Parent connector network/ahas

Tell us how you figured things out, over time.

Note to documenters: please share the following:

COMMUNICATION AHAS. In the process of doing the work, what did the working group learn about improving communications in education? (Who needs to share which information with whom, via which media, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how can those barriers be overcome?)

IMPLEMENTATION AHAS. In the process of doing the work, what did the working group learn about implementing innovations (and specifically, communication solutions) in education?

TURNING POINTS. Moments when you redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

Share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever you can!

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In fall 2009, we began building relationships among parents interested in schoolwide communication improvements. Mica and Consuelo, both parents at the Healey School, met at a coffee hour with the principal in fall 2009 and discovered a mutual interest in starting conversations across language and program. Mica invited Consuelo to help do parent outreach for the OneVille Project, and a design partnership at the Healey began!

Our first effort to focus on parent relationships and schoolwide communication infrastructure was to hold Reading Nights, designed to link parents across programs in communications about supporting children’s literacy. To get people to Reading Nights at all, we had to practice communicating between school and home, to advertise events in multiple languages. (LINK TO CONSUELO'S DOCUMENT HERE. . )

(COLORED TEXT BOX: COMMUNICATION AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication!

As we tried to get people to Reading Night and to then share tips from Reading Night, we realized the need for better communication infrastructure for reaching parents! Otherwise, inviting parents to school events is hard and incredibly time-consuming.

A listserv for the school’s K-6 magnet program linked two classrooms of parents in the hallway, but not the other two classes (Special Education and, the "Neighborhood" program). Many immigrant and lower-income parents in the magnet program weren't on the listserv anyway. So, we moved forward with paper and face to face communication.

We put up multilingual signs outside of the classroom doors, where parents would see them. Some did, but not all parents dropped off their kids at school themselves. Consuelo's giant pizza, put up on the wall a few days before each Reading Night, worked particularly well to entice kids!

Consuelo's pizza: our best Reading Night advertisement

Face to face invitations on the playground before school were often the thing that brought some people to Reading Night, in part because parents – often those standing alone on the playground rather than clustering in friendship groups – got the message that they would be welcome. But face-to-face invitations were particularly time-consuming, and our energy for standing outside to invite parents personally to events waned over the year. At teachers’ urging, we continued to also announce Reading Nights to kids in classrooms, who would then invite their parents! One of our most well-attended Reading Nights involved an entire class, who did a play together with their teacher.

(In trying to get “out” our reading tips from each Reading Night, we realized a parallel need for infrastructure: following up after events, so work can continue in between! Somehow, we needed a channel that could reach everybody pre and post our event. We tried to post our reading tips as paper sheets on a hallway bulletin board, but somehow this didn't excite lots of viewing from passers-by.)

Had we known that the school's "robocall" system could call a targeted subset of parents in their language, perhaps we could have used that to invite more people! It wasn't until the following year, with a new principal, that we realized we could help shape the content of robocalls. (But this most obvious channel-home is often used only for the "most important" of communications, so we may not have been allowed to use it.)

Reading Nights were in part about getting families excited about reading together in new ways (parents told us their children left talking all night about reading). One main innovation was to also make time to get parents together on the side to talk together as our children did activities. In part from listening to parents who ended up doing child care, missing the parent-to-parent conversation, and getting frustrated, we realized something else about necessary communications in schools:

(COLORED TEXT BOX: COMMUNICATION AHA: What many parents most needed (or wanted!) was a chance to talk quietly to other parents!

In this case, about our experiences trying to help our children read.

In order to support more communication between the school's diverse parents, we focused on improving a typical "slot" for parent-parent and parent-administrator communication: the typically English-dominated "coffee hours" with the principal, held monthly on Friday mornings in the PTA room. Relatively few immigrant parents came regularly to this event.

In partnership with the principal in fall 2009, we created a slot for a multilingual coffee hour model, a brainstorm of Consuelo (PHOTO), always committed to finding creative ways of empowering and including immigrant parents. In the multilingual coffee hour, parents voluntarily translated for other parents wanting to ask questions and hear information from the principal. The experience quickly clued us into a key local resource:

(COLORED TEXT BOX: MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: The massive local resource of parent bilingualism!).

At several points over that school year and the next, we considered combining the multilingual coffee hour back into the "regular" coffee hour with the principal. The Healey's next principal first leaned in this direction in fall 2010, arguing that every coffee hour should de facto be multilingual. But, then he decided to keep a distinct "multilingual" coffee hour. Since typical coffee hours were so obviously dominated by questions and comments from English-speaking parents, it still felt important to have a space focused actively on multilingual communication. The multilingual coffee hour with the principal is now an established place where people take extra time for translation and purposefully amplify languages other than English, by ensuring that speakers of other languages get priority in asking and answering questions. Read more about it on this page.

(ADD MINI COMMENT BLURB OR VIDEO INTERVIEW HERE WITH LUPE OR IRMA, ON WHAT IT HAS MEANT TO HAVE AN EXPLICITLY MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HR?)

New community developments at the Healey in 2009-10 shaped the next building blocks of our work, and our next ahas about needed improvements to communication infrastructure. Halfway into the 2009-10 school year, the school committee put on its agenda a key task: deciding whether to integrate the Healey's magnet and "Neighborhood" K-6 programs into one school. In response, we used our multilingual coffee hour for a number of parent dialogues to facilitate conversation about this choice.

In our work to support such organized parent dialogues, we realized just how irregular it was for parents to just speak to each other across "groups" about their children's education. It became important later in the Healey's unification debate to be able to report, i.e., to school council members, that everyone we talked to - across lines of class, race/ethnicity, and language - wanted a more rigorous learning experience for their children. Many parents had never talked to parents from the other “groups.”

In the parent dialogue work, we also realized again just how central problems of communication were to all parents being fully included in the school. School committee members used the magnet program's listserv to advertise school committee meetings about the Unification debate, and the parents who came to meetings were disproportionately those on the listserv. Those on the magnet program's listserv also emailed the superintendent or principal regularly with their opinions about whether the programs should integrate. Three months into the debate, when we walked around the nearby Mystic Development (the housing project literally down a flight of stairs from the school) to invite parents to a school committee meeting, we realized that many -- those not on the listserv -- were unaware that the issue of integration was even up for debate at their school at all.

In the end, the School Committee voted to "unify" the Healey's K-6 programs and hired a consultant to steer that process through the following school year.

(COLORED TEXT BOX: TURNING POINT: With the Healey in the midst of brainstorming all sorts of changes to its everyday structures, we focused for 2010-11 on improving infrastructure for schoolwide communication, and for reaching and including immigrant parents in particular.)

As school ended in June 2010, supporting communication of important school information across lines of language, class, and also tech access/training became our key focus at the school. As we continued work on a schoolwide communication toolkit, we focused on questions of language barriers and brainstormed a key response in Fall 2010: the Parent Connector Network.

(COLORED TEXT BOX: The evolution of the Parent Connector Network. In creating the Parent Connector Network, we realized over time the sorts of infrastructure a school needs to have in place to improve translation and interpretation in particular.)

In the cafeteria one morning in xxxx, Consuelo and Mica were sitting with several parents from the PTA, talking about how to improve schoolwide communication. Consuelo took out a piece of paper and started to draw triangles, linked to other triangles in a pyramid structure. Parents could be links to other parents, she explained. In the car together going home, Mica named the role: "Connectors."

We began to share out the basic idea of “parents linking to other parents” with the school council and other school leaders, to see what people thought of it. People immediately liked the idea. There were already "room parents" in the magnet program, but these parents primarily had signed on just to email other parents in their classroom once in a while, about things like parent breakfasts or school supply needs, not to explain the more important issues going on at the school.

Importantly, we learned from others that paid Parent Liaisons for each major language in each school had existed previously in Somerville, under a grant; when the grant finished, the Liaisons ended too. We agreed to see what volunteers could do with their bilingual skills – without carrying the burden of paid employees. The project took the idea of “liaisons” and asked parents, as friends, to “liaison” to a few other parents at a time.

(COLORED TEXT BOX: Parents’ power?: Ongoing communication innovation!)

We started brainstorming the components of the Connector project with the principal, and also at meetings with other Working Groups at the Healey School (e.g., a "Parent, Student, and Teacher Partnership" working group and a School Climate working group that formed in 2010-11) and with those parents who came to our Multilingual Coffee Hours. Parents from our first Reading Nights also remained key brainstorming partners.

POST HERE: FIRST PARENT CONNECTOR DIAGRAM.

Our first question was how the principal would respond to serious complaints from parents. This was Consuelo’s concern in particular; ironically and frustratingly, weeks later she herself would feel compelled to leave the school after a poorly resolved incident in which immigrant parents using a school space, including her, were yelled at by a white parent. In her case, the loop of parent complaint/principal response/issue resolution -- a loop affecting every school in the country -- did not go well. The loop was particularly important to figure out. (CONSIDER HOW/WHETHER TO TELL ANY MORE OF THIS STORY HERE)

As we worked on this loop, our second concern was logistical: how would volunteers “connect” to a reasonably sized group of parents? Should they have their pictures in the hallway, for calls at any time from whoever? Should Connectors specifically be bilingual people, or just kind people? And should all parents (including English-speaking parents) have a “Connector,” or particularly some of them? After Consuelo’s departure,

TURNING POINT: we brainstormed the idea of focusing the Connectors first on bilingual parents communicating with immigrant parents. We also decided to link each Connector to 10 parents who spoke their language -- by phone.

Starting in winter 2011, we recruited Connectors -- bilingual parents (and one young staff member) who had, over the prior year, shown particular interest in reaching out to immigrant parents or translating public information so others could access it. We also recruited parents who had shown some interest in bilingual or parent-parent events, such as our coffee hour, Reading Night, and public dialogues!

As a team of parents, we met with each other in one of the school's conference rooms and started using our multilingual coffee hours to get ongoing advising from parents schoolwide. The Parent Connector concept was approved early, in the school's formal unification plan in xxx. But we still had to flesh it out by doing it!

Our goal became to "just start," so we could test ways parents could reach out to other parents. We needed also to figure out what info we would and would not translate for free, how many school-home communications were necessary a month, how to use existing school channels and create new simple tools for parent outreach, and more.

(COLORED TEXT BOX: Experimenting with Communication Solutions!)

We invited parents to our first gettogether to introduce the Connector project before a Healey PTA night. Nearly 30 parents showed up, speakers of Somerville’s 3 main languages; we ate food from Somerville’s Maya Sol (pupusas), Fiesta bakery (Haitian patties) and the Panificadora Modelo (Brazilian pastry). Two students from the Mystic Learning Center babysat for parents while they attended. Our first parent-parent communication experiment, in “robocalls,” seemed to have worked: when an invitation comes from another parent who speaks your language, perhaps it’s even more enticing. Having received many robocalls for snow closures (!) and school events in the district’s four main languages (typically English, Spanish, Portuguese, then Creole, in that order), one Connector had suggested we “flip” the typical script by asking a parent to record a Spanish-only message targeted directly to Spanish speakers. It matters who uses the channel to speak to whom! So, a few parents translated the invitation into Spanish, Creole, and Portuguese and we recorded each message Monday morning in the Healey principal’s office, using his phone. Somerville’s call-home robocall system allows for this sort of targeted messaging.

In a diverse group of Healey parents and the principal at our next multilingual coffee hour, we shared some information needs immigrant parents had expressed at our launch event (How do I get my child tutoring or help with homework? How do I find scholarships and slots for afterschool? How do I enroll my child in an afterschool sport?) and brainstormed ways Connectors could respond. One goal articulated was to make all parents feel more comfortable approaching school staff themselves, with interpreters as needed.

Our core concern remained: how to avoid a situation where parents mentioned needs to Connectors and never received a response (a classic situation in many schools!). Meeting face to face with the Principal to share parent incidents and needs had to remain a key infrastructural piece of the Connector model. But, such meetings can’t happen that often among busy people. In xxx (date), we created this Googleform for a Connector coordinator and the principal to use to keep tabs on parent calls. We edited it together, for example, adding more detailed information on how to tell parents to request translators.

(COLORED TEXT BOX: One implementation stumbling block raised a COMMUNICATION AHA: better systems are needed to get parents’ numbers to other parents!)

Because our Connector project started mid-year, we had no beginning of the year form for all parents, saying “do you want a Connector? Check here to release your number to them!” So, since only staff were allowed to have these numbers automatically, it took months to figure out how to get Parent Connectors other parents’ phone numbers.

We first tried handing out paper permission slips at PTA Night. In the end that seemed way too time-consuming, and so, we asked district Parent Information staff to call all of the parents and get their permission to release their numbers to parent connectors. But to do that, school staff had to figure out how to download a spreadsheet of language-specific numbers for PIC staff from X2, the district’s “student information system”; then the PIC staff had to make the calls home to get parents’ permission to release numbers to the Connectors; then, finally, Connectors got lists and could start calling.

(COLORED TEXT BOX: COMMUNICATION AHA: No wonder why so many people don't put in the effort to reach out to parents! It's real work.)

(COLORED TEXT BOX: COMMUNICATION AHA: Privacy and trust are of course key issues to be navigated in broadening school home communications. Whenever we raised the issue of getting parents' numbers to other parents, one parent from the school would relate that other working-class parents were afraid of sharing personal phone numbers with other parents because of restraining orders and personal safety fears. Issues of distrust go deep: who is willing to share basic personal information with other parents, especially in an era of ramped-up deportation of undocumented immigrants and legal interventions in households?

But if unaddressed, what do such barriers to school-parent and parent-parent contact mean? Parents who don't know about summer school enrollment or how to request interpreters for meeting with their teachers' children, and so, missed opportunities to pull parents and teachers together as partners. Children unable to be invited to birthday parties or playdates; parents who cannot be invited personally to gettogethers, and consequently, a slowing of community-building.

All this is an important example of the need for infrastructure to normalize communications between school and home, while considering dynamics of trust and privacy. An official form enabling parents to easily offer permission to have a Connector get her number is one example; a personal, non-threatening first call from a Connector as a peer (instead of a school official) is another.

(COLORED TEXT BOX: Another COMMUNICATION AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. One implementation issue to consider was whether we turned off a few Connectors by immediately using technology in our own infrastructure to communicate among Connectors. For example, we had to split up the list of approved parent names among the Connectors, but we wanted to think a bit about who should be with whom based on the grade of the children and prior personal relationship. We decided this at the end of a lengthy face to face meeting and so, chose to use a Google Spreadsheet to divide up the names. This cost us several weeks as some confusion reigned: Connectors who had Yahoo accounts rather than gmail accounts couldn't open the Google spreadsheets and for a couple of weeks, didn't know why or ask! Some Connectors took immediately to using the Google spreadsheet to choose "their" parents and get their numbers. Other Connectors needed multiple calls to get them to come to training sessions on the Google spreadsheet, and some may have turned off to the project thinking that tech savviness was a barrier to it. (One Connector has her daughter help her get her email; another uses her husband's computer to check hers. Another checks email regularly but doesn't write back via it!).

Relatedly, the same parents took easily to using a Googleform version of a paper form we had created, to keep records on parents' needs in one online place rather than have Gina, our staff member and Creole Connector, have to keep track of paper forms that the principal also would have to find in order to read. One Connector, another Creole speaker, tried the forms and in the end, wanted to use paper and asked Gina to retype her notes. But over time, we've realized what training is needed (how to use a Google spreadsheet!), and, which tech uses aren't really that necessary (possibly, the Googleform, unless the volume of parent needs increases). We'll see over time whether the Google form for recording parent needs is useful, or not.

Unsurprisingly, emails between the Connectors linked Connectors who used email for their jobs far more successfully than those who didn't like to access it routinely (this broke down along class lines, as well). Some Connectors who speak primarily in Spanish were fine to read long emails in English, but didn’t want to write back in English. Some Connectors themselves required regular phone calls to stay glued to the project. Gina, our youngest member, preferred texts, as well. And, we all needed occasional face to face meetings to brainstorm ideas more effectively and to stay interested in the project!

(COLORED TEXT BOX: COMMUNICATION AHA: parents need help with ongoing resource questions.)

As we began our calls home, we realized that along with hearing parents' confusions about certain school information (deadlines for enrolling in various programs), Connectors were getting asked key resource questions that were time-sensitive (e.g.: can I enroll my child in summer school voluntarily or, does she have to be referred?). So, a key "information loop" became how to get such FAQs answered regularly on public channels.

At a coffee hour, we asked people about methods of getting information out to a lot of parents at once. Michael Quan (PHOTO) suggested a hotline as a solution at one multilingual coffee hour.

(COLORED TEXT BOX: TURNING POINT: We decided to make a hotline, to get translated information more easily to all parents!)

Seth (PHOTO) prototyped a hotline (using open source software and the Twilio API), even as he smiled that it was a low-tech solution he wouldn't have thought of himself.

We started recording updates from the principal and answers to parents' Frequently Asked questions collected by the Connectors, with Tona, Maria, and Gina. We began with parents coming to speak into a computer (see photo!). We planned to hone the hotline over the summer, so that translators can record to it from home. (PHOTO OF MARIA AND LINK TO THE FIRST SET OF FAQS?)

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated information, on to it!

COMMUNICATION AHA: effectively using the local resource of bilingualism: Volunteer Translators of the Month?

We came up with the idea of asking volunteer Translators of the Month (also bilingual parents, and maybe, students) to verbally translate information all parents needed to know that month (in Haitian Creole, Portuguese, and Spanish). Bilingual parents and staff noted at our coffee hour that translating material into their languages verbally – so, speaking it on to a hotline -- is easier than doing it word for word from paper to paper.

(COMMUNICATION AHA: effectively using the local resource of bilingualism: scheduling interpreters!)

Many Connectors also kept hearing ongoing stories from parents who lacked interpretation and translation at the moment when they needed it. Figuring out this piece of the infrastructure became another goal. Some parents didn’t know how to request translators to have scheduled meetings with teachers (we were told that they were supposed to ask the Vice Principal); some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents (Gina herself couldn't find a Spanish speaker one day to explain to a mother her son's injury). At other times, both told us, translators were requested by both parents and educators, but not actually present in the final meeting! While the District has a list of interpreters to call and also has bilingual staff at the PIC, getting interpreters to the right place at the right time is the core resource-use problem. One Portuguese-speaking Connector, Maria, brainstormed the infrastructure component based on her experience working in hospitals: an interpreter "on call" by the phone during certain hours, and so, not having to travel to assist.

We had other realizations about needed infrastructure as we fielded parent questions: Connectors also needed a standing info page with links (again, a Googledoc for regular updating, plus a paper version), so that they knew what to tell parents looking for public services (e.g., legal or family services.)

To clarify roles, we chose a Lead Connector (Tona) and an Information Coordinator (Gina, paid staff, at 5 hrs/week). They are also planning to organize a summer training for Connectors, by the principal, on how the school functions.

In our final Spring 2011 efforts, we are joining brainstorming forces with parents from Somerville's Welcome Project (a nonprofit focused on empowering immigrants in Somerville, housed in the Mystic Housing Development down the hill from the Healey school). A parent group had formed there that also wanted to focus on translation and interpretation in Somerville (one was already a Connector), so we have joined our conversations.

In June 2011, in a retreat with principal, Connectors, we are finishing this full list of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school. The Parent Connector Network is one of the key "components" -- it's connection, human-style!

POST HERE: FINAL CONNECTOR INFRASTRUCTURE DIAGRAM.

IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and connectors to paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families; paid staff in any district should be on top of such 'case management.' So, how can districts create a hybrid of volunteer and paid roles? TBD next fall!

Hear some words here from our Lead Connector and our Information Coordinator: (VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH TONA OR GINA?)

Hear some words here from some of our Connectors (EVERYBODY ELSE? VIDEOTAPE AT THE NEXT CONNECTOR MEETING?)