Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

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

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

What communication improvement did we make?

With a team of parents and administrators in a K-8 school in Somerville, we created one "component" of systemic support for interpreting and translating information. The Parent Connector Network is a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administration) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. We have Spanish-speaking, Portguese-speaking, and Creole-speaking Connectors. Each Connector is calling 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.

What's our main aha 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!

Introduction: What did we work on, and why?

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

With a team of parents and administrators, and with ongoing advising from parents schoolwide, we've been working toward fleshing out a full "infrastructure" of school-home and parent-parent communication strategies, particularly for a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers.

The Parent Connector Network is one of the "components." 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, that we hope will serve to bring more people into school events and leadership.

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

While some parents make 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 communication glitch. The school really does enroll people who are deeply empowered in their communications, and people left out of the most basic communications of schooling.

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.) (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 the Connectors as one component of the “infrastructure” for translation and interpretation in a multilingual school. There are other pieces. 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.

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).

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! (The school secretary 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.)

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 publicly 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. We’re interested in a translation/interpretation model from the Turlock Unified School District in California, 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). Which communications could trained adults handle particularly effectively, and at a lower cost than sending everything to the PIC?

So, we've been fleshing out a full list of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school. We've been brainstorming these components with Somerville's Welcome Project (in the Mystic Housing Development down the hill from the school). A parent group formed there that has also focused on translation and interpretation in Somerville, so we've joined the conversations.

Process

(in this section, document: How has this co-design effort taken shape, and what of that process might others, elsewhere, need to replicate? What have been the stumbling blocks in the process?)

Our design process has been fully collaborative and ethnographic: we participated in communication in the school while trying to figure out how to improve it. It has taken us two years to fully understand and, preliminarily flesh out the full "infrastructure" necessary to support better translation and interpretation schoolwide. To get here, we worked with families and teachers in several other design efforts to improve the core communication infrastructure for sharing information across parents and between school and parents.

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. And, we practiced communicating between school and home to advertise events in multiple languages. (LINK TO CONSUELO'S DOCUMENT HERE. . )

To supplement the typically English-dominated meetings with the principal, we also created a multilingual coffee hour model, under the guidance of Consuelo Perez, a parent partner particularly committed to creative ways of empowering immigrant parents. The multilingual coffee hour with the principal is a place where people take time for translation and amplify languages other than English. (ADD INTERVIEW HERE WITH LUPE OR IRMA, ON WHAT IT HAS MEANT TO HAVE AN EXPLICITLY MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HR?)

In a number of community dialogues, we realized just how pervasive problems of communication were to parents being fully included in schools. (LINK TO SOME DOCUMENTATION FROM MAY 5 MEETING)

We also attempted to hold "Get an Email" nights at the Healey, a puzzle piece that needs further development. See Computer Infrastructure

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EXCESS INFO TO GATHER AND PUT SOMEWHERE

Some Connectors took immediately to using Google spreadsheets, some needed multiple calls to get them to come to training sessions on them, and some tried them and in the end, wanted to use paper and ask the Information Coordinator to retype their notes. (one Connector has her daughter help her get her email; another uses her husband's computer to check hers). Other glitches got in the way: Connectors who had Yahoo accounts rather than gmail accounts couldn't open the spreadsheets and didn't know why or ask! But over time, we've realized what training is needed and, which tech uses aren't really that necessary. We'll see over time whether the Google form for recording parent needs is useful, or not.

We've also found that Connectors need occasional face to face meetings to stay interested in the project!

We created this googleform for keeping tabs on parent calls, since a major issue in schools is parents mentioning needs that don't receive a response. 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.

We're doing a call home by all Connectors before the year ends – to gather information on “how are the interactions w/ your teachers going? How is translation and interpretation going?”

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