have a school-based father engagement event or program, or they decide to include fathers and father figures, what I have seen is they wind up going into reaction mode instead of proactive mode, and they will announce it and wait for a student to come into the counselor's office sad, "Well, let's be proactive." If we're going to have something that says, dad, father, whatever, we know who these kids are.
(09:09):
I would hope that you know your students and your community well enough to know who these kids are and that your counselor is well engaged with them. Why can't we preactively go to these students and say, "We're about to do something and we need you to understand what inclusive means." And it means including everybody, including the students that are not in your situation, the students that have a dad, we want to make sure that everybody's included, but we don't want you to be shocked when this announcement is made up and we want to have you be a part of what we're doing here. So if you preactively go to these students and say, "Number one, we're going to do this. We don't want you to be afraid or scared or shocked when this happens, but more importantly, we want to help you and support you in connecting with somebody that can come to this event for you.
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" So if it's a grandfather, if it's an uncle, if it's a coach, if it's whoever, work with that family and bring that support instead of eliminating it and pulling it away and making it disappear. So my proposal is let's be proactive in actually supporting these kids that need it rather than stigmatizing it and let them float out there alone. We want to make sure that that support is there. So I'm working a little bit more on that. I'm actually putting together some workshops now on, and I want to make sure I use the proper terminology since I'm not a clinical person, but let's be trauma aware in understanding we know what the ACEs are, the ACEs, the advanced childhood experiences, understanding them and being able to proactively support those students and still be able to be inclusive of all family members.
Justin Baeder (10:57):
And Keith, you mentioned reporting requirements and compliance and you talk about Title I schools and tier one supports. Take us into how some of this can fit together because this is actually required. Thinking about this is actually required in some jurisdictions and by some policies that we actually are supposed to think about this as a school and need to document what we're doing. What does that landscape look like?
Keith Schumacher (11:21):
Absolutely. And the thing that I've heard a lot is that when we talk about doing a daddy event, whatever, donuts with dad, pizza night, whatever, people think of it and their mindset is, "Oh, this is just a cute thing. This is something we can take a picture and have a social media post and it be all cutesy." But where they miss the boat, and I got to give the state of Texas credit for this because they trained me up on this. They've got some of the most advanced family engagement going on. I'm so impressed with them, but they came to me and they said, "Well, why are we not using this data that we're collecting from these events and this outreach and using it in our Title one, Section 1116 compliance reporting?" And then all of a sudden it hit me like a brick. I thought, if we can take this from being a cutesy thing to actually dollars and cents and getting people to understand, number one, when you have a Title I program in your school, and Justin, it is in my book, I'm very clear, I never refer to a school as a Title one school because I don't brand the community in any way.
(12:30):
They may be a school that is using the resources available to make some positive changes, but they're not branded a Title I school. But I will say that when the schools can say, "All right, we know that there's a need because of our whatever the benchmarks are that set that, but we can show that we've made an outreach. We can show that there's been a response. And when we have our events, we can show that there's an attendance and all of that. And regardless of which program that you're using, and there are several that I promote and support, but you can use that data towards your section 1116 reporting." Now, the other thing that I have learned, another, this happened to me down in Florida. I had a school official come to me and say, "Well, why aren't you using this as a tier one strategy?" Well, I did not know anything about what tier one was.
(13:25):
I had to sit down, learn about it. But when you think about it, tier one, and correct me if I'm wrong, Justin, because I know you're much more familiar with this than I am, but tier one is really supports that support the entire community. It's before we have more aggressive supports, but it's intended to support the entire community. So if we use this, school-based father engagement, SBFE that I call it, as a tier one strategy, it will help us moving forward. Is that not correct?
Justin Baeder (13:56):
Absolutely. The idea is that we prevent more problems from becoming individually acute problems by providing broad-based for everybody kind of preventative measures and universal supports. Set everybody up for success and you have fewer people who will need some sort of additional support to be successful. Absolutely. Discover the power of data-driven instruction in your school with IXL. IXL is the most widely used online learning and teaching platform for K to 12. It gives you everything you need to maximize learning from a comprehensive curriculum to meaningful school-wide data. And IXL's diagnostic is research proven to be a strong predictor of performance on standardized assessments, including NWEA MAP, STAR, and iLearn, just to name a few. The best part, everything I just mentioned is all integrated into one platform, so you can simplify your edtech tools. Visit ixl.com/center to lead your school toward data-driven excellence today. Well, Keith, I wonder what advice you have for schools that are wondering, we've got to do something.
(15:02):
We're required to do this. We need to do this. It's important to us, but what do we actually try to get dads in to do? Because attending informational meetings and filling out surveys is not in my top 10 hobbies as a man. Exactly. And I think a lot of people are willing to do those things, but it sounds like you're talking about a set of opportunities, particularly around volunteering and making a difference that can actually take advantage of the effort that people can contribute and not just treat them as people who show up and fill out paperwork, but who actually do things. And I will say, personally, I feel much more comfortable in any situation where I know what I'm supposed to do. I've been given a job. Exactly.
Keith Schumacher (15:41):
I
Justin Baeder (15:41):
Would rather you hand me a mop than hand me a clipboard or just have me sit there, get me to do something. So what's your advice for schools on that front?
Keith Schumacher (15:49):
Absolutely. 100%. And I know that the last time we spoke, you had made the reference of coming in to help with a class party. I think you even mentioned you'd rather go to the dentist than go help with a party.
Justin Baeder (16:03):
Rather clean up after the party or help with field day or something.
Keith Schumacher (16:07):
Exactly. But the thing is, the first thing we need to do is get away from the stereotypes and stop the assumptions of, "Oh, dad's not interested in doing that. " Because there are some dads that might, or grandfathers that might want to come in and help with a class party or something like that. So I think taking the binders off on that is a part of it because I've had people's, "Well, we don't want parents helping in the classroom." And I'm like, "Why not? " Because I've said this for many years, if a parent is trying to support their child's education based only on the memory of their own education, they're not even close. I mean, they've got to be able to see inside those classrooms and have those communications with the teachers and support the teachers and to be able to have that knowledge.
(16:55):
So one of the programs that I've worked very closely with over the years actually puts volunteers in the classroom, but we've got to get over the idea of we can't do this because they can't come in during the workday or we can't do this because of whatever reason. The programs, first of all, if you want to look at the specific programs that are available, they are very intentional on, number one, being inclusive of all students. And number two, making sure it doesn't interfere with the workday and give those opportunities to be there. But anything from volunteering in the classroom, don't assume, you know what that word means? Don't assume that if a dad shows up to volunteer, it's only for manual labor. We have this joke in the business. It's like, "Oh, dad's here. Hand him a box." Dads love to be in the classroom.
(17:47):
They love to talk about their career. They love to read to classes. One of the things that I love to see is when a father or father figure can go into a classroom and read to a class, particularly at the primary level, and that gives the teacher the opportunity to pull students that she needs to collect data from. And I say she, it could be she or he. But taking off those preconceptions and binders of dads don't want to read a Helen Lester book or dads don't want to do this or that, you only want to put them in the gym where they can run around. Be open-minded and say, "What is it that you would like to do? " But rather than just being so open about it and say, "What do you want to do? " Make some suggestions. And like you said, I wouldn't be too thrilled with getting handed them off, but I would do it because I've done it so much in my career.
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But still, be specific. We need you to stand out in front of the school and help with traffic or if they have that ability, hand out flyers during car line or come in and read. And the other thing that we see a lot is a lot of school leaders think it's only for the elementary level. And we really, really need that support at the middle and high school level. And one of the programs actually does have a specific middle and high school curriculum, and a lot of people aren't aware of that. And it really makes it very simple. But I would like to get into talking about what I refer to as the start strategy, and that is strategy to help school leaders get past the, what do I do now, the how do I get started? And then the other thing that is not in the book yet, but I'm developing is what I call the six seasons of school-based father engagement.
(19:47):
And really the catalyst behind that is, once again, these school leaders that are in April and May trying to catch up with what they didn't get a chance to do earlier on this school year. If we look at March 1st as day one of the school-based father engagement year, I think you'll be able to understand, if we look at March and April is the time we're getting our team together, this does take a team. We don't wear heroes in school-based ... We don't wear capes, superheroes in school-based father engagement. It does need to have the support of the admin. Counselors need to be involved. Your family engagement people need to be involved. Your PTA or PTO, which most of us have the preconceived assumption that that's the moms, we want to include them because this can help them with their membership and leadership development. So I know I'm kind of rambling here.
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I've got a few different things, but this six seasons is if you take the 12 months of the year and break them down into two month seasons, I've got it set up where during these two months, this is what you need to do. The next two months, this is what you need to do. And I even include summer because summer is important because you have to prep for what your new school year is going to look like. If you wait until August, it's too late, you're never going to get going. It'll be October before you know it. Then it's into December and everything's crazy. And then once again, you've gone through a whole school year and you're in April trying to have donuts with that again. So having a continuous cycle and knowing what needs to be done at certain times a year, which includes accountability and includes the training.
Justin Baeder (21:32):
Keith, I know the book is loaded with examples of specific things that schools can do, specific events and ongoing approaches. You also talk about some national and regional programs that schools can follow. Take us into some of the starting points for schools. I believe you have an acronym called START.
Keith Schumacher (21:52):
I do. I do. One of the things that I constantly kept coming back to was that when schools, their programs go dormant, and I say that because I don't believe programs fail. And you may have a school leader that is sitting there listening to this program and said, "Well, we tried X, Y, Z program and it failed for us, or we tried this program and it failed for us." And what I really need to get them to understand is the programs, particularly the ones that we work with, are proven to be successful. So the programs do not fail. It's the leadership that is lacking. When that leadership is lacking, and it's just like anything in education, the reason why it's lacking isn't because somebody had any malice intent or anything like that. It's just simply that there was a lack of training and a lack of accountability.
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And that's when I started thinking, how do I get people to easily understand this? And I came up with what I refer to as the start strategy. And what that means is the first letter is S is structure. You have to have a structure in what you're doing. You can't just throw a box of donuts on the table, invite a bunch of guys in and expect it to be successful. It has to have a structure. You have to have a reason for what you're doing, goal set up and what your plans are. And then the next thing, the T is training. The programs available have, they do have training available. My organization, we provide training as well. So having that training is important. You're not going to put somebody in a car without giving them a driver's license or having them earn that driver's license.
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So I see it so many times that, "Hey, we wanted to do something. We tried it and it didn't work." And then I go back in the records and see that the principal never even took the 20 minutes to watch the training video. I'm like, "Well, that's why it didn't work because you didn't take the time to learn what you were doing." The A is for accountability. Accountability needs to be a two-way street. And the reason I say that is when a principal stands up in front of a group of, in this case, dads or family members and says, "Hey, we want to invite you. We want you to be a volunteer. We want you to be involved at our school," and then doesn't do anything to support that and just expects them to show up and start rearranging doilies in their lunchroom. It just doesn't work that way.
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So there has to be an accountability. And what I call it biphasic accountability, it has to flow in two directions. The parents have to have the confidence to hold that school leader accountable to offer the programs that are there. And if you go for two, three, four months and you've never gotten an email that said, "Hey, we haven't heard from you, " they need to be calling the principal and saying, "Hey, you said you were going to give us the opportunities to be involved, but then we never heard from you again." So that's where the accountability is to be able to know that you're going to reach these goals within certain points of time throughout the school year, not just a one-time event, and to be able to keep that moving forward. The R is resources. Programs have resources. I've talked to so many school leaders and they said, "Well, we weren't able to get this done." I said, "Well, did you use the teacher survey?" "Well, I didn't know there was a teacher survey.
(25:16):
""Yes, there's a teacher survey. The teachers are very important in this. Did you use the end of day survey for the guys that did participate?" "Oh, we didn't know that. "So utilizing those resources are really important and then it is all tied together with the end of the word start and it's that last T and it's what's so important and that's trust. Your family members in your community, the parents of your students need to be able to trust you as a school leader to be there for them when they want to be engaged with the school. So it's a circle. It really needs to be able to come back around. So when I created that six seasons of accountability or six seasons of school-based father engagement, I put accountability in there twice because it's just that important. And to be able to say," Okay, we're going to build our structure in March and April.
(26:11):
We're going to do our training in May and June. We're going to have our resources starting to be available in July and August because a lot of people don't realize, Justin, and I want to see what you think about this because I truly believe that the single most important day in the whole school year is back to school night because that is going to be the one time organically that you're going to see the largest number of male role models in your building, the dads, the grandfathers, the uncles, the what have you. If you don't have something concrete and available at back to school night, you're going to be stuck for another year. But if you can say, "Hey, we're going to do this event on this date, can we count on you to be here to have pizza with your kid on this night?" And they could put it in their calendar right there while they're standing there and you can put it into your system where it's going to pop a reminder up to them, then that's where you're going to build that consistency through the whole school year based most importantly on that one night.
Justin Baeder (27:23):
Love it. I love the concrete starting points, the concrete actions to take and just the huge range of ideas because knowing what is working elsewhere, as you said, the programs that are working, the events that are good starting points, I think it's so reassuring to know that this has been thought through. This has been tried. This is not a new idea and it's exceeding lots of places.
Keith Schumacher (27:45):
Just going to say one of the things that I think a lot of people are going to enjoy in the book is I've broken it down into four sections. Number one, why is it important that we do school-based father engagement? The second section is going to talk about scaling the work. We'd love it when districts take this on as an initiative. Then we're going to talk about the programs that are available. And of course there are some local programs as well, but that section four is going to be the goldmine. It's going to be what I call your extra credit. So even if you've gone through the first three sections and you've done the stuff to get to the end of your course, your school year, whatever, the extra credit is these ideas for extra events. And there's some cutesy stuff in there. Any elementary school leader knows what chaos the first two or three days, the first day, second day, third day of school are, I've got what I call the Separation Anxiety Task Force is actually depending on fathers and father figures in the school to help you get through that chaos.
(28:53):
But we want to give them a little bit of an idea of a little bit of training, how not to do things stupid around the school, those kind of things. Things like building your community through your feeder pattern. Why can't we at a home, high school football game, allow the elementary and the middle schools to have their own tailgate to bond with their own community and then step out onto that field before the game or at halftime and be recognized and because that's where the dads are. And the dads, even at the elementary and the middle school level, they're going to want to know what's going on at the high school level. So if we can tie that whole feeder pattern community together for the purpose of creating an inclusive and welcoming atmosphere for fathers and father figures, it really is a nice tie-in. And there's several other ideas.
(29:42):
There's about eight or 10 different ideas that you can use in your school to kind of go beyond the donut.
Justin Baeder (29:51):
So the book is After the Donut: An Introduction to School-Based Father Engagement. Keith Shoemaker, if people want to learn more about your work and some of Organizations that you work with, where's the best place for them to go online?
Keith Schumacher (30:04):
Well, if they want to know specifically about the book, they can go to afterthedonut.com. And what I'm really excited about is the number of school leaders that are ordering the book for their whole team and taking it on as a book study. And I'm really excited about that. So if you're interested specifically in the book, you can go to afterthedonut.com. If you want to order from Amazon, it is available on Amazon as well. And then if you want to learn specifically about school-based father engagement in our nonprofit work with the National Alliance for Father Friendly, that webpage is fatherfriendlyschools.com
Justin Baeder (30:40):
Perfect. Keith, thanks so much for joining me again on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.
Keith Schumacher (30:46):
Thank you.
Announcer (30:59):
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