Summary: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, Ana Maria Nieto, and Maggie Ward for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School and Jedd Cohen

SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION TOOLKIT: Parent Connector Network

Click for the Overview and key findings on this project; click for the Expanded story on this project.

Summary

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOUR SCHOOL COULD IMPROVE COMMUNICATION?

Questions to ask about the current system in your school:

➢ Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it?

➢ Where do you put school information so that everyone in the school can see it?

➢ How do you share parent ideas around the school?

➢ What system do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

➢ How can you tap local bilingualism, either paying people to translate material or organizing bilingual volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

➢ How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation?

➢ What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?

➢ Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers?

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATIONS?

What we found:

• ¡Aha! Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone.

• ¡Aha! Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers.

• ¡Aha! In a multilingual school and district in particular, improving communications -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

OUR MODEL FOR IMPROVING COMMUNICATION

Parent Connector Network Model:

HOW DO PARENT CONNECTORS WORK? HOW WOULD IT BE IMPLEMENTED?

• If willing, bilingual parents ("Connectors") might volunteer time to build relationships with immigrant families who speak their language and help get information to and from them. Click here to see how we got to this point.
• Connectors can call 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing.
• “Translators of the month” connectors can help prioritize and translate school information collected on a Googledoc by school leaders and staff.
• That information can go onto a multilingual hotline (contact us if you want to create one!) or, schoolwide listserv, or onto handouts in backpacks.
• (Here's a link to the story of how we got to the point of testing this “infrastructure” for multilingual translation and interpretation.)

Click for the Overview and Key Findings on this project; click for the Expanded Story on this project.