Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

Summary

In this working group, we have been working to help ensure that all parents in a multilingual and class-diverse school can access important school information. We also worked to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and immigrant parents. Over the course of two years, we assembled a crew of parents working on communication in a K-8 school and particularly focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual parents use phones, Googleforms, and a hotline to help get information to more recently immigrated parents who speak their language.

We now are working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Creole-speaking Connectors. Each Connector is to call approximately 10 families once a month to share key information from the principal and to ask questions about issues Connectors see arising among parents. The Connectors are also on call for questions at any time.

The Connectors have also become key innovators of translation and interpretation infrastructure schoolwide. We spent late spring 2011 finishing a full list of components to such infrastructure!

Our main aha about improving the communication infrastructure of public education?

One main aha: districts across the country say that they "can't" effectively communicate across language barriers; it's too expensive and we don't have the resources. But improving translation and interpretation in a multilingual school and district in part requires getting more organized about effectively using a key local resource: bilingualism. At the same time, a key issue we’re trying to understand is where the line is between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals.

Communication we set forth to improve

What aspect of communication did we want to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?

At the Healey School in Somerville (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. In addition to barriers of language, disparities in tech access, tech training, time, and personal friendship keep parents from being equally informed about school issues and events and equally present at face-to-face public events.

In the Parent Connector Network, as in our broader schoolwide communication toolkit, our goal was to figure out ways to better include all parents in a multilingual K-8 school.

Because language barriers particularly exclude parents from full participation, the Parent Connector Network has focused on reaching out to parents who speak the district's 3 main languages other than English: Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole.

Begun in earnest in Winter 2011, the Parent Connector Network is a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administrators and staff) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. The Connectors use phones, Google forms, and a hotline to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share a school.

In the Parent Connector network, we are working to ensure equal access to school information and also working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and immigrant parents, in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've also been fleshing out a full list of systemic supports necessary to create more effective interpretation and translation across a multilingual school. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

Process

How we realized and redirected things, over time.

History

The groundwork needed to support the current work.

Our design process has been fully collaborative. It has taken us two years to fully understand and, preliminarily flesh out aspects of the communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as full partners in the project of supporting young people.

We started creating the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011. Before then, we worked with families and teachers in several other design efforts to improve the communication infrastructure for sharing information across parents, and between school and parents. All of that laid the groundwork.

Basically, as parents, we participated in both successful and unsuccessful communications in the school while trying to figure out how to improve these!

We began building relationships among parents interested in schoolwide communication improvements.

Mica and Consuelo, parents at the school, met at a coffee hour with the principal in fall 2009 and shared a mutual interest in starting conversations across language. Mica invited Consuelo to help do parent outreach for the OneVille Project, and a design partnership at the Healey began!

We tried several forms of face to face parent get-together, to connect parents across lines of language, income, and program.

In 2009 when we began our work, the Healey had 4 segregated programs: a magnet K-6 program, a "Neighborhood" K-6 program, a Special Education program, and a middle school. With parents from across the K-6 programs in a Kindergarten hallway at the Healey, we began in fall 2009 creating Reading Nights to link parents from different school programs in face to face efforts to share information on reading with young children. Our events were social, and academic. We met Tracy and Dave, Maria, Michelle, and many others -- (PHOTOS?) -- parents who formed the core of the working group that would continue to work on schoolwide communication.

To supplement the typically English-dominated meetings with the principal, we created a multilingual coffee hour model, a brainstorm of Consuelo (PHOTO), a parent partner particularly committed to finding creative ways of empowering immigrant parents.

We considered at several points melting the coffee hour into the "regular" meeting with the principal; but, those are typically dominated by English and by English-speaking parents. It still seems important to have a space focused 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.

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

The school was in the process of deciding whether to integrate its magnet and "Neighborhood" programs, and so, we also held a number of community dialogues to facilitate conversation about this choice. (LINK TO SOME DOCUMENTATION FROM MAY 5 MEETING)

We started to pitch the Connector Network concept to school council and principal and "unification" working groups in fall 2011, and brainstorming the concept in conversations at various group meetings. The concept was included in the school's unification plan in xxx. Starting in winter 2011, then, we recruited Connectors -- bilingual parents (and one young staff member exploring the career of a parent liaison) who had, over the prior year, shown particular interest in reaching out to immigrant parents or translating public information so they could access it. As a team of parents, we met with the principal and started getting ongoing advising from parents schoolwide at our multilingual coffee hours. Our work was to test necessary ways that parents could reach out to other parents -- what info we would and would not translate for free, how many school-home communications were necessary a month, how to use existing school tools for parent outreach, and more, particularly for a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers.

MOVE TO MORE GENERIC SCHOOLWIDE TOOLKIT:

We also attempted to hold "Get an Email" nights at the Healey, a puzzle piece that needs further development. Especially in a community where there are many community-oriented technologists (LINK TO THEIR ORGS OR NOT?!), there's really no reason why everyone eventually shouldn't have basic tech skills. See Computer Infrastructure

Communication ahas and turning points!

SHOULD THESE GO ON READING NIGHT OR OTHER PAGES? THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY ALL LED TO THE CURRENT CONNECTOR NETWORK EFFORT.

Our Communication Ahas that helped us shape the Parent Connector Network began in Reading Night, our Parent Dialogues, and the Multilingual Coffee Hour.

Reading Night ahas: In organizing the Reading Nights to get people to reading nights, we practiced communicating between school and home to advertise events in multiple languages. (LINK TO CONSUELO'S DOCUMENT HERE. . ) Communication aha: inviting parents to school events is hard and incredibly time-consuming if there isn't a great infrastructure for it. Two classrooms of parents in the hallway were on the magnet program's listserv, but the other two classes (Special Education and, the "Neighborhood" program) were not. We put up multilingual signs where parents would see them, but, many didn't drop off their kids at school themselves. And, face to face invitations on the playground before school were often the thing that brought some people to Reading Night, because people felt they were coming to meet other friends. Those were particularly time-consuming!

Had we known that the school's "robocall" system could call a targeted subset of parents in their language, we would have used that to invite more people!

Communication aha: We also realized that because of a lack of communication infrastructure among parents, we could not effectively follow up with parents who did not attend, about the literacy tips we got at the Reading Nights!

Communication aha: we also realized that we were expecting too many face to face social events at the school, for parents exhausted by a glut of events. Our first Reading Night was very well attended, but attendance at the monthly events went down slowly as everyone became very tired.

Communication aha: we also realized that it was very hard to get parent organizers together in person to organize the events, leaving organization too reliant on parents who were not working.

And, we relized that building friendships between parents was key to getting parents to participate further! The core organizers were willing to do lots of work together because, basically, we liked each other.

Turning point: so, we began to focus on two directions: improving communication infrastructure and parent relationship more generally at the school.

In our work to support parent dialogues, we had another communication aha: we realized just how irregular it was for parents to speak to each other across "groups," about fundamental desires for their children's education! It became important later in the Healey's work to be able to report, for e.g. to school council members, that everyone who attended our dialogues and those who we talked to in the hallway or in the neighboring Mystic Housing Development all wanted a more rigorous learning experience.

In the parent dialogue work, we had another fundamental communication aha: We realized just how pervasive problems of communication were to parents being fully included in schools. Those on the magnet program's listserv emailed the superintendent or principal regularly with their opinions about whether the programs should integrate; three months later when we walked around the Mystic Development 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 the school.

Turning point: supporting communication across lines of language, and tech access, became our key focus at the school. While we continue work on a schoolwide communication toolkit, we focused first on questions of language barriers, and focused full force on the Parent Connector Network.

A key issue we’re trying to understand is where the line is between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. Translation and interpretation are civil rights in federally funded education, so the District has to pay for translating all important parent information (and it must pay for interpretation at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. Some of this may be simply organizing resources more effectively. The Turlock Unified School District in California]] trains and employs parents 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). Which communications could trained adults handle particularly effectively, and at a lower cost than sending everything to the PIC?

Our core concern was how to avoid a situation where parents mentioned needs to Connectors that never received a response (a classic situation in many schools!). In xxx (date), we created this Googleform for keeping tabs on parent calls. We edited it together, for example, adding information on how to tell parents to request translators. Tona reworked it so it wasn’t set up as if there was a serious issue each time, but is more of a general recording space.

Many Connectors then began hearing stories from parents who lack interpretation and translation when they need it. So, our next goal became to meet w/ the principal and Welcome Project to share these stories and, rather than just critique, brainstorm the full "system" of infrastructure components needed to get interpreters in the right place when they are needed! A key aha has been that a) schools need more help to be nimble in setting up face to face meetings with translators. Many times, translators were requested but not actually present in the final meeting!

Communication aha: in order to get resources for their children, parents need resource questions answered as they come up.

We've also realized that Connectors get asked about resources a lot and asked key questions that are time-sensitive (e.g.: can I enroll my child in summer school voluntarily or, does she have to be referred?). Connectors don't have time to call all parents to share these FAQ answers, so, a key "information loop" is to get such FAQs answered regularly on public channels. We've chosen for now to answer them on our hotline and in the most common existing channel for school-home communication, the "purple calendar." They have to be translated in order to be useful to parents, and so, we may tap "Translators of the Month" for this!

A standing info page for Connectors is also necessary, so that Connectors themselves know what to tell parents looking for legal or family services.

Lead Connector and Information Coordinator are planning to organize a summer training for Connectors, by principal, on how the school functions.

Communication aha: if parents need help with setting up translators or getting into afterschool programs, etc., it's not enough to just find the right "contact person" to send immigrant parents to. The problem is that parents have trouble approaching that contact person, in their language!

Implementation stumbling blocks, solutions, and lessons learned!

One implementation issue to consider was whether we turned off a few Connectors by immediately using technology we knew would help. For example, some Connectors took immediately to using a Google spreadsheet to choose "their" parents and get their numbers, and a Googleform to keep records on parents' needs. Other Connectors needed multiple calls to get them to come to training sessions on the Google spreadsheets, 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 uses email regularly but doesn't write back via it!). One tried the forms and in the end, wanted to use paper and asked the Information Coordinator to retype her notes.

Other glitches got in the way, but some Connectors figured them out: 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! But over time, we've realized what training is needed (how to use a Googleform!), and, which tech uses aren't really that necessary (possibly, paper notes, quick emails to the Lead Connector/Information Coordinator/principal, or a monthly meeting for reporting parent needs could work as well as the Googleform, but not if the volume of parent needs increases). We'll see over time whether the Google form for recording parent needs is useful, or not.

We Connectors need to communicate regularly with each other as well (to determine monthly scripts for calls, for example), and we've also found that unsurprisingly, email links email-obsessed Connectors far more successfully than those who don't like to access it routinely (this breaks down along class lines, as well). Some Connectors themselves require regular phone calls to stay glued to the project. Our youngest partner and some of us prefer texts, as well. And, we all needed occasional face to face meetings to brainstorm ideas more effectively and to stay interested in the project! In one face to face meeting, for example, a discussion of several "lack of interpreter" stories that Connectors had heard from parents led us to agree that we should put those stories at the top of our agenda in a meeting with the principal focused on our translation and interpretation infrastructure ideas.

Findings/Endpoints

Concrete communication improvements

We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of Connectors ready for fall and two great leaders. We also have a meeting scheduled for the summer, to brainstorm the full set of translation/interpretation infrastructure components we think are needed for a multilingual school. We're way beyond the typical response, "we don't have the resources!"

Main communication realizations and implementation realizations

What are our main ahas about improving the communication infrastructure of public education?

Above all, improving translation and interpretation requires getting more organized about effectively using a key local resource: bilingualism!

Technological how-tos

As a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. Learning how to record on it: In April, we were still sitting at the computer talking into it, or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, we xxxxx.

Things we’d expand/do differently

If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about?

Tech for the Connectors. Early forms for parents, to say "I want one!" to avoid the PIC month. Infrastructure is needed so that volunteers aren't over-taxed!