"At our school, there
is a true partnership between parents and teachers. It feels
like we are both raising the same child."
-- A parent at
San Francisco Community School |
Successful schools do not operate in isolation. They
build connections to families and communities as a way to strengthen
relationships in support of children, and as a way to better understand
students so that teaching can be tailored to them as individuals.
Creating
Family-School Partnerships
Most traditional schools – and even
many new small schools – see parent involvement as a secondary
goal. They say they will teach the child, no matter what is happening
at home. Yet differences between the norms and expectations of home
and school can lead to serious disjunctures that cause students
to fail in school. If parents do not understand or trust what is
happening at school, they are not as likely to support and reinforce
their children’s efforts to succeed there. If parents do not
know what the school expects and needs from their children and from
them, it is difficult for them to respond in supportive ways. Just
as strong teacher-student relationships can provide students with
invaluable support, so, too, are solid partnerships among teachers
and families a key component of student success.
Part of the difficulty in creating strong family-school
connections is that parents often do not feel welcome at school,
especially in high schools. Many have vivid memories of their own
negative experiences in school. Usually the only reason the school
contacts them is to tell them that their child is in trouble: Teachers
who call home with positive news are the exception, perhaps not
surprisingly given teachers’ typical load of 150 students
or more. And when parents do make an effort to reach the school,
they are frequently shunted around between counselors, deans, and
assistant principals, none of whom knows very much about their child.
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Treating
Families as Experts
If educators in small schools truly value
family involvement, they can reinvent this dysfunctional relationship
and reach out to create common ground with families, which leads
to mutually supportive practices at home and at school. To establish
this kind of partnership, teachers and administrators must recognize
that parents and guardians are experts on their children’s
needs and treat them as such. Parents can offer observations about
students’ strategies, paces, and styles of learning; their
different strengths and experiences; the ways they express what
they know; and the kinds of teaching strategies that are effective
for them. When teachers’ insights are supported by parents’
insights, teachers can more easily connect students’ experiences
to curriculum goals.
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Looking
at Student Work Together
In effective schools with performance
assessment systems, teachers often draw parents into these conversations
about their child’s learning process by inviting them to participate
in conferences about students’ exhibitions and portfolios.
These may be the centerpiece of teacher-family conferences, which
are held regularly in high schools as well as elementary schools,
creating a common starting place for understanding the work of the
school and the student. When teachers and parents look at student
work together, they begin to talk about what the child is doing
and learning and how they both can support the educational process.
Teachers in successful schools also invite parents to visit the
classroom when they can and to contribute to the curriculum whenever
possible.
To make these conversations possible, educators
must understand families’ cultures and, whenever possible,
communicate with them in their primary languages. This means translating
documents and using translators at meetings (including, often, the
students themselves) so that non-English speaking parents can be
full participants in the life of the school.
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Finding
Ways to Meet
Reaching out to families in a meaningful
way is not easy: It requires time and perseverance to establish
the sustained relationships with parents that will lead first to
mutual understanding and then to cooperation on behalf of children.
Some schools begin their outreach with visits to churches or community
centers where families congregate; they also host meetings at school
and welcome parents with food, translation services, and child care.
Regular one-to-one meetings between teachers and parents or guardians
(even in high school) help build relationships and keep lines of
communication open. Effective schools hold these meetings at various
times and provide translation and child care to accommodate parents’
schedules and needs. If parents are unable to come to the school
– and even if they are – teachers make home visits to
show their commitment to working with families to support their
children’s education. Advisory structures and looping, as
well as smaller student loads, make these contacts feasible and
encourage the development of strong parent-teacher relationships.
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Co-Constructing
Schools
Many effective new schools have engaged
families in the design and start-up process, so that the school
represents an educator-family partnership from the start. In some
cities, grassroots community organizing groups have been deeply
involved in starting new schools (see profiles). When alliances
among teachers and families develop across class, race, and culture
in the process of creating a new school, the results can be extremely
powerful.
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Supporting
Family Learning
Some schools run family literacy or continuing
education programs (or partner with community agencies that run
such programs at the school) to provide useful services to families
and at the same time welcome them into the school community. Parents
who attend such activities at the school during school hours get
to know teachers and other school staff and feel more comfortable
talking with teachers about their children’s education (Henderson,
1994).
In a broader sense, family-school connections
are essential because they place education where it belongs –
at the heart of the community. Unlike the traditional factory-model
school representing a faceless system, the small redesigned school
has the potential to be an integral part of the neighborhoods it
serves – and even to help build community in those neighborhoods
around the critical goal of education.
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