Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

Summary

This working group has evolved over the two years of OneVille's work. Over the course of two years, we linked parents particularly committed to improving communication in their K-8 school. Throughout, we have been working to help ensure that all parents in a multilingual and class-diverse school can access important information about and from their school, so that all can fully participate in the joint project of educating children.

In the past year, we have particularly worked to include immigrant parents in the loop of school info and input. We particularly focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual parents ("Connectors") 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 Haitian Creole-speaking Connectors. Each Connector is calling approximately 10 other families once a month, to share key information from the principal and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on call for questions from parents, 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!

We've had countless ahas about improving the communication infrastructure of public education, and particularly, about improving the infrastructure for interpretation and translation.

Here's one main aha: 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. Districts across the country say that they "can't" effectively communicate across language barriers, because it's too expensive. So how could districts efficiently fulfill parents' civil rights to needed interpretation and translation of important school information? It's a key issue for any multilingual community, and a host of parents and staff from the Healey School in Somerville set forth to work on it.

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?

(COLORED TEXT BOX: We wanted to add infrastructure that could help equally include all parents in a multilingual, class-diverse school!)

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, and time -- and gaps in personal relationship and connections -- keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities.

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, class-diverse 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 have come to 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 operated from a central principle: schools should ensure equal access to school information and dialogue, in order to promote inclusive participation in school life. We've also been 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.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of an "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a full list of such systemic supports. 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. As a multilingual group of parents (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to understand the detailed barriers in the way of English-learners' participation in English-dominant schools, and, the full communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as full partners in the project of supporting young people.

Basically, as a rolling group of parents, we participated in both successful and unsuccessful communications in the school while trying to figure out how to improve schoolwide communication! Over time we came to focus on communicating with non-English speakers as one of the school's primary barriers.

Before we started creating the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we had worked with families and teachers in several other design efforts to improve connections between parents and school and parents-parents more broadly. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation. So, we want to describe some of the work that laid the groundwork for the Parent Connector Network.

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

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!

We say "across language and program" because 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 from 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.

With parents from across the first three programs in a Kindergarten hallway at the Healey, we began in fall 2009 creating Reading Nights to link parents in face to face efforts to share information on reading with young children. Our events were social, and academic. Through early chance meetings in our hallway, we met Tracy and Dave, Maria, Michelle, Carrie, Jen, and many others -- (PHOTOS?). 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, some parent dialogues, and, finally, the Parent Connector Network.

From the beginning, the particular issue of connecting English-speaking parents and staff with speakers of other languages was on our minds, because so many immigrant parents in the hallway were possible attendees for Reading Night.

Consuelo and Mica focused additionally on another early effort: to supplement the typically English-dominated "coffee hours" with the principal. In partnership with the principal, we created a slot for a multilingual coffee hour model, a brainstorm of Consuelo (PHOTO), a parent partner particularly committed to finding creative ways of empowering immigrant parents. In the multilingual coffee hour, parents translated for other parents wanting to ask questions and hear information from the principal, quickly cluing us into a key local resource: parent bilingualism.

(COLORED TEXT BOX: MAJOR AHA! The massive local resource of parent bilingualism).

At several points over the two years to come, we considered melting the coffee hour back into the "regular" meeting with the principal (the Healey's next principal first leaned in this direction but then decided to keep a distinct "multilingual" coffee hour). But, since typical coffee hours are so obviously dominated by 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.

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

New community developments at the Healey shaped the next building blocks of our work. 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. In response, we used our coffee hour for a number of community dialogues to facilitate conversation about this choice, and, we held a large community dialogue on a Saturday (LINK TO SOME DOCUMENTATION FROM MAY 5 MEETING). 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.

By fall 2010, we were focused on the issue of fully including parents across barriers of language (and relatedly, disparities of tech access and training). Through the series of "ahas" described below, we came up with the Parent Connector Network concept and started to pitch it and brainstorm it with school council, principal and "unification" working groups. 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. As a team of parents, we met with the principal and started using our multilingual coffee hours to get ongoing advising from parents schoolwide. The Parent Connector concept was approved 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.

Communication ahas, implementation 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.

Communication Ahas that helped us shape the Parent Connector Network actually began in Reading Night, our Parent Dialogues, and the Multilingual Coffee Hour. The first series of ahas led to focus on parent relationships and schoolwide communication infrastructure. Then, two more ahas led to the intensive focus on translation and the Connector Network.

Learning to focus on parent relationships and schoolwide communication infrastructure: ahas from Reading Night, Parent Dialogues, and Coffee Hours

For example, 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.

Learning to focus on translation and interpretation infrastructure: the ahas of creating the Parent Connector Network!

Starting in January xx, we met as a force of Connectors and then, emailed each other multiple times weekly.

AHA: our experiment in personal calls. the robocalls. xxxxx

AHA: by xxxx, we were seeking a method for getting information out to a lot of parents at once, so that Connectors didn't become inundated with work. Michael Quan (PHOTO) suggested a hotline as a solution at one multilingual coffee hour.

Turning point: Seth prototyped one, even as he smiled that it was a low-tech solution he wouldn't have thought of himself.

Then, we started recording updates from the principal and answers to parents' Frequently Asked questions, with Tona, Maria, and Gina (PHOTOS)

Implementation aha: join with other people who share the same focus and have knowledge for brainstorming that you might not have.

In late spring, we joined 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, so we joined our conversations and kept fleshing out the full set of components of schoolwide translation and interpretation infrastructure.

The Parent Connector Network is one of the key "components" -- it's connection, human-style!

We've been brainstorming these components at our own Connector meetings among ourselves and 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 have also remained key brainstorming partners.

In Spring 2011, we began to brainstorm in earnest with folks 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 formed there that has also focused on translation and interpretation in Somerville, so we've joined our conversations. In June 2011, in a retreat with principal, Connectors, we finished this full list of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.

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?)

The Healey School really does enroll a full U.S. range of families who are deeply empowered in their home-school communications (e.g., middle-class parents who email the principal constantly to get his attention, and people left out of the most basic communications of schooling (while some middle-class parents at the Healey design technology for a living, some have no computers and no internet.) A listserv has long enrolled only some. Sporadic robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. For many, parent teacher conferences require interpreters, and scheduling those interpreters itself is a structural communication problem.

Time is also of the essence: some families have time/resource to volunteer countless hours during the school day. In contrast, one Portuguese-speaking dad we knew of worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a paper sign saying he wanted to pay someone to help him drive his daughter to school after he left for work. His "Connector" made the sign for him. (INTERVIEW WITH MARIA ON THIS?)

Communication from school to home is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. In an era when most people work too much to talk face to face very often, how do we get information to all families and get input from all families?

We see one key as efficient organization of a key local resource: bilingualism.

The Connectors themselves are a key local resource, as people willing to be on call to answer other parents' questions in their language and to monthly, share information that requires additional explanation. There are other pieces of the “infrastructure” for translation and interpretation in a multilingual school that tap local bilingualism as well. We’re prototyping a hotline (using open source software and the Twilio API) allowing volunteer Translators of the Month (also bilingual parents, and maybe, students) to verbally translate information all parents need to know (in Creole, Portuguese, and Spanish). Bilingual parents have noted 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. So far, we have parents coming to speak into a computer (see photo!). We hope to hone the hotline so that translators can record to it from home.

POST PHOTO OF MARIA HERE!

We're working on other components of the “infrastructure” for translation and interpretation: a Googledoc as one organized place where principal, school leaders, put info that most needs dissemination/translation each month, by Translators of the Month and Connectors; Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs; Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. Robocalls (ADD SCREEN SHOT?) home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls, but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Small infrastructural “moves” can help: one parent noted that at another school, they put information at the top of every handout indicating where you can go to get a translation (over time, our Hotline).

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!

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.

Overall aha: The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation. Otherwise, disorganization means that things don’t get translated! Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but glitches certainly can block communication too. One example: 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, it took us weeks to work through the Parent Information Center (PIC) to get parents to release their numbers to other parents! (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.)

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!