Parent connector network/ahas

Note: all this is being edited by Connectors right now

Tell us how you figured things out, over time.

Note to documenters: This is the main documentation section! Main goal is to share your “ahas.” Consider OneVille’s research questions:

   * Who needs to communicate what info to whom, through which media, in order to support young people?

   * Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome?

   * How might basic tech help increase community cooperation in young people’s success, by supporting diverse students, teachers, parents, administrators, service providers, and other community members to share ideas, resources, and information and to build relationships?

Share your: COMMUNICATION AHAS. In the process of doing the work, what did the working group realize about improving communications in education?

IMPLEMENTATION AHAS. In the process of doing the work, what did the working group realize about implementing these innovations?

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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ADD QUOTES AND PHOTOS TO BRING THIS ALIVE.

In 2009 when we began our work, the K-8 Healey had 4 historically separated programs: a magnet K-6 program drawing disproportionately middle-class families from Somerville; a "Neighborhood" K-6 program disproportionately enrolling low income and immigrant families living around the school, including in the housing development a few steps away; a Special Education program, also disproportionately enrolling low income students of color and immigrants; and a middle school (7-8).

In fall 2009, with parents from across the first three programs in a Kindergarten hallway at the Healey, we began creating Reading Nights to link parents in face to face efforts to build relationships and share information on reading with young children. (ONE PHOTO HERE)

Several of these parents formed the early core of the parents who would continue to work on schoolwide communication for two straight years. We worked together on a multilingual coffee hour and some parent dialogues; in 2010-11, a subset of bilingual parents forged forward to create the Parent Connector Network.

From the beginning, we wrestled with the particular issue of connecting English-speaking parents and staff with parents speaking other languages. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and so, focused full force on the Parent Connector Network in winter/spring 2011. But let us share the story of how we got there! It’s a story of friendships sparking creative school improvement and vice versa.

SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION INNOVATION EFFORT 1: READING NIGHT

In fall 2009, Mica and Consuelo, both parents in the Kindergarten hallway at the Healey School, met at a parent coffee hour with the principal and discovered a mutual interest in starting conversations across language and program. A “schoolwide communication” design partnership at the Healey began!

In conversations with the principal and other parents in the hallway, we came up with the idea of holding a monthly Reading Night designed to link parents across programs in communications about supporting children’s literacy. In doing the work of holding Reading Nights, we built friendships between parents that would make a difference in the years to come and encountered a bunch of schoolwide communication issues that would shape our thinking about the “infrastructure” needed at the Healey!

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

To get people to Reading Nights at all, we had to advertise events in multiple languages and test ways of getting people back to school in the evenings. A listserv linked the school’s K-6 magnet program parents (though less so, the program’s lower-income and recent immigrant parents) but not the Special Education and "Neighborhood" programs. To include everyone, 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 attract kids -- who then brought their parents!

Consuelo's pizza: our best Reading Night advertisement

Had we known that we could record calls on the school's "robocall" system (ConnectEd) to target 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. We only used it twice in these 2 years -- once to invite people to a schoolwide dialogue and once to invite parents to PTA night.)

Face to face invitations on the playground before school were often the thing that brought some parents to Reading Night, in part, we think, because parents got the message that they would be welcome. But face-to-face invitations were really time-consuming, and our energy for standing outside to invite parents personally to events waned over the year. Beyond sending fliers home and putting up Consuelo’s pizza, at teachers’ urging we continued to announce Reading Nights to kids in classrooms, who would then invite their parents. One of our most well-attended Reading Nights involved an entire “Neighborhood” class, who did a play together with their teacher.

COMMUNICATION AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact. But this is the very sort of contact that is most time-consuming!

IMPLEMENTATION AHA: If face to face outreach is draining the resources of volunteers, organize the larger community to help - in this case, kids!

PHOTOS

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). But as it turned out, what many parents most needed (or wanted!) was a chance to talk quietly to other parents! We learned to make time in Reading Nights to get parents together on the side to talk together about our children’s reading struggles, 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 parents really needed opportunities to become and make friends.

As we tried to share out tips from Reading Nights, though, we again realized the need for better communication infrastructure for connecting parents to each other. We tried to post our reading tips as paper sheets on a hallway bulletin board (using Google Translate, which garbled some of the words) and stuck the same fliers in every backpack. But this never turned into a conversation that ran in between our Reading Nights -- whoever didn’t come in person didn’t really benefit.

COMMUNICATION AHA: We need to figure out ways to include parents if they don’t show up to face-to-face events!

IMPLEMENTATION AHA: If prepping face to face events takes too much time from people, they lose momentum. (At the same time, face to face meetings build friendships in crucial ways.)

Prepping for Reading Night took more time than we wanted, because we tended to prepare materials from scratch (LINK TO CONSUELO'S DOCUMENT HERE). But at the same time, we knew our kids loved the events and the work did create friends and leaders among us -- one of us later became the head of the PTA and two of us its vice presidents, and others won spots on the School Site Council in a year that would turn out to be very important for the Healey’s future. We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, (PHOTO) one mom got word of another mom’s cookie business -- and hooked her up to a reporter in the Boston Globe for press!

SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION INNOVATION EFFORT 2: MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR

At the same time as designing Reading Nights, we focused on improving an existing "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.

[JPEG HERE OF COFFEE HR INVITE]]

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. In fall 2010, the Healey's next principal first suggested 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 still dominated by questions and rapidly-launched 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. Main needs: a coffee pot; some Brazilian sweet bread; the principal; and parents with questions or ideas!

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

SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION INNOVATION EFFORT 3: PARENT-PARENT ISSUE DIALOGUES

New community developments at the Healey in 2009-10 shaped our next ahas about needed improvements to communication infrastructure. Halfway into the 2009-10 school year, the Somerville School Committee put on its agenda a key task: deciding whether to integrate the Healey's magnet and "Neighborhood" K-6 programs. In response, we used our multilingual coffee hour for a number of parent dialogues and “Q and A with the principal” to facilitate conversation about this choice. (link to blog post here) We also held an organized parent dialogue on a Saturday at the nearby Mystic Housing Development’s activity center (link to blog post here).

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

In the parent dialogue work, we also realized again some structural barriers of communication that precluded all parents being fully involved in the school. School committee members used the magnet program's listserv to advertise school committee meetings about the Unification debate. The parents who came to the meetings to speak their minds were disproportionately those on the listserv. Those on the 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 – again, those not on the listserv -- were unaware that the possibility of integration was even up for debate at their school at all. Some parents, particularly immigrant parents struggling to communicate in a new language, were so “out of the loop” of school information that they didn’t understand there were multiple programs at the school to begin with.

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. Parents were invited into the process as partners.

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

MAIN SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION INNOVATION: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK

In the cafeteria one morning in fall 2010, Consuelo and Mica were sitting with several parents from the PTA, talking about how to improve schoolwide communication. Consuelo, whose phone was constantly ringing with calls from Spanish-speaking parents sharing questions and needs (how to get a wheelchair? How to deal with a social service organization? Where to get a public service?) 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, just as she was. 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: parents often remarked upon the need for better translation of information and “inclusion” of immigrant parents but hadn’t been sure how to facilitate it. There were already "room parents" in the magnet program, but these parents primarily had signed on just to email other (disproportionately middle class) parents in their classroom once in a while, about things like parent breakfasts, field-trip chaperones, 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 parent volunteers could do with their bilingual skills – without carrying the burden of paid employees. The Connector project took the idea of “liaisons” and asked parents, as friends, to “liaison” to a few other parents at a time.

POST HERE: FIRST PARENT CONNECTOR DIAGRAM.

(INNOVATION AHA: Parents’ power?: Ongoing communication innovation!)

We started brainstorming the components of the Connector project with the principal, at meetings with a "Parent, Student, and Teacher Partnership" working group of parents and teachers at the unifying Healey, and with those parents who came to our Multilingual Coffee Hours. Parents from our first Reading Nights also remained key brainstorming partners.

COMMUNICATION AHA: How does input from parents, get in? How does info from schools, get out? Especially if there aren’t full time paid parent liaisons, it’s particularly important to figure out how schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns.

Even as one focus was getting information “out” to parents, a first question was how the principal would respond to serious complaints coming “in” from parents. This was Consuelo’s concern in particular, since her phone was often ringing with calls from parents with serious needs (e.g., parents seeking advice about how to handle byzantine social services agencies and even bewildering arrests). Ironically and frustratingly, weeks later she herself would feel compelled to leave the school after a never-fully-resolved incident in which a white parent yelled at her and other immigrant parents who were using a school space for a parent get-together. In her case, the loop of parent complaint/school response/issue resolution -- a loop affecting every school in the country -- did not go smoothly: the principal didn’t have a clear mechanism for sharing with her his efforts to investigate, leaving her uninformed, while she sent a public letter to officials that further challenged a trusting relationship. To our minds, a lack of a clear communication plan ended up destroying relations of trust in all directions. In particular, we figured, parents with issues had to know that there was a point person to go to and, a point person then responsible for letting them know what was going on. But all without overburdening any individual -- the principal was already answering streams of parent emails each day!

IMPLEMENTATION AHA/TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first.

For a bit, we wondered: should all parents (including English-speaking parents) have a “Connector”? After Consuelo’s departure, we decided to focus the Connectors first on bilingual parents communicating with immigrant parents, who seemed the most blocked from information flow in both directions.

COMMUNICATION AHA: Try linking parents to specific groups of other parents. How about: COMMUNICATION AHA: Use the rich social relationships that already exist among parents to help bring more families into two-way communication with the school.

A related concern was logistical: how would volunteers connect to a reasonably sized group of parents? Should they have their pictures in the hallway, showing they were willing to take calls at any time from whoever? Knowing that this would make information flow chaotic, we decided to link each Connector by phone to 10 parents who spoke their language.

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 in translating public information so others could access it. We also recruited bilingual parents who had shown some interest in parent-parent events, such as our coffee hour, Reading Night, and public dialogues! Soon, we had Sofia, Lupe, Tona, Angela, Marcia, Maria, and Veronaise (PHOTOS IF POSSIBLE!), all parents, plus Gina, a young staff member and Creole speaker who as it turned out wanted to develop a career as a parent liaison. We used some Ford funding to stipend Gina to help coordinate the project.

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 early spring. 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 decided that in particular, we also had 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 or create new simple tools for parent outreach, and what to do with parent issues that came back “in.”

TURNING POINT: Experimenting with communication solutions for getting school info “out” and parent input “in”

Our first parent-parent communication experiment -- to get info “out” and parents themselves “in” to school-- was a new use for the school’s “robocalls.” As parents, we had 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): Somerville’s call-home robocall system, ConnectEd, allowed Parent Info Center staff to record each translated version. (Some of our answering machines still cut the messages off after English!) One Connector, Lupe, had suggested we “flip” the typical script in two ways: by asking a parent to record a message targeted directly to speakers of a single language. It turned out that ConnectEd could do this. So, Lupe, Gina, and Marcia recorded a targeted invitation in Spanish, Creole, and Portuguese in the Healey principal’s office, using his phone. In the robocall, we invited parents to our first gettogether to introduce the Connector project before a Healey PTA night. Nearly 30 parents showed up, some saying they had come because they heard Lupe’s voice! 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 then attended parent-teacher conferences.

COMMUNICATION AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently to parent questions as they come up.

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 the PTA Night (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 to ask questions, with interpreters as needed. But we also knew that this would be an inefficient way of getting answers out, a question we would resolve later in the spring with a parent “hotline.”

At the time, we had another core concern: how to avoid a situation where parents mentioned needs to Connectors and never received a response? In xxx (date), building on a form for reporting bullying incidents, we created this Googleform for Connectors (and Connector coordinator/principal) to use to keep tabs on parent calls. We edited it together, particularly adding more detailed information on how to tell parents to request translators. But the system for “input in” still didn’t feel right. For one thing, we realized we were advising Connectors to tell non English-speaking parents to approach English-speaking staff with their questions!

We were heading toward understanding the need for “systems” for info flow in both directions.

COMMUNICATION AHA: One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system: better systems are needed to get parents’ contact numbers to other parents! Otherwise, parent partnerships can’t easily happen.

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

We first tried handing out paper permission slips at the PTA Night. They trickled in with signatures: way too time-consuming. So, we asked district Parent Information staff to call all of the parents and get their permission to release their numbers to Parent Connectors. (And we used some Ford funding to stipend them). To facilitate the calls, school staff first tried to figure out how to download a spreadsheet of language-specific numbers for PIC staff from X2, the district’s “student information system.” That took some time. 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. A month or more to get parents’ numbers, to other parents!

COMMUNICATION AHA: No wonder why so many people don't put in the effort to reach out to parents! It's real work that takes real time – and at times, money.

Notably, the magnet program had a great directory with parents’ phone numbers, home addresses, and emails in it, collected via paper sign-ups in classrooms when school began. Whenever we raised the issue of getting more parents' numbers to other parents, particularly immigrant and low income parents, somebody would relate that many working-class parents were afraid of sharing personal phone numbers with other parents because of restraining orders and personal safety fears. This wasn’t totally true: many immigrant and low income parents put down their numbers on signup sheets at Reading Nights or coffee hours. But issues of distrust are understandable: who is willing to share basic personal information with other parents, strangers, especially in an era of ramped-up deportation and legal interventions in households?

COMMUNICATION AHA: Privacy and trust are key issues to be navigated carefully in broadening school home communications. But, issues of privacy do mean that at times, it takes much longer for people to partner than they would otherwise.

But if unaddressed, what do such barriers to parent-parent contact mean? Children unable to be invited to birthday parties or playdates; parents who cannot be invited personally to gettogethers; missed opportunities to pull parents together as partners.

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

As we started to link Connectors to parents and make calls, we had another COMMUNICATION AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier.

IMPLEMENTATION AHA: But it can’t be too technical or some volunteers will get turned off!

We may have turned off a few Connectors by immediately using technology in our own infrastructure to communicate among Connectors. For example, we now had to split up the list of approved parent names among the Connectors, but we wanted to think a bit about who should be paired with whom, based on the grade of the children and prior personal relationship. We decided this at the end of a face to face meeting and so, we chose to use a Google Spreadsheet to divide up the names from home. 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, and to take some notes on each call. 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 her email account. Another checks email regularly but doesn't write back via it.). One Connector tried the Google 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 complex Googleform; we’ll record parent issues right on the spreadsheet of parent names, until the volume of parent needs increases).

We emailed a lot between Connectors to discuss next steps, and unsurprisingly, such emails 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 spoke 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 (or a text saying she had an email!). And, we all needed occasional face to face meetings to brainstorm ideas more effectively and to stay interested in the project. Our core summer 2011 plan: a Connector party, with tequila.

IMPLEMENTATION AHA/ TURNING POINT: Go with the form of communication that will reach the most people now.

As we began our calls home, we realized that 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. So, rather than wait for everyone to get computer literate or computer access immediately, we decided to make a hotline, to get translated information more easily to all parents. Our reasoning:

COMMUNICATION AHA: Parents need help with ongoing resource and information questions. Blockages to quick information flow mean children don’t get opportunities.

No free or open source hotlines seemed to exist in “plug and play” form, so Seth (PHOTO) prototyped a hotline using open source software and the Twilio API. Tona, Maria, and Gina came in to record updates from the principal and answers to parents' Frequently Asked Questions collected by the Connectors, by speaking into Seth’s 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 school information, on to it! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a blast of information heading toward parents at all times. How to triage this info and have point people translate in an organized manner? The school typically referred most important documents to the PIC for paid translation and, parents holding events sometimes informally asked other parents to translate info on the magnet program’s listserv or on fliers. But because of the glut of info and the cost and effort of translation, most of the everyday info coming from the school via fliers or from parents via the listserv wasn’t translated.

COMMUNICATION AHA: A key need in public information-sharing is TRIAGING information so it’s not overwhelming -- and ORGANIZING information so that others can quickly digest it.

In late spring, 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 for the Hotline and for a script for Connector calls (into 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 -- was actually easier than doing it word for word from paper to paper.

We came up with this infrastructure plan: school leaders would dump information for possible translation onto a Googledoc. Principal and Lead Connector would triage it in a monthly meeting and decide what should be translated for the Hotline and what go “out” via a Connector call. Volunteer Translators of the Month would then translate the top priority information for the Hotline. In their monthly calls, Connectors would tell parents the highlights and refer them to the Hotline, along with explaining anything that required more one to one conversation.

We decided that Connectors also needed a standing info page Googledoc with links of local resources, so they knew what to tell parents looking for public services (e.g., legal or family services.) In our Connector calls to date, we had experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for better infrastructure for handling one on one parent needs coming “in”:

• a mom who said she had been trying to set up a meeting with her child’s teacher for a year
• a mom who needed legal advice and then asked the Connector to go with her as an interpreter/ally in an IEP (Special Education services) meeting on her child

We decided that in such cases, we had reached the boundary line of what volunteers could do. Translating IEP information is a paid skill; and scheduling a meeting with a busy teacher could take a Connector hours of back and forth calls. It was time to consider actual staff for these aspects of school-parent connection.

COMMUNICATION AHA: another aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism: infrastructure for scheduling interpreters!

As a few Connectors were asked to come be translators at parent-teacher meetings, we also kept hearing ongoing stories from parents who lacked interpretation and translation at the teacher meetings when they most needed it. Figuring out this piece of the infrastructure became another goal. Some parents didn’t know how to request translators for 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 for reasons unknown to both. While the District has a list of interpreters to call and also has bilingual staff at the PIC, getting bilingual interpreters to the right place at the right time is the core resource-use problem. (One Portuguese-speaking Connector, Maria, suggested based on her experience working in hospitals that the schools try an interpreter "on call" by the phone during certain hours.) Parents have recommended that our dashboard family report card view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves!

We decided that in each call, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and put those on the google spreadsheet. And, we decided that if parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to staff in an email cc’ing staff, parent, and Lead Connector. But again, we decided that in the end, the Lead Connector had to be paid staff (see below).

COMMUNICATION AHA: Again, creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation may simply be about organizing existing resources most effectively.

Turlock Unified School District in California has a model where parents are trained and paid as professional interpreters and translators. Somerville’s Welcome Project already trains young people this way in their LIPS program, to translate at public events (http://www.welcomeproject.org/content/liaison-interpreters-program-somerville-lips). Adults said they were most comfortable with certain one on one communications from other adults and pointed out other nuances: interpreters at public meetings need to announce their availability in audible ways! And, be on call for one on one meetings throughout the night with teachers (the Healey principal had interpreters use walkie-talkies for this purpose!)

We hope to join 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 has formed there that also wants to focus on translation and interpretation in Somerville (one group member is also a Connector).

In June 2011, we had finished 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 in the end, volunteer Connectors could connect parents in to staff but that ongoing communication about meeting serious parent needs then had to be taken up by paid multilingual staff. But we believe this staff member, a Lead Connector, can be part-time.

To clarify roles, we pressed for a Lead Connector/part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week. We reasoned that 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, the task for the coming fall will be to figure out how and whether a very part-time liaison role fits the need if volunteers help get info out and input in! We’ll also be considering how Connectors can invite parents explicitly to participate in school events and leadership.

Hear some words here from our Connectors: (VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH TONA OR GINA or MARIA?)

P.S. In a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers, some lack access to information because of translation gaps and some because of a gap in basic tech knowledge. We learned early on in our work in Somerville that the problem is not necessarily one of computer access (the nearby housing project has many computers) as much as one of training. Even English-speaking parents in the school’s magnet program didn't know how to get on its listserv. Now that the school’s programs have merged and the school is creating a schoolwide listerv, these issues will rise to the fore. And having people equally speak up on the common listserv, in whatever language, will be the next frontier of parent inclusion!

In Winter 2011, we attempted to hold a "get an Email" night at the Healey, but it wasn't well attended; this crucial puzzle piece needs further development. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face tech training event! This is what we mean by each infrastructure “component” being connected – and fueled by an overall commitment to including all parents. Combining the Connector network with email training by the PTA may be a good solution, especially as the school goes from having a listserv only for the magnet program to a listserv for all. Especially in a community where there are many community-oriented technologists, there's really no reason why everyone eventually shouldn't have basic tech skills. See Computer Infrastructure.