Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

At the Healey School in Somerville, parents hail from xx countries. Some have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some, in a former magnet program now unifying with the rest of the school. Robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. Communication from school to home is a huge issue, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. We've been working on a range of school-home and parent-parent communication strategies. In particular, the Parent Connector Network was an idea to link bilingual parents to parents who speak their languages, to support translation and personal relationships by phone. As part of the Parent Connector project, then made a hotline to answer FAQs from parents and Googleforms to collect info on how parents are doing.

We also supported a schoolwide wiki to be made to support information-sharing during the unification process, and near the end of spring 2011, a Googlecalendar.

History

We began in fall 2009 creating Reading Nights to link parents across a Kindergarten hallway in face to face efforts to share information on reading with young children. Our events were social, and academic; we met parents who formed the core of the working group that continued to work on schoolwide communication.

We also created a multilingual coffee hour model under the guidance of Consuelo Perez, to supplement the typically English-dominated meetings with the principal.