Oneville Wiki - User contributions [en]

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-14T15:58:47Z

24.60.250.60:

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one! We’ve also made a video of our model [[here]], which we'll continue to test and tweak in fall 2011.

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

-------
Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

Today, systems for getting information to all families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – as long as the tech is basic and parents and staff are shown how to use it. In multilingual schools, people also need to organize to tap a key local resource: bilingualism. Such structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. (In fact, we've learned that nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents!)

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. 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 more explanation.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much.

A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents (in ways that also help unite the school), and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff.

In particular, our final aha of the year was that communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?
-------------------
'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;

:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents use phones, Google forms, and the open source hotline to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families;

:c) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts. [[link here to instructions on starting and using Googledocs. Jedd, can you find these translated? Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?]])

We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.

As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short [[VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?]]

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: [[Regina’s sheet here??]].

In our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it [[SHOW PHOTO]]. Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, we xxxxx. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?

:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?

:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?

:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-14T15:57:35Z

24.60.250.60: /* SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 2: MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR */

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------
ADD PHOTOS OF CONNECTORS AND VIDEOS OF THE DIAGRAMS, TO BRING THIS ALIVE. (CONSIDER VIDEO INTERVIEWS W/ SOME CONNECTORS TOO!)

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 whose children shared 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 creating a monthly multilingual coffee hour and holding 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 -- and with getting information written in English translated. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused fully 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 school improvements and vice versa.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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. We immediately started talking to other parents about the idea of “OneVille” -- in this case, linking families who shared a pretty divided school -- and a design partnership at the Healey began to sprout!

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. We sat with other parents in the PTA room and talked about what might pull us together. Tracy and Dave, Maria, Jen, Carrie, Consuelo, Michelle, and others started brainstorming a first Reading Night focused on baking words (Tracy, a parent in the hallway’s “Neighborhood” classroom, had a cookie business and her husband Dave worked in a pizza restaurant).

[[Image:Tracy.jpg|thumb|Tracy, PTA and 2011 Healey community council (her cookie business was the focus of our first Reading Night!)]]

In doing the work of holding Reading Nights, we built friendships between us parents that would make a difference in the years to come -- and we encountered a bunch of schoolwide communication issues that would shape our thinking about the “infrastructure” needed at the Healey!

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

To get parents in the hallway out to Reading Nights, 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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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 direct channel-home was 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 two 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. 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 one by one is draining the resources of volunteers, try reaching those clustered in one place -- in this case, kids!

ADD 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. (This required parents who could interpret for others.) In part from listening to parents who ended up taking care of the kids, 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 to share information. We tried to post our reading tips as paper sheets on a hallway bulletin board (we used Google Translate, which garbled some of the words) and we 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 still need to figure out ways to get information to parents if they don’t show up to face-to-face events.

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 organizing parent (Maria) later became the head of the PTA and two others (Tracy and Dave) its vice presidents, and others (Michelle) 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 Tracy’s cookie business -- and hooked her up to a reporter in the Boston Globe for press!

We burned out on Reading Night after holding about six of them that year, because it took too much face to face work to create materials from scratch; we sort of reached the outer limit of volunteer time and energy. We also realized that since we weren’t experts on reading, it was more effective for us to focus on venues for gathering parents to talk, period, than on guiding other parents in the content of teaching reading. We also didn’t yet know how to “seed” events so they would replicate without us. But we knew we had created an important space for parents to gather together -- and the friendships we made carried us through our next innovations.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 2: MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR==

While designing Reading Nights, we also 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, and English-speaking parents almost always dominated the conversation.

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. We thought about having language-specific coffee hours but the principal asked for a combined coffee hour, which in the end offered its own benefit -- valuing multilingualism. In the multilingual coffee hour, parents voluntarily translated for other parents wanting to ask questions and hear information from the principal. Enjoying the sound of multiple languages became part of the event.

[JPEG HERE OF COFFEE HR INVITE]]

The experience quickly clued us into a key local resource:

'''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? ANA, CAN YOU PLAN TO GET THIS?)

[[Image:Dave.jpg|thumb|Dave, multilingual coffee hour enthusiast and 2011 PTA president]]

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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” dialogues to facilitate conversation about this choice. [[link to OV 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 - said they wanted a more rigorous learning experience for their children.

In the parent dialogue work, we also realized again some structural barriers of communication that held back many parents from 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 on the upcoming decision, we realized that many parents – 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.

'''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 EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK==

In the cafeteria one morning in fall 2010, Consuelo and Mica were sitting with several parents from the PTA (Maria and others), talking about how to improve schoolwide communication. Consuelo, whose phone was constantly ringing with calls from Spanish-speaking parents with 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."

[[LINK TO A JPEG OF THIS DIAGRAM IF MICA CAN FIND IT!]]

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: many Healey parents often spoke of 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 had 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.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Lots of parents were very ready to contribute to 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: 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. While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in!

Even as one focus was getting information “out” to all parents, a first question of the Connector project 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 confusing 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 this case, the loop of parent complaint/school response/issue resolution -- a loop affecting every school in the country -- did not go smoothly: the principal’s emails didn’t fully describe his actual efforts to investigate, leaving her uninformed, while she sent a public letter to officials that further challenged a trusting relationship. To all 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 reporting back what was going on. But this “loop” couldn’t overburden 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 supporting communication with immigrant parents, who seemed the most blocked from information flow in both directions. And that meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

A related concern was logistical: how would volunteers connect to a reasonably sized group of parents? Should they just post 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.

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

As a team of Connectors, 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 (robocalls, listserv, backpack handouts) or create new simple tools for parent outreach, and what to do with parent issues that came back “in.”

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, 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 events -- 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. (Some of our answering machines still cut the messages off after English!). Somerville’s call-home robocall system, ConnectEd, typically was used by principals who asked Parent Info Center staff to record each translated version. One Connector, Lupe, had suggested we “flip” that typical script in two ways: we’d ask a parent to record a message targeted directly to speakers of a single language. It turned out that ConnectEd could do this and the principal, Jay DeFalco, was excited to try it. 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 a 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 event (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 people shared was to make all parents feel more comfortable approaching school staff themselves to ask questions. But we also knew that parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place and we also knew that parents approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic 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), we modified a district form for reporting bullying incidents and created this Googleform (LINK TO IT OR SHOW JPEG?) for Connectors (and Connector coordinator/principal) to use to keep tabs on parent calls. We edited it together, 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 still advising Connectors to tell non English-speaking parents to approach English-speaking staff to share their needs and arrange interpreters!

We were heading toward understanding the need for “systems” for info flow and translation 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 weeks 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 parents’ 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 of approved parent numbers 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 from 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?

But if unaddressed, what do such barriers to parent-parent contact mean? Children unable to be invited to birthday parties or playdates; parents who can’t be invited personally to gettogethers or hear important explanations of school issues; missed opportunities to pull parents together as partners. It’s just a basic tension.

'''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.

All this is an important example of the need for infrastructure to normalize communications between school and home. One example is an official form allowing parents to easily offer permission to have a Connector, at the beginning of the year.

'''COMMUNICATION/IMPLEMENTATION AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

As we started to link Connectors to parents and make calls, we may have turned off a few Connectors by immediately using technology in our own infrastructure to communicate. For example, at the end of one face-to-face meeting we decided that Connectors might want to “get assigned” parents with whom they had a prior personal relationship, 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 phone 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 requirement to participate. (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 often.). 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. This fall, 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 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 fall 2011 plan: a Connector party, with tequila.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Go with the form of communication that will reach the most people now. Parents need help with ongoing resource and information questions. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities.

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 when so many parents weren’t regularly on email. At a multilingual coffee hour, we asked people how to get basic information out to a lot of parents at once. Michael Quan (PHOTO) suggested a hotline as an immediate 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. At the same time, we held a couple of “email nights” to try to get more parents email access (see below).

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. The goal: create a tool that could let you “press 1 for Spanish,” and leave a message too in that language.

Tona, Maria, and Gina came in to record updates from the principal in Spanish, Portuguese, and Creole, and they also translated answers to parents' Frequently Asked Questions that had been collected by the Connectors. [FIRST SET OF FAQS HERE] They recorded their messages by speaking into Seth’s computer (see photo!). We then honed the hotline over the summer, so that translators can record to it from home.

(PHOTO OF MARIA)

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, including toward parents willing to translate it. How to triage this info so that there wasn’t an overwhelming amount to translate? 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. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, 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 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. But if Translators of the Month did put their translations on paper, we figured the same script could go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks) and that regardless, the basic info could also be referenced in Connector calls home.

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 might require more explanation in 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 paid staff for these aspects of school-parent connection.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating 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. Many 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; the PIC later clarified [[this]] LINK TO REGINA’S DOC?). 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, both parents and educators requested interpreters, but they were not actually present in the final meeting for reasons unknown.

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 rather than any lack of bilingualism in the community. Distributing the resource in a cost-effective way is also crucial: 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’s|dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves!

(other details of using human resources effectively for translation and interpretation: interpreters at public meetings need to announce their availability in audible ways! And, if interpreters go to PTA Night to interpret the big meetings, they also need to be on call for impromptu one on one meetings throughout the night between parents and teachers (the Healey principal had interpreters use walkie-talkies for this purpose!)

We decided that in each call home, 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 via email (cc’ing parent). That required -- paid staff.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. 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 staff. In our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that parents couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it.

We pressed for a 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.

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).

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! We now hope to join brainstorming forces with a parent group from Somerville's Welcome Project (housed in the Mystic Housing Development down the hill from the Healey school) that also wants to focus on translation and interpretation in Somerville (one mom in the group is also a Connector).

POST HERE: FINAL CONNECTOR INFRASTRUCTURE DIAGRAM.

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

'''P.S. NEXT STEPS:

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 and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be 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. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See [[Computer Infrastructure.]]

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-14T15:57:16Z

24.60.250.60: /* SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 1: READING NIGHT */

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------
ADD PHOTOS OF CONNECTORS AND VIDEOS OF THE DIAGRAMS, TO BRING THIS ALIVE. (CONSIDER VIDEO INTERVIEWS W/ SOME CONNECTORS TOO!)

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 whose children shared 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 creating a monthly multilingual coffee hour and holding 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 -- and with getting information written in English translated. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused fully 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 school improvements and vice versa.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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. We immediately started talking to other parents about the idea of “OneVille” -- in this case, linking families who shared a pretty divided school -- and a design partnership at the Healey began to sprout!

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. We sat with other parents in the PTA room and talked about what might pull us together. Tracy and Dave, Maria, Jen, Carrie, Consuelo, Michelle, and others started brainstorming a first Reading Night focused on baking words (Tracy, a parent in the hallway’s “Neighborhood” classroom, had a cookie business and her husband Dave worked in a pizza restaurant).

[[Image:Tracy.jpg|thumb|Tracy, PTA and 2011 Healey community council (her cookie business was the focus of our first Reading Night!)]]

In doing the work of holding Reading Nights, we built friendships between us parents that would make a difference in the years to come -- and we encountered a bunch of schoolwide communication issues that would shape our thinking about the “infrastructure” needed at the Healey!

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

To get parents in the hallway out to Reading Nights, 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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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 direct channel-home was 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 two 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. 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 one by one is draining the resources of volunteers, try reaching those clustered in one place -- in this case, kids!

ADD 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. (This required parents who could interpret for others.) In part from listening to parents who ended up taking care of the kids, 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 to share information. We tried to post our reading tips as paper sheets on a hallway bulletin board (we used Google Translate, which garbled some of the words) and we 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 still need to figure out ways to get information to parents if they don’t show up to face-to-face events.

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 organizing parent (Maria) later became the head of the PTA and two others (Tracy and Dave) its vice presidents, and others (Michelle) 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 Tracy’s cookie business -- and hooked her up to a reporter in the Boston Globe for press!

We burned out on Reading Night after holding about six of them that year, because it took too much face to face work to create materials from scratch; we sort of reached the outer limit of volunteer time and energy. We also realized that since we weren’t experts on reading, it was more effective for us to focus on venues for gathering parents to talk, period, than on guiding other parents in the content of teaching reading. We also didn’t yet know how to “seed” events so they would replicate without us. But we knew we had created an important space for parents to gather together -- and the friendships we made carried us through our next innovations.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 2: MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR==

While designing Reading Nights, we also 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, and English-speaking parents almost always dominated the conversation.

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. We thought about having language-specific coffee hours but the principal asked for a combined coffee hour, which in the end offered its own benefit -- valuing multilingualism. In the multilingual coffee hour, parents voluntarily translated for other parents wanting to ask questions and hear information from the principal. Enjoying the sound of multiple languages became part of the event.

[JPEG HERE OF COFFEE HR INVITE]]

The experience quickly clued us into a key local resource:

'''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? ANA, CAN YOU PLAN TO GET THIS?)

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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” dialogues to facilitate conversation about this choice. [[link to OV 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 - said they wanted a more rigorous learning experience for their children.

In the parent dialogue work, we also realized again some structural barriers of communication that held back many parents from 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 on the upcoming decision, we realized that many parents – 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.

'''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 EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK==

In the cafeteria one morning in fall 2010, Consuelo and Mica were sitting with several parents from the PTA (Maria and others), talking about how to improve schoolwide communication. Consuelo, whose phone was constantly ringing with calls from Spanish-speaking parents with 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."

[[LINK TO A JPEG OF THIS DIAGRAM IF MICA CAN FIND IT!]]

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: many Healey parents often spoke of 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 had 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.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Lots of parents were very ready to contribute to 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: 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. While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in!

Even as one focus was getting information “out” to all parents, a first question of the Connector project 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 confusing 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 this case, the loop of parent complaint/school response/issue resolution -- a loop affecting every school in the country -- did not go smoothly: the principal’s emails didn’t fully describe his actual efforts to investigate, leaving her uninformed, while she sent a public letter to officials that further challenged a trusting relationship. To all 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 reporting back what was going on. But this “loop” couldn’t overburden 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 supporting communication with immigrant parents, who seemed the most blocked from information flow in both directions. And that meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

A related concern was logistical: how would volunteers connect to a reasonably sized group of parents? Should they just post 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.

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

As a team of Connectors, 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 (robocalls, listserv, backpack handouts) or create new simple tools for parent outreach, and what to do with parent issues that came back “in.”

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, 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 events -- 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. (Some of our answering machines still cut the messages off after English!). Somerville’s call-home robocall system, ConnectEd, typically was used by principals who asked Parent Info Center staff to record each translated version. One Connector, Lupe, had suggested we “flip” that typical script in two ways: we’d ask a parent to record a message targeted directly to speakers of a single language. It turned out that ConnectEd could do this and the principal, Jay DeFalco, was excited to try it. 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 a 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 event (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 people shared was to make all parents feel more comfortable approaching school staff themselves to ask questions. But we also knew that parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place and we also knew that parents approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic 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), we modified a district form for reporting bullying incidents and created this Googleform (LINK TO IT OR SHOW JPEG?) for Connectors (and Connector coordinator/principal) to use to keep tabs on parent calls. We edited it together, 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 still advising Connectors to tell non English-speaking parents to approach English-speaking staff to share their needs and arrange interpreters!

We were heading toward understanding the need for “systems” for info flow and translation 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 weeks 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 parents’ 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 of approved parent numbers 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 from 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?

But if unaddressed, what do such barriers to parent-parent contact mean? Children unable to be invited to birthday parties or playdates; parents who can’t be invited personally to gettogethers or hear important explanations of school issues; missed opportunities to pull parents together as partners. It’s just a basic tension.

'''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.

All this is an important example of the need for infrastructure to normalize communications between school and home. One example is an official form allowing parents to easily offer permission to have a Connector, at the beginning of the year.

'''COMMUNICATION/IMPLEMENTATION AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

As we started to link Connectors to parents and make calls, we may have turned off a few Connectors by immediately using technology in our own infrastructure to communicate. For example, at the end of one face-to-face meeting we decided that Connectors might want to “get assigned” parents with whom they had a prior personal relationship, 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 phone 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 requirement to participate. (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 often.). 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. This fall, 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 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 fall 2011 plan: a Connector party, with tequila.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Go with the form of communication that will reach the most people now. Parents need help with ongoing resource and information questions. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities.

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 when so many parents weren’t regularly on email. At a multilingual coffee hour, we asked people how to get basic information out to a lot of parents at once. Michael Quan (PHOTO) suggested a hotline as an immediate 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. At the same time, we held a couple of “email nights” to try to get more parents email access (see below).

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. The goal: create a tool that could let you “press 1 for Spanish,” and leave a message too in that language.

Tona, Maria, and Gina came in to record updates from the principal in Spanish, Portuguese, and Creole, and they also translated answers to parents' Frequently Asked Questions that had been collected by the Connectors. [FIRST SET OF FAQS HERE] They recorded their messages by speaking into Seth’s computer (see photo!). We then honed the hotline over the summer, so that translators can record to it from home.

(PHOTO OF MARIA)

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, including toward parents willing to translate it. How to triage this info so that there wasn’t an overwhelming amount to translate? 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. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, 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 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. But if Translators of the Month did put their translations on paper, we figured the same script could go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks) and that regardless, the basic info could also be referenced in Connector calls home.

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 might require more explanation in 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 paid staff for these aspects of school-parent connection.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating 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. Many 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; the PIC later clarified [[this]] LINK TO REGINA’S DOC?). 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, both parents and educators requested interpreters, but they were not actually present in the final meeting for reasons unknown.

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 rather than any lack of bilingualism in the community. Distributing the resource in a cost-effective way is also crucial: 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’s|dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves!

(other details of using human resources effectively for translation and interpretation: interpreters at public meetings need to announce their availability in audible ways! And, if interpreters go to PTA Night to interpret the big meetings, they also need to be on call for impromptu one on one meetings throughout the night between parents and teachers (the Healey principal had interpreters use walkie-talkies for this purpose!)

We decided that in each call home, 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 via email (cc’ing parent). That required -- paid staff.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. 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 staff. In our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that parents couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it.

We pressed for a 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.

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).

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! We now hope to join brainstorming forces with a parent group from Somerville's Welcome Project (housed in the Mystic Housing Development down the hill from the Healey school) that also wants to focus on translation and interpretation in Somerville (one mom in the group is also a Connector).

POST HERE: FINAL CONNECTOR INFRASTRUCTURE DIAGRAM.

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

'''P.S. NEXT STEPS:

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 and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be 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. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See [[Computer Infrastructure.]]

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-14T15:56:40Z

24.60.250.60: /* SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 1: READING NIGHT */

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------
ADD PHOTOS OF CONNECTORS AND VIDEOS OF THE DIAGRAMS, TO BRING THIS ALIVE. (CONSIDER VIDEO INTERVIEWS W/ SOME CONNECTORS TOO!)

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 whose children shared 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 creating a monthly multilingual coffee hour and holding 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 -- and with getting information written in English translated. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused fully 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 school improvements and vice versa.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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. We immediately started talking to other parents about the idea of “OneVille” -- in this case, linking families who shared a pretty divided school -- and a design partnership at the Healey began to sprout!

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. We sat with other parents in the PTA room and talked about what might pull us together. Tracy and Dave, Maria, Jen, Carrie, Consuelo, Michelle, and others started brainstorming a first Reading Night focused on baking words (Tracy, a parent in the hallway’s “Neighborhood” classroom, had a cookie business and her husband Dave worked in a pizza restaurant).

[[Image:Tracy.jpg|thumb|Tracy, PTA and 2011 Healey community council (her cookie business was the focus of our first Reading Night!)]]

In doing the work of holding Reading Nights, we built friendships between us parents that would make a difference in the years to come -- and we encountered a bunch of schoolwide communication issues that would shape our thinking about the “infrastructure” needed at the Healey!

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

To get parents in the hallway out to Reading Nights, 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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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 direct channel-home was 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 two 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. 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 one by one is draining the resources of volunteers, try reaching those clustered in one place -- in this case, kids!

ADD 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. (This required parents who could interpret for others.) In part from listening to parents who ended up taking care of the kids, 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 to share information. We tried to post our reading tips as paper sheets on a hallway bulletin board (we used Google Translate, which garbled some of the words) and we 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 still need to figure out ways to get information to parents if they don’t show up to face-to-face events.

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 organizing parent (Maria) later became the head of the PTA and two others (Tracy and Dave) its vice presidents, and others (Michelle) 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 Tracy’s cookie business -- and hooked her up to a reporter in the Boston Globe for press!

[[Image:Dave.jpg|thumb|multilingual coffee hour enthusiast and 2011 PTA president]]

We burned out on Reading Night after holding about six of them that year, because it took too much face to face work to create materials from scratch; we sort of reached the outer limit of volunteer time and energy. We also realized that since we weren’t experts on reading, it was more effective for us to focus on venues for gathering parents to talk, period, than on guiding other parents in the content of teaching reading. We also didn’t yet know how to “seed” events so they would replicate without us. But we knew we had created an important space for parents to gather together -- and the friendships we made carried us through our next innovations.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 2: MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR==

While designing Reading Nights, we also 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, and English-speaking parents almost always dominated the conversation.

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. We thought about having language-specific coffee hours but the principal asked for a combined coffee hour, which in the end offered its own benefit -- valuing multilingualism. In the multilingual coffee hour, parents voluntarily translated for other parents wanting to ask questions and hear information from the principal. Enjoying the sound of multiple languages became part of the event.

[JPEG HERE OF COFFEE HR INVITE]]

The experience quickly clued us into a key local resource:

'''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? ANA, CAN YOU PLAN TO GET THIS?)

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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” dialogues to facilitate conversation about this choice. [[link to OV 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 - said they wanted a more rigorous learning experience for their children.

In the parent dialogue work, we also realized again some structural barriers of communication that held back many parents from 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 on the upcoming decision, we realized that many parents – 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.

'''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 EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK==

In the cafeteria one morning in fall 2010, Consuelo and Mica were sitting with several parents from the PTA (Maria and others), talking about how to improve schoolwide communication. Consuelo, whose phone was constantly ringing with calls from Spanish-speaking parents with 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."

[[LINK TO A JPEG OF THIS DIAGRAM IF MICA CAN FIND IT!]]

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: many Healey parents often spoke of 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 had 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.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Lots of parents were very ready to contribute to 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: 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. While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in!

Even as one focus was getting information “out” to all parents, a first question of the Connector project 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 confusing 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 this case, the loop of parent complaint/school response/issue resolution -- a loop affecting every school in the country -- did not go smoothly: the principal’s emails didn’t fully describe his actual efforts to investigate, leaving her uninformed, while she sent a public letter to officials that further challenged a trusting relationship. To all 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 reporting back what was going on. But this “loop” couldn’t overburden 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 supporting communication with immigrant parents, who seemed the most blocked from information flow in both directions. And that meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

A related concern was logistical: how would volunteers connect to a reasonably sized group of parents? Should they just post 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.

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

As a team of Connectors, 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 (robocalls, listserv, backpack handouts) or create new simple tools for parent outreach, and what to do with parent issues that came back “in.”

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, 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 events -- 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. (Some of our answering machines still cut the messages off after English!). Somerville’s call-home robocall system, ConnectEd, typically was used by principals who asked Parent Info Center staff to record each translated version. One Connector, Lupe, had suggested we “flip” that typical script in two ways: we’d ask a parent to record a message targeted directly to speakers of a single language. It turned out that ConnectEd could do this and the principal, Jay DeFalco, was excited to try it. 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 a 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 event (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 people shared was to make all parents feel more comfortable approaching school staff themselves to ask questions. But we also knew that parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place and we also knew that parents approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic 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), we modified a district form for reporting bullying incidents and created this Googleform (LINK TO IT OR SHOW JPEG?) for Connectors (and Connector coordinator/principal) to use to keep tabs on parent calls. We edited it together, 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 still advising Connectors to tell non English-speaking parents to approach English-speaking staff to share their needs and arrange interpreters!

We were heading toward understanding the need for “systems” for info flow and translation 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 weeks 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 parents’ 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 of approved parent numbers 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 from 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?

But if unaddressed, what do such barriers to parent-parent contact mean? Children unable to be invited to birthday parties or playdates; parents who can’t be invited personally to gettogethers or hear important explanations of school issues; missed opportunities to pull parents together as partners. It’s just a basic tension.

'''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.

All this is an important example of the need for infrastructure to normalize communications between school and home. One example is an official form allowing parents to easily offer permission to have a Connector, at the beginning of the year.

'''COMMUNICATION/IMPLEMENTATION AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

As we started to link Connectors to parents and make calls, we may have turned off a few Connectors by immediately using technology in our own infrastructure to communicate. For example, at the end of one face-to-face meeting we decided that Connectors might want to “get assigned” parents with whom they had a prior personal relationship, 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 phone 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 requirement to participate. (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 often.). 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. This fall, 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 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 fall 2011 plan: a Connector party, with tequila.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Go with the form of communication that will reach the most people now. Parents need help with ongoing resource and information questions. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities.

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 when so many parents weren’t regularly on email. At a multilingual coffee hour, we asked people how to get basic information out to a lot of parents at once. Michael Quan (PHOTO) suggested a hotline as an immediate 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. At the same time, we held a couple of “email nights” to try to get more parents email access (see below).

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. The goal: create a tool that could let you “press 1 for Spanish,” and leave a message too in that language.

Tona, Maria, and Gina came in to record updates from the principal in Spanish, Portuguese, and Creole, and they also translated answers to parents' Frequently Asked Questions that had been collected by the Connectors. [FIRST SET OF FAQS HERE] They recorded their messages by speaking into Seth’s computer (see photo!). We then honed the hotline over the summer, so that translators can record to it from home.

(PHOTO OF MARIA)

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, including toward parents willing to translate it. How to triage this info so that there wasn’t an overwhelming amount to translate? 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. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, 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 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. But if Translators of the Month did put their translations on paper, we figured the same script could go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks) and that regardless, the basic info could also be referenced in Connector calls home.

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 might require more explanation in 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 paid staff for these aspects of school-parent connection.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating 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. Many 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; the PIC later clarified [[this]] LINK TO REGINA’S DOC?). 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, both parents and educators requested interpreters, but they were not actually present in the final meeting for reasons unknown.

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 rather than any lack of bilingualism in the community. Distributing the resource in a cost-effective way is also crucial: 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’s|dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves!

(other details of using human resources effectively for translation and interpretation: interpreters at public meetings need to announce their availability in audible ways! And, if interpreters go to PTA Night to interpret the big meetings, they also need to be on call for impromptu one on one meetings throughout the night between parents and teachers (the Healey principal had interpreters use walkie-talkies for this purpose!)

We decided that in each call home, 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 via email (cc’ing parent). That required -- paid staff.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. 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 staff. In our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that parents couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it.

We pressed for a 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.

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).

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! We now hope to join brainstorming forces with a parent group from Somerville's Welcome Project (housed in the Mystic Housing Development down the hill from the Healey school) that also wants to focus on translation and interpretation in Somerville (one mom in the group is also a Connector).

POST HERE: FINAL CONNECTOR INFRASTRUCTURE DIAGRAM.

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

'''P.S. NEXT STEPS:

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 and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be 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. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See [[Computer Infrastructure.]]

Schoolwide communication toolkit

2011-08-11T19:17:46Z

24.60.250.60:

'''Ensuring that everyone in a school can partner in student success requires overcoming structural barriers to communication between the families who share a school, and the school!

With parents, teachers, staff, and administrators at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, we've been working toward a toolkit of tools and strategies for schoolwide communication that reaches all families across lines of language, income, background, and tech access/training.

In particular, we've been working on improving the [["infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school|"infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a multilingual school.]] We've been developing a [[Parent connector network]], where bilingual parents use phones, [[Google forms]], and a [[hotline]] we made, to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families. A [[multilingual coffee hour]] is part of the infrastructure too!

Other tools include a [[wiki]] for school reform notes, and our partners in the PTA are beginning to work on training parents on email and getting everyone on a common listserv (one program within the school has long used a listserv successfully).

We began this work by holding Reading Nights and parent dialogues at the Healey in 2009-10.

'''We've decided to describe our full set of schoolwide communication efforts on the [[Parent Connector Network]] page, since that was the main outcome of our 2009-11 efforts. In that Network, all the work we had been doing for two years came together!

Schoolwide communication toolkit

2011-08-11T19:17:01Z

24.60.250.60:

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-11T19:16:22Z

24.60.250.60:

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one! We’ve also made a video of our model [[here]], which we'll continue to test and tweak in fall 2011.

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

-------
Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

Today, systems for getting information to all families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – as long as the tech is basic and parents and staff are shown how to use it. In multilingual schools, people also need to organize to tap a key local resource: bilingualism. Such structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. (In fact, we've learned that nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents!)

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. 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 more explanation.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much.

A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents (in ways that also help unite the school), and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff.

In particular, our final aha of the year was that communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?
-------------------
'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;

:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents use phones, Google forms, and the open source hotline to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families;

:c) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts. [[link here to instructions on starting and using Googledocs. Jedd, can you find these translated? Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?]])

We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.

As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short [[VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?]]

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: [[Regina’s sheet here??]].

In our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it [[SHOW PHOTO]]. Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, we xxxxx. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?

:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?

:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?

:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-11T19:16:10Z

24.60.250.60:

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one! We’ve also made a video of our model [[here]], which we'll continue to test and tweak in fall 2011.

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

-------
Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

Today, systems for getting information to all families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – as long as the tech is basic and parents and staff are shown how to use it. In multilingual schools, people also need to organize to tap a key local resource: bilingualism. Such structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. (In fact, we've learned that nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents!)

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. 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 more explanation.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much.

A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents (in ways that also help unite the school), and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff.

In particular, our final aha of the year was that communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?
-------------------
'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;

:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents use phones, Google forms, and the open source hotline to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families;

:c) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts. [[link here to instructions on starting and using Googledocs. Jedd, can you find these translated? Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?]])

We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.

As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short [[VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?]]

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: [[Regina’s sheet here??]].

In our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it [[SHOW PHOTO]]. Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, we xxxxx. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?

:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?

:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?

:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-08-11T19:15:48Z

24.60.250.60:

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|The joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

''Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)
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Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also awesome young people, and great research partners!

So far, we have all been testing private texting between teachers and students and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts (with students’ advance, overall permission), to see if texting was helpful to students and teachers. GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.

'''Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that texts were supporting them to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Texting teachers and students are also having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. Teachers and students said they were experiencing greater trust and strengthened relationship. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

Most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours.
But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age: as Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

In Phase 1, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via rapid group texting.

We’ve augmented Google Voice with group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). Before we work to create any other open source texting tools, we’re going to see if group texting even works for people: we’ll use xxx, a software that xxx. So, in fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting and start teacher-full class texting with GoogleVoice, and we’ll all test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
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In the texting pilot, we wanted to enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person about how he/she was doing personally and academically, and what supports might enable his/her success (from both the students' and stakeholders' perspectives). Our vision was to support an entire “team” in rapid communication. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll add next “team” members in fall 2011!

There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. Increasingly, people don’t have (or answer!) home phones. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

It is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us connected and available. Texting and other mobile text based communications give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:
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[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

===Basic History===

The groundwork needed to support the current work.
-------
Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ ideas, interests and efforts.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And we came to ask: how might texting support needed communications?

We started working on a tech strategy for ongoing youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t attractive enough to use if it wasn’t social enough yet! Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/) to check in generally with all their local and online friends, instead of use our private social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal support communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these (what we came to call a “separate place to go”) without a critical mass of interested members. (One successful exception: students were immediately interested in creating “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students immediately grabbed the chance to speak, even though we didn’t have people lined up to watch! [LINK TO VIDEO HERE!]). This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about students’ learning styles and interests could get students “flowing” in typing about their learning online.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new afterschool club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, the “separate place to go” didn’t work: there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, some of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough compelling online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site. (Again, the eportfolio project may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

1) Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help. One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

2) Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

3) Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people. For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out most with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''Uche: ADD GRAPHIC HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY

Also, the students said they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that texting was the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over text, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big aha came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation in early fall 2010 where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA/TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than assemble entire texting “teams” for each student, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. Uche set Mo and Ted up with Google Voice (see “Technical How-To’s” below). In January 2011, Mo and Ted and Uche/Mica held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 a.m. and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some series of communications made a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week max) for their time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal ‘research day,’ and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention later, logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school; Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Texting/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
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We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting and have dozens of students and more teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in exploring texting with more of his teachers. And both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for serious school support that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We’re all set to test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

-------
We want to repeat two core “ahas” we stated earlier:

'''Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

Texting of course can’t replace other needed youth supports. But it can definitely help. At our April Research Day at Harvard, students noted that texts could get a student to come in on time; to focus on his classes; even to care. Obens summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting got him to school, but couldn’t keep him focused in class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. One student made clear that student-teacher texting was a start, but linking in other people in her life was crucial too: “She has been building a better relationship w/ Ted via texting. Dad doesn't have a phone, she says, and she doesn't want Ted texting him. Dad doesn't text, but she does seem to lean on him for some support. Girlfriends not helpful to her for graduation she says. She doesn't know how to apply to college, either. No guidance counselor??” To support students fully, it often felt necessary to tell person A about an issue facing person B. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is still to test texting “teams.” (see below!)

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?
-------------------
The principal is interested in expanding teams to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some were newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

The principal felt that for some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful. Interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team, he thought.

When we asked students who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting. Real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. So, we’re going to go with youth-constructed teams as planned and we’ll see where they take it.

'''Next COMMUNICATION QUESTION: Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not?

Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both? He wants to honor the kids’ sense of privacy.”

'''This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting. Who needs to share which information with whom on the “team,” and can a group texting tool support a complex “team” conversation?

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
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SETH AND UCHE ADD HERE

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice: Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without incurring texting charges. Teachers can also view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can also choose to have the service forward any texts received to their phones’ regular text messaging accounts. Or, they can check those messages directly on their phones via smartphone apps.

Google Voice also provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement.

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. (SETH EXPLAIN HERE?)

Using the Twilio API, Seth then created a many to many group “chat” tool that we came over time to call a “reply to all” tool. Technologically, it was hard for Seth to quickly create a tool where people could choose to text some in the “team” but not others. A student already noted that getting your own text back in group chat felt a bit weird. Kinks to be worked out! In the meantime, before we seriously tweak an open source version, we’ll test xxx software just to see if group texting even works in personal terms!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
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Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

:-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

:-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Texting/ahas

2011-08-11T15:16:35Z

24.60.250.60:

Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.
We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!
-----------------------

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

Do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth” medium. Also, the sort of support texting could offer immediately seems particularly personal, because it really feels like a private “tube” between two people. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own “personal lives.”

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot explicitly with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

But in some ways, FC/NW is a special school: all teachers work in what Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles; they work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

Over time, our overall COMMUNICATION AHA would be about the benefits of texting for student-teacher relationship. But we want to tell you how we got there! Below is a discussion of the “communication ahas” we had throughout the pilot. We taped a lot of our conversations and so we talk about ourselves in the third person (Ted and Mo, Mica and Uche)

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.===

In February, Ted got last minute info in a staff meeting that a ski trip was available to a new student he’d recently met and had been helping with math. The “kid’s voicemail was full.” So, Ted texted the student using Google Voice, to tell him to bring needed info and a signed permission slip the next day. The student’s response? “Lots of exclamation points, ‘thank you,’” Ted said; there was now a “high level of communication” with the student. The exchange happened “in an 18 hour turnout” and “allowed us to make a strong connection right when he got to the school.”

:Me: Bring in your insurance info tomorrow, the company and your policy number, with 10 bucks, yor going skiing thursday! 3:23 PM
:Student: Thank you soo much ted! i will .. ill have it all tomarrow! 4:12 PM
:Me: Are you going to school tomorrow? 6:59 PM
:Student: Yea .. deffintly 9:36 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.===

One student said that he lacked a home phone, so texting helped: “Sometimes they call your house when there’s no school, but I don’t have a house phone. They might call my mom but she never picks up. If he (Ted) hadn’t texted me (about the snow day), I wouldn’t have woken up for school.”

In another case, a student who had been kicked out of school texted Ted to find out what his situation was and whether he faced expulsion.

And here’s an e.g. of texting with Mo that helped when a student was literally absent from school:

:Me: Worried about you!! 8:15 PM
:Student: im feeling much better now I will deff see u tmr (: 8:16 PM
:Me: Good we miss you!! Can mom right a note for the last 2 days 8:17 PM
:Student: she called [School admininstrator] today telling him I was out sick not truent 8:18 PM :Me: Good..see you tomorrow..and glad your feeling better!! 8:19 PM
:Student: thanks 8:24 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.===

In early March, Uche and Mica got together with Mo and Ted and looked at the GoogleVoice record of all the texts. Our plan: to “pull out examples of texts that you find interesting,” to “label the “type” of communication that occurred,” and to “provide any evidence of any text’s effects on any student’s achievement/motivation/relationship with you.”

We noted how many different school-related subjects a teacher and student could text about! So far, Mo had primarily been texting with students for wakeup calls, paperwork reminders, discussions of personal updates, updates on other students that students knew about, health check-ins, and discussions of absence. She bantered a lot with the students, too. We laughed often in the pilot about the number of exclamation points Mo tended to use in her texts!!!!!!!!

Ted had reviewed his own Google Voice record and “broke it up into categories – who talks to who about what.” “(There’s) a cluster about being on time. Another about dropout prevention, kids who haven’t been to school in a long time, what can we do to transition you out of here easier. And, checkins w/ students about miscellaneous—academics, work, home, if they’re heading toward that dropout prevention category . . . Also snow days, field trips, some kids need to bring attire for electives (gym attire, skates, something they may need for the next day). On being on time, staying a full day – if kids walk out I remind them about the day before. . . . And also, jobs. Kids that want jobs.”

Ted was texting with students about absences and lateness; afterschool activity (he coached a boxing club and led a lot of trips); and for personal checkins, which then often considered academic issues. “New electives, new teachers, new schedules – some confirmations on preparations for the next day – are we going skating, to boxing club tomorrow, to bring in the right clothes.” Students were checking in with him via text about academic issues like credits, the semester change, and their discipline records. One student had texted him to ask how he was doing after a fraught interaction, and how his weekend went. A few students had texted him for help in class. In some cases he was strongly pushing young people to attend class or keep up their motivation via text. The other texts Ted had been sending in February were “more like routine -- no school, a snowstorm, ‘you haven’t been in school where are ya’ type stuff. Some kids don’t respond to those at all, some kids do,” he said.

Neither teacher was fielding detailed questions about schoolwork via text. Instead, they were texting more about logistics, reminders, updates, absence explanations, and more -- and in the process, building relationships. As we read all these texts, Ted and Mo expressed surprise and satisfaction with “the language that the kids are using to thank (them)…It’s refreshing to know that they have that capability.” Some students expressed gratitude and other emotions through their texts that Ted and Mo hadn’t experienced with them in the classroom.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.===

If you judged texting by the immediate consequences of a given text, it could sometimes look unsuccessful. Ted said in February that the previous week, a doctor showed up at school for testing one of his students, but “the kid didn’t show up for school that day.” Ted texted the student at 10 (the appointment was scheduled for 9:00-11:00); “he texted me right back w/ what sounded like a confirmation that he was coming but then didn’t come. So that was almost a success story but not.”

Mo noted that students she texted to wake up still came late. But, the same students were using text to contact her with serious support needs, even during drug rehab placements. Mo was using her texting to support one young person with depression, so that the student eventually came in to school.

Mo had a major aha about texting in March: “Success for a depressed student in a sense is the engagement itself. Even having this exchange.” And as Ted said earlier in the year, “In some ways, it comes down to someone paying attention to them.” As Mo explained of one text she sent to a student in March, “I wanted to make her feel good before she went to bed.” And Mo reported in March that she had this talk with a student the previous day:

"I just wanna make sure you’re ok – when I text you I wanna know you’re ok, safe. We worry about you!” He had responded, “I know you guys do, I will definitely write you something.”

Over and over in the pilot, we talked about how texts showed not just connection but true caring. Students pointed out a bunch of examples on our April Research Day:

:-Mo’s text to a student: “worried about you.” “It shows that she really cares,” Shelia explained.
:-“You had a bad day yesterday”: a particularly caring teacher “check-in.”
:-“you made 1 day last week.” “I like the encouragement,” said one student.
:-“you’re a smart kid.” “That’s really nice because some kids might feel doubt and don’t get many compliments from people,” another student said.
:-Mo pointed out that one student had asked Ted “how was your weekend.”

Shelia pointed out that overall, the texts could build relationship and simultaneously, the motivation to try. “You need to know [teachers] care in order to do stuff. Otherwise what’s the point in trying. If a person is ‘I’m here for you’ – you feel someone else cares, I should care too.”

Again, texts built up consequences over time: in the texts below, the youth was still not in school, but a relationship was being built to get him in the next time. Note the three quick appreciative texts back after a compliment, which many students pointed out on Research Day:

:Me: Hey is your mom coming in 8:20 AM
:Student: Yah bro waiting for her that's y I ain't in school my G G=grandma lmao ur old 8:21 AM :Me: Not funny....lol 8:23 AM
:Student: Ii hate the fact u don't apritiate my jokes 8:24 AM
:Student: -_- 8:24 AM
:Me: But I appreciate you:-) 8:26 AM
:Student: Ahhh good made my morning 8:31 AM
:Student: =) 8:32 AM
:Student: Lol jk jk idc 8:32 AM
:Me: Awwwww 8:33 AM

Similarly, in the texts below it was of course not the actual medical help Ted offered via text that could be supportive to the student, but the caring itself:

:Hey I dont think im going to come to school tomorw im wicked sick 7:19 PM
:Have a glass of o.j. and drink water often. Get some rest, and you'll feel great in the morning, ready for school 7:44 PM
:Ive been doing that all day and it hasnt helped one bit 7:58 PM
:Lets have a good full 1/2 day tomorrow 9:31 PM
:Idont know if im goin to school tomorrow 9:46 PM
:You haven't been putting consecutive full days together, push yourself to improve, you can do it! 9:49 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.===

Just as in face to face conversation, there’s no either/or.

Here’s an exchange that went from a basic schedule update, to a communication about stickers (Somerville “Villen” gear), to fundamental questions about school deadlines:

:Me: No school tomorrow 7:09 PM
:Student: -_- aww .... Hey do you have any villen stickers by any chance :) jw 7:11 PM
:Me: Haha, no 7:12 PM
:Student: Aww :( .... I wish there was school tommorrow .... Hey do you think the school will extend the add drop day .... Like give us another week for add drop o 7:16 PM
:Student: r no...??? Jw 7:16 PM
:Me: Not sure 7:16 PM
:Student: Okaii well I hope you have a nice day or two off :) 7:17 PM
:Me: Thanks you too 7:19 PM
:Student: Ill try -_- ..... :) 7:20 PM

Communications that started about serious school status questions could then turn into banter that was both joking and academically important. The exchanges below happened over several days:

:Student: Ted do u kn how long I am suspened for 9:41 PM
:Me: [Principal] wanted to have a meeting this week, I will call you tomorrow, sorry so late 10:48 PM
:Student: No I kn that I just need to kn wen is the meeting 10:49 PM
:Student: Thow 10:54 PM

:Me: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM
:Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM
:Me: Use it! 3:27 PM
:Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

Another text exchange between Ted and a student mixed banter and serious stuff:

:X: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM
:Me: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM
:Me: Hurry up! 7:49 AM
:X: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM
:Me: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM
:X: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM
:Me: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM
:X: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM
:X: Noo! almost closest ive been! 7:27 AM
:Me: Good try though, we both have some studying to do over vacation 7:28 AM
:X: thanks and i know my eyes will be glued to that rmv book 7:29 AM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.===

Several students texted Ted about sports events: he said even one student (above with "silly goose") who had been asked to leave school a few months earlier “texted me after the Lakers beat the Celtics last week, at 10:30 pm”:

:Student: Lol wat just happend to ur celtics 10:48 PM
:Me: Ha 10:57 PM

When a HGSE student asked one of Ted’s students (who had not been responding to Ted’s texts) about whether texting with teachers was useful, the student suggested that he “finds (them) useful, but I just don’t want to text back.” But, he added, he’d like to hear from Ted over the weekend once in a while, even if just to see “how his weekend was going.” The student also wanted to know more about Ted outside of school: for example, “is he working anywhere else, or is he just a teacher?” Talking about this non school-related stuff, the student claimed, would “make their relationship grow even stronger.”

Many students made similar statements in private interviews and group discussions. Obens, another of Ted’s students, summed up the sentiment in our April Research Day: “When you’re texting you feel like you’re closer to the teacher.” Ted agreed with Obens: “(Texting) definitely strengthens our face to face, day to day relationships.”

“Have good conversations,” Yose advised other teachers considering texting with students as we ended our April Research Day. “Like don’t just talk about school. Also talk about how your day’s going, stuff like that. Don’t just keep it about school.”

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to a more informed face to face conversation.===

For example, Ted texted a student this:

Me: I heard you had a bad afternoon at school. Check in first thing tomorrow 7:03 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!===

In our March conversation, we realized that it actually could be very useful to a teacher to have an entire “relationship” with a young person documented via texting.

For example, Ted’s first group text that winter prompted this response from a student who at first did not text at all with Ted:

:Me: A reminder that tonight is Parent-Teacher night at NW/FC. Please notify your loved one at home that teachers are at school to meet them from 6:30-7:45pm.
:9:05 AM Student: O please lol 9:10 AM

Through looking at Ted’s texts in March, Ted and Mo realized that the student had built a texting and face to face relationship trusting enough that she could reveal serious personal struggles to Ted. In March, this student had texted Ted about a physical argument with someone; via text, Ted “said we could talk later [in person], and we did.” “She never told me that,” said Mo, adding that it showed real growth in the student-teacher relationship “That she could share something so big, with you, that she trusts you so much that she could tell you that.”

Teachers could share texts to catalyze student support in moments of crisis: In several other cases, Mo had shown texts with a depressed or self-destructive student to the principal, to say “look, I’m really worried.”

As Ted put it, documenting a relationship helped in less crucial cases as well:

“When I’m texting a kid I creep back up to the history to see what concerns have come up in the past – that’s helpful for me, just so I can keep it all together, keep track. To remind myself – that I would like to help them more, talk to them more frequently.” Shelia agreed on our April Research Day that texts kept a relationship around with you, for later viewing. “With a phone call, it’s out of your head,” Shelia explained. “With a text message it’s still there when you turn on your phone – it still reminds you. You have to delete it if you don’t want it – it’s there to remind you.”

Since texts were always “there to remind you,” reviewing a relationship could be distressing too, of course: later in the pilot, Ted would also point out that it became a burden to look back at exchanges that were emotionally complicated. Sometimes, he said, you just wanted to start clean with a student the next day!

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.===

Mo and Ted agreed that the OneVille Project’s texting pilot made student-teacher texting seem normal and acceptable and so, allowed for student-teacher relationships to form faster. In the past, for example, Ted probably would not have asked a new student for his texting number so quickly. As Mo put it, “in the past I would wait until I developed a relationship w/ the kid and then get his texting number. I would have waited to overhear a conversation about texting, then say, ‘oh, you text? You don’t have my number!’ and then, start texting.”

Still, Ted finished our Research Day arguing that texting partners then had to “try” a little bit: “It’s up to both people to enhance the texting relationship. If the student is just responding “ok” or “yes” or “no,” that doesn’t allow the texting relationship to develop and to go towards communications that aren’t just ‘be on time.’”

===COMMUNICATION AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”===

Shelia and Mo had that aha on Research Day when looking again at Ted’s text “you need to be in school way more my friend.” Others noted on Research Day that students felt particularly comfortable with the medium of texting:

“Some people might feel more comfortable saying it via texting more than face to face --- because in person you might feel shy, awkward and not know what to say back,” a student said.
“I’d rather text my parents than call them,” a student added.

We noted many times over the year that texting could also handle many “styles” of communication. Ted noted in March that, “Mo is more of a conversationalist with the way she is texting – mine are more announcement style, school 8 a.m. tomorrow, don’t forget boxing tomorrow, stuff they don’t have to respond to. I do that to protect myself a little bit – I don’t want to burden them or feel like I’m waiting for a response from them.” Mo added, “more an FYI type of thing.” Ted agreed: “if they have a follow up they text me back.” (Still, Ted later received and sent many joking texts as well, and like Mo, he followed up personally with many a student over the course of the pilot.)

Ironically, even while other teachers wary of texting’s writing style had suggested that the “poor grammar” of texting should make it off-limits to teachers, Ted noted in March that texting could immediately allow more “words” to be exchanged between student and teacher, rather than less: “One word answers [in person] with teenagers are more typical,” but via texting, “This is not one word answers. . .it’s better than “huh.” As Uche put it, “it takes more effort to text than to talk.” Ted added: “even more than they know they are giving – it might seem mindless, just chatting, and next thing you’re their friend!”

By late spring, when Mica asked Ted what his response would be “to a teacher who might say ‘banter’ or misspellings that happen via text are a problem for education,” Ted had this to say, though not all teachers would agree:

“Lighten up. Anyone who does text is probably aware that the spellings and capitalization and punctuation are going to be all over the place. So we might need to say, against fear of this tech, ‘get used to this -- this is not going anywhere, this is what people are doing.’ It’s almost unhealthy to fear this at this point; this is where we are going. If you want the perfect sentences, do that in an English class, but that’s not what we’re trying to do.”

===COMMUNICATION AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.===

Pointing out uses of humor in the texts, Yose made another point about how texting could add to student-teacher relationships: people could communicate even if a student was in a bad mood. A face to face conversation might end with the student “shouting” out of anger, unable to help it; with texting, you could “be mad” and still “send a funny text.” With texting, you could show the recipient the “emotions” you wanted them to see, and not necessarily what you felt.

Another student elaborated from across the room: with texting, you could overcome the “intimidation” of possible “rejection” by the other person, by sending lighthearted texts across the private channel that did not have to be responded to immediately. Emotion was “easier to handle” via texts, another student said.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Politeness and respect while texting! Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.===

On our April Research Day at Harvard, students were immediately perceptive about another “pattern in the data”: students and teachers were noticeably polite to each other, texting “thanks and you’re welcome” after texts about permission slips, reminders, and personal check-ins on grades or life. “The kids haven’t been crossing boundaries in any way – no one has been inappropriate,” Mo said that day.

VIDEO OF MO HERE FROM RESEARCH DAY?

Obens explained that for texting to be successful, students had to “keep it private, clean, respectful, stuff like that.” When pushed to define respect, he suggested that students should “give the teacher the same respect you’d give them in school. Don’t think that outside you should act different.”

Ted had commented in our March review of texts on the “language the students are using in thanking us – they’re receptive to positive talk that they don’t do verbally with you.” In person, he added, students didn’t necessarily “stop and appreciate you in moments” the way they were doing with texting. Students were “taking the time to write back, thanking you for letting them know about something – it strengthens the relationship with us and the school.”

In Research Day, several students pointed out the following texting exchange as interesting and important in its level of student-teacher respect. Starting from a text from student to teacher, the exchange turned into communications about “putting a grade up” in the class:

:Student: Hope your alright man.sorry that happened too u 9:43 PM
:Me: I'm cool, thanks tho, have a good weekend 9:47 PM
:Student: Alright man have a good n 11:22 PM
:Me: Everything ok? 9:30 AM
:Student: Ted? 10:39 AM
:Me: Yup 11:02 AM
:Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class
:11:05 AM Me: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM Student: Alright 11:09 AM

Students weren’t angelic with texting, of course: some tried to bend the rules against texting during school. In February, Ted reported that “kids are testing limits w/ texting me while they are standing next to me in school, to get a reaction, not get a reaction – b/c they know they can’t use their phone in school. but they’re not abusing it or anything, they are just testing it.“

In March, Mo noted that one student whose “mouth is a gutter” had “corrected himself” after using the “n word” in a text because “he knows I would say something.” In March, Ted also noted that “A good boundary has unintentionally or intentionally been set by the kids or us – a few texts over the weekend at night but they didn’t start coming in at one in the morning.” Ted and Mo both agreed that kids had done basically nothing inappropriate with the texts -- as our original ground rules had requested.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.===

Texting somebody back “shows you appreciate the person and you’re thankful they helped you out,” Shelia said. Mo added: “They appreciate (Ted, our Full Circle teacher) taking time out of his own private life to send these texts.” Obens said that texts from Ted had gotten him to school on time.

When we analyzed this next example in Research Day, the students first noted the easy but respectful banter between student and teacher (“ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8”). Then, the student who had sent the texts pointed out that the fact that he “put in the effort” and the time to text back and forth about attendance rules showed he felt motivated to be there on time. He pointed out his responses, like “fine” and “I’ll make it [to school] by 8:10,” as evidence. “I sleep a lot – but I made it before 8:10. It did help. I was used to coming in around 8:30,” he said:

:Me: School 8:00am manana 7:10 PM
:Student: ok boss 9:33 PM
:Me: 8am! 6:19 PM
:Student: Ok lol 6:22 PM
:Student: 8:10? 6:22 PM
:Me: Try for 7:55, and get settled with something to read mi amigo 6:24 PM
:Student: That's too early ted. I'm make it before 8:10 6:25 PM
:Me: Nooooooo, 8! 6:26 PM
:Student: Ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8 6:43 PM
:Me: Arrive late, leave early, booo 3:26 PM
:Student: I made it on time 3:34 PM
:Me: School starts at 8, no later 3:36 PM
:Me: You can do it! 3:37 PM
:Student: But to be late its 8:10 4:00 PM

Wielding her highlighter in again pointing out Ted’s text to another student (“you need to be in school way more my friend”), Shelia explained that “I feel like it’s genuine concern.” “It shows connection,” Obens added. “It also shows courage.” He pointed out that Ted was “taking time to text people about stuff – taking time to get a person to school on time. That shows courage on the part of the teacher. Also on the student, by replying back.” Shelia agreed, adding, “It takes the courage to make that bond – from the teacher -- and also for the student to participate in the bond.”

The texting student above (“Ahhh jesus ted") added, “Who would want to text a teacher – there’s a lot you could be doing at that time. A lot of people won’t do it – that they do it means they really care about what they are doing.”

Ted highlighted this same point: student texts to teachers “show a level of investment. Even if (the text is) not school related, the student is checking in, making that contact, when they don’t have to. It’s really important to understand – the value of doing things not only when you have to do things.”

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!===

On Research Day, we left sure that texting had “helped” in these teachers’ classrooms but unsure how it might work in “a school of like 600,” as someone put it. Full Circle/Next Wave are particularly “personal” schools, some pointed out: “in other schools it’s less personal, you get five minutes with that teacher,” Shelia said.

We left with a question: does that sort of lack of “personal” time for face to face attention in other schools make something like texting more likely to get traction or not? More likely to help, or less?

As Ted put it in March, “if we had serious students who wanted help academically this could get out of control – multiple texts, multiple students, if students do their homework every night and want a question answered every night – so maybe structuring that with a [texting] office hours idea – [a group chat] a couple days a week.” While computers would be most useful for serious group homework help, “texting is better b/c they don’t need a computer” and many didn’t have them to use. Students also indicated that they always appreciated the (timeconsuming) strategy of being “nagged” with reminders, via texting or not: “I don’t like getting nagged but it’s what gets me to do stuff,” said a student.

But Ted pointed out that as with any channel, you could just choose how much support you did and didn’t offer as a texting teacher. As Ted put it re. wakeup texts, “I’m going to try not to go as far as the Next Wave (junior high) will go – I’m trying to put more responsibility on the high school student – I’m shying away from the pre-school conversation.”

In June, as paperwork and end-of-school activities took over, texting began to feel a bit “extra” to the teachers. Mo had stopped doing daily wakeup texts with a few students for now: “The last couple months I haven’t texted as much as I did in the first half of the year,” she said. “There’s so much crap you have to do – paperwork for SPED (Special Education); time gets consumed with life,” said Ted, whose wife had just had a baby. “Especially with the baby, I haven’t thought about texting kids that much – but I have texted them more on personal stuff b/c I haven’t been in classroom so much. Students had been texting him asking “how’s your daughter . .They texted me when the Bruins won.”

While one-to-one relationship-building definitely took time, check-ins via text could of course also save time, by reaching absent students and by building relationships one could count on later. Some check-ins otherwise simply couldn’t happen in person during packed days. Looking at one of Mo’s texts on Research Day, Yose noted, “She’s making sure the kid doesn’t get in trouble – she asks him to call his mom and stuff. She couldn’t do this face to face b/c he wasn’t in school.” Similarly, Mo pointed out a quick student text requesting useful information: “hey do you think they’re gonna extend the add drop period?” In class, Oben explained, “I don’t feel like bothering (Ted) w/ those types of questions.“

In March, Mo had mentioned that to save time, she really needed a tweaked Google Voice that could help her text her entire class at once (GV typically only allows a text to a group of 5 people). Having “started out texting every Thursday for homework,” she had “got away from it b/c was a pain to do 5 and then 5 – to do all at once will make it a whole lot easier.” Ted agreed in June that a texting “blast” to all of his students would save him time; we’ll pilot that this fall.

But time was still a core concern in one-to-one texting -- even as for now, the relationship-building made it worth it.

We had some final “ahas” about the use of texting in public schools:

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.===

Several times in the pilot, students lost phones, had their phones shut off b/c of not paying bills, or simply ran out of plan minutes. In March, Mo reported a range of student experiences: “Someone who lost their phone, someone who left it in a cousin’s car, someone who got it taken away – some got shut off – [xx] owes $500 on his phone, so he doesn’t have his phone any more. . .and they’re always changing numbers.”

In these cases, it was clear that economics matter in using texting for student support and that texting was hardly a foolproof method of reaching students. But this is the case regardless of whether people are using phones. And relying on phones may now be more equitable in some ways than relying on people to have the flexibility to meet you for face to face meetings whenever you’re free, or, expecting them to have computers, internet access, and home phone lines.

A student who had 78 texting minutes a month, period, put it this way to Mica:

“I think I have email on my phone but I have to pay for it. I could check email on my mom’s phone, she has a blackberry. If I’m near a computer. . I’ll check my facebook and then my email. [how often do you check your email?] not often. . I could try to check and let you know. . . I don’t have minutes and so I can’t text. Like when you get a cell phone it runs off of minutes, you have to pay for the cell phone, internet, and texts. When I have no minutes I have no text messages, no phone calls, nothing. [that’s the situation, til when?] till the 8th or 9th of April. [so If I text you you don’t even get it?] nope. . . . I don’t have a lot so it’s easy to run out – 78 minutes.”

This student later got a Droid that allowed her to do texting, internet, even “edit papers.”

And students also made their own solutions within economic limits. Another student showed us his ingenious phone arrangement: to save on texting and internet charges, he carried an unactivated iphone (purchased from a friend for xx) that he used at school to access the internet over the school’s wifi network. He used smartphone apps for different social networks and also did his texting over the internet, so he was able to approximate having a full-fledged smartphone while saving money. The student also carried a prepaid phone for calls and texts.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.===

A texting relationship also blossomed between some youth and the HGSE grad students who headed to the school multiple times for personal conversations (and, as one student put it, to crack a few jokes). In February, we had decided that the HGSE students needed a clearer “role” with the young people even just to check in with them via text on “how is texting going” or “how are you doing.” The FC/NW students also noted that a relationship was needed first before students could feel comfortable texting with new adults. Our decision: HGSE students would return with new roles as college/career readiness mentors on call as well as co-researchers.

One HGSE student then had this exchange with a student at FC/NW:

:HGSE: Im happy to help you out. What way do you think I could help you best to be successful?
:S: You tell me
:HGSE: Well I think your teachers and counselor and fam and friends are a good support team. I could help w advice about graduation and college here and there
:S: About geting me in 2 a gud collage for consoler for kids
:S: I wonder how u get in 2 harvard
:S: I need u 2 tell me where can I go and be a gud consoler wit a gud deagree

Another one of us had this extended conversation with one student, two months after we began:
9:17 p.m.

:HGSE: Hey there – a mentor signed up with district but she wants to mentor in journalism carers. Not your thing, correct? Still seeking science and math person from them. And, any questions for me on college/academic stuff? I’m always here to be asked
:Student: (immediately!): Do you have any info on culinary arts.
:HGSE: I know someone starting a restaurant as a chef. And someone else who made it as a chef in NYC
:S: Do you have anything on culinary colleges?
:HGSE: I think the chef in NYC went to one. Want me to ask?
:S: Yes thanks
:HGSE: What’s your email address or how would I put him in touch with you? I have to go through his dad, etc.
:S: (shares email address)
:M: Ps is it chef role you are interested in or something else?
:S: chef. But I’m also interested in everything actually.
:HGSE: everything in the world or everything about culinary school?
:S: Culinary school. Lol
:HGSE: How about the science of food btw? There’s a course at Harvard about that; maybe google it
:S: I’ll google it.
:HGSE: ((having googled it myself too)): How about this to get started too – Harvard lectures online from chefs on science and food! http://scientopia.org/blogs/everydaybiology/2011/03/03/harvard-lectures-the-science-of-cooking-and-molecular-gastronomy
:S: (10:31): Awesome thanks. I’ll ttyl. Good night
:HGSE: ((I have to google “ttyl” and learn it means “talk to you later” (!!!)))

As it turned out, she had no way to look up these links without going to school to use the computers, because her phone had no access to the internet and she had no internet-linked computer at home. Still, a conversation began about her career interests that expanded in the months to come -- and she later got a smartphone.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.===

Having planned originally to test texting “teams” in 2010-11, we promised early on to bring new tutors and mentors on to students’ “teams” if they wanted them. But to match tutors and mentors to students, the district coordinator needed clearance from the principal and then, descriptions of students’ precise interests, which took time -- and it then was very hard to schedule the face to face afterschool meetings between the tutors and the students. One tutor, who also worked as a teacher, was only available after 5:00 and on weekends. And the student we were seeking this tutor for pointed out that her own work schedule at Kmart changed suddenly “every week”: she never knew how many hours she’d get and when, and she also sometimes had to work on the weekends. In the end, it took several weeks of coordinating texts, emails, and phone calls to try to get this tutor to meet 3 girls face to face in the school. After we finally set up a meeting between the tutor and the girls after school at a nearby Dunkin Donuts, just one student took the tutor up on the opportunity – after Mica sent multiple text messages urging the student to reschedule a conflict and advised the tutor via text through gridlock traffic. No better evidence that face-to-face mentoring just isn't possible all the time!

Texting/ahas

2011-08-11T14:05:33Z

24.60.250.60:

Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.
We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!
-----------------------

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

Do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth” medium. Also, the sort of support texting could offer immediately seems particularly personal, because it really feels like a private “tube” between two people. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own “personal lives.”

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot explicitly with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

But in some ways, FC/NW is a special school: all teachers work in what Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles; they work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

Over time, our overall COMMUNICATION AHA would be about the benefits of texting for student-teacher relationship. But we want to tell you how we got there! Below is a discussion of the “communication ahas” we had throughout the pilot. We taped a lot of our conversations and so we talk about ourselves in the third person (Ted and Mo, Mica and Uche)

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.===

In February, Ted used GoogleVoice this way: he got last minute info in a staff meeting that a ski trip was available to a new student he’d recently met and had been helping with math. The “kid’s voicemail was full.” So, Ted texted the student to tell him to bring needed info and a signed permission slip the next day. The student’s response? “Lots of exclamation points, ‘thank you,’” Ted said. There was now a ‘high level of communication” with the student. The exchange happened “in an 18 hour turnout” and “allowed us to make a strong connection right when he got to the school.” This was a related example:

Me: Bring in your insurance info tomorrow, the company and your policy number, with 10 bucks, yor going skiing thursday! 3:23 PM
Student: Thank you soo much ted! i will .. ill have it all tomarrow! 4:12 PM
Me: Are you going to school tomorrow? 6:59 PM
Student: Yea .. deffintly 9:36 PM
Me: Boxing club tomorrow 6:18 PM
Student: Ok .. should i bring anything? 6:41 PM
Me: Workout clothes 6:42 PM
Student: Ok .. thanks .. 7:03 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.===

Another student said that he lacked a home phone, so texting helped:

“Sometimes they call your house when there’s no school, but I don’t have a house phone. They might call my mom but she never picks up. If he (Ted) hadn’t texted me (about the snow day), I wouldn’t have woken up for school.”

In another case, a student who had been kicked out of school texted Ted to find out what his situation was and whether he faced expulsion.

And here’s an e.g. of texting that helped when a student was literally absent from school:

Me: Worried about you!! 8:15 PM
Student: im feeling much better now I will deff see u tmr (: 8:16 PM
Me: Good we miss you!! Can mom right a note for the last 2 days 8:17 PM
Student: she called [School admininstrator] today telling him I was out sick not truent 8:18 PM
Me: Good..see you tomorrow..and glad your feeling better!! 8:19 PM
Student: thanks 8:24 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.===

In early March, Uche and Mica got together with Mo and Ted and looked at the GoogleVoice record of all the texts. Our plan: to “pull out examples of texts that you find interesting,” to “label the “type” of communication that occurred,” and to “provide any evidence of any text’s effects on any student’s achievement/motivation/relationship with you.”

It was notable how many different school-related subjects a teacher and student could text about! So far, Mo had primarily been texting with students for wakeup calls, paperwork reminders, discussions of personal updates, updates on other students that students knew about, health check-ins, and discussions of absence. She bantered a lot with the students, too. We laughed often in the pilot about the number of exclamation points Mo tended to use in her texts!!!!!!!!

Ted had reviewed his own Google Voice record and “broke it up into categories – who talks to who about what:

(There’s) a cluster about being on time. Another about dropout prevention, kids who haven’t been to school in a long time, what can we do to transition you out of here easier. And, checkins w/ students about miscellaneous—academics, work, home, if they’re heading toward that dropout prevention category . . . Also snow days, field trips, some kids need to bring attire for electives (gym attire, skates, something they may need for the next day). back to on time, staying a full day – if kids walk out I remind them about the day before. . . . And also, jobs. Kids that want jobs.”

Ted was texting with students about absences and lateness; afterschool activity (he coached a boxing club and led a lot of trips); and for personal checkins, which then often considered academic issues. “New electives, new teachers, new schedules – some confirmations on preparations for the next day – are we going skating, to boxing club tomorrow, to bring in the right clothes.” Students were checking in with him via text about academic issues like credits, the semester change, and their discipline records. One student had texted him to ask how he was doing after a fraught interaction, and how his weekend went. A few kids had texted him for help in class. In some cases he was strongly pushing young people to attend class or keep up their motivation via text. The other texts Ted had been sending in February were “more like routine -- no school, snowstorm, ‘you haven’t been in school where are ya’ type stuff.” “Some kids don’t respond to those at all, some kids do,” he said.

Neither teacher was fielding lots of questions about schoolwork via text. Instead, they were texting more about logistics, reminders, updates, absence explanations -- and in the process, building relationships. As we read all these texts, Ted and Mo expressed surprise and satisfaction with “the language that the kids are using to thank (them)…It’s refreshing to know that they have that capability.” Some students expressed gratitude and other emotions through their texts that Ted and Mo hadn’t experienced with them in the classroom.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.===

If you judged texting by the immediate consequences of a given text, it could sometimes look unsuccessful. Ted said in February that the previous week, a doctor showed up at school for testing one of his students, but “the kid didn’t show up for school that day.” Ted texted the student at 10 (the appt was 9-11); he “texted me right back w/ what sounded like a confirmation that he was coming but then didn’t come. So that was almost a success story but not.”

Mo noted that students she texted to wake up still came late. But, the same students were using text to contact her with serious support needs, even during drug rehab placements. Mo was using her texting to support one young person with depression, so that they eventually came in to school.

Mo had a major aha in March: “Success for a depressed student in a sense is the engagement itself. Even having this exchange.” And as Ted said earlier in the year, “In some ways, it comes down to someone paying attention to them.” As Mo explained of one text she sent to a student in March, “I wanted to make her feel good before she went to bed.” And Mo reported in March that she had this talk with a student the previous day:

"I just wanna make sure you’re ok – when I text you I wanna know you’re ok, safe,” she said, adding, “we worry about you!” He had responded, “I know you guys do, I will definitely write you something.”

Over and over in the pilot, we talked about how texts showed not just connection but true caring. Students pointed out a bunch on our April Research Day:

Mo’s text to a student: “worried about you.” “It shows that she really cares,” Shelia explained.

“You had a bad day yesterday”: a particularly caring teacher “check-in.”

“you made 1 day last week” (“I like the encouragement,” said one student)

“you’re a smart kid” (“That’s really nice because some kids might feel doubt and don’t get many compliments from people,” another student said.

Mo pointed out that one student had asked Ted “how was your weekend.”

Shelia pointed out that overall, the texts could build relationship and simultaneously, the motivation to try. “You need to know [teachers] care in order to do stuff. Otherwise what’s the point in trying. If a person is ‘I’m here for you’ – you feel someone else cares, I should care too.”

In the texts below, the youth was still not in school, but a relationship was being built to get him in the next time. Note the three quick appreciative texts back after a compliment, which many students pointed out on Research Day:

Me: Hey is your mom coming in 8:20 AM
Student: Yah bro waiting for her that's y I ain't in school my G G=grandma lmao ur old 8:21 AM
Me: Not funny....lol 8:23 AM
Student: Ii hate the fact u don't apritiate my jokes 8:24 AM
Student: -_- 8:24 AM
Me: But I appreciate you:-) 8:26 AM
Student: Ahhh good made my morning 8:31 AM
Student: =) 8:32 AM
Student: Lol jk jk idc 8:32 AM
Me: Awwwww 8:33 AM

Similarly, in the texts below it was of course not the actual medical help Ted offered via text that could be supportive to the student, but the caring itself:

Hey I dont think im going to come to school tomorw im wicked sick 7:19 PM
Have a glass of o.j. and drink water often. Get some rest, and you'll feel great in the morning, ready for school 7:44 PM
Ive been doing that all day and it hasnt helped one bit 7:58 PM
Lets have a good full 1/2 day tomorrow 9:31 PM
Idont know if im goin to school tomorrow 9:46 PM
You haven't been putting consecutive full days together, push yourself to improve, you can do it! 9:49 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.===

Just as in face to face conversation, there’s no either/or.

Here’s an exchange that went from a basic schedule update, to a communication about stickers (Somerville “Villen” gear), to fundamental questions about school deadlines:

Me: No school tomorrow 7:09 PM
Student: -_- aww .... Hey do you have any villen stickers by any chance :) jw 7:11 PM
Me: Haha, no 7:12 PM
Student: Aww :( .... I wish there was school tommorrow .... Hey do you think the school will extend the add drop day .... Like give us another week for add drop o 7:16 PM
Student: r no...??? Jw 7:16 PM
Me: Not sure 7:16 PM
Student: Okaii well I hope you have a nice day or two off :) 7:17 PM
Me: Thanks you too 7:19 PM
Student: Ill try -_- ..... :) 7:20 PM

Communications that started about serious school status questions could then turn into banter that was both joking and academically important:

Student: Ted do u kn how long I am suspened for 9:41 PM
Me: [Principal] wanted to have a meeting this week, I will call you tomorrow, sorry so late 10:48 PM
Student: No I kn that I just need to kn wen is the meeting 10:49 PM
Student: Thow 10:54 PM
Me: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM
Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM
Me: Use it! 3:27 PM
Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

Another text exchange between Ted and a student mixed banter and serious stuff:

X: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM
Me: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM
Me: Hurry up! 7:49 AM
X: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM
Me: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM
X: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM
Me: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM
X: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 A
X: Noo! almost closest ive been! 7:27 AM
Me: Good try though, we both have some studying to do over vacation 7:28 AM
X: thanks and i know my eyes will be glued to that rmv book 7:29 AM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.===

Several students texted Ted about sports events: even one student (above with "silly goose") who had been asked to leave school a few months earlier, “texted me after lakers beat the celtics last week, at 10:30 pm”:

Student: Lol wat just happend to ur celtics 10:48 PM
Me: Ha 10:57 PM

When a HGSE student asked one of Ted’s students (who had not been responding to Ted’s texts) about whether texting with teachers was useful, he suggested that he “finds (them) useful, but I just don’t want to text back.” But, he added, he’d like to hear from Ted over the weekend once in a while, even if just to “how his weekend was going.” The student wanted to know more about Ted outside of school: for example, “is he working anywhere else, or is he just a teacher?” Talking about this non school-related stuff, the student claimed, would “make their relationship grow even stronger.”

Many students made similar statements in private interviews and group discussions. Obens, another of Ted’s students, summed up the sentiment in our April Research Day: “When you’re texting you feel like you’re closer to the teacher.” Ted agreed with Obens: “(Texting) definitely strengthens our face to face, day to day relationships.”

Folks pointed out this COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to a more informed face to face conversation.

For example, Ted texted a student this:

Me: I heard you had a bad afternoon at school. Check in first thing tomorrow 7:03 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting relationships could also morph over time from banter to serious exchanges.===

In our March conversation, we realized that it actually could be very useful to a teacher to have an entire “relationship” with a young person documented via texting.

Ted’s first group text that winter prompted this response (Mica’s favorite) from a student who at first did not text at all with Ted. Later, in March, we all realized that she had built a texting and face to face relationship trusting enough that she could reveal serious personal struggles to him:

Me: A reminder that tonight is Parent-Teacher night at NW/FC. Please notify your loved one at home that teachers are at school to meet them from 6:30-7:45pm. 9:05 AM
Student: O please lol 9:10 AM

By March, this student texted Ted about a physical argument with someone; via text, Ted “said we could talk later [in person], and we did.” “She never told me that,” said Mo, adding that it showed real growth in the student-teacher relationship “That she could share something so big, with you, that she trusts you so much that she could tell you that.”

In several other cases, Mo had shown texts with a depressed or self-destructive student to the principal, to say “look, I’m really worried.”

As Ted put it, documenting a relationship helped in less crucial cases as well:

“when I’m texting a kid I creep back up to the history to see what concerns have come up in the past – helpful for me, just so I can keep it all together, keep track. To remind myself – that I would like to help them more, talk to them more frequently.” (Later in the pilot, Ted would also point out the opposite: it became a burden to look back at exchanges that were complicated, and sometimes you just wanted to start clean with a student the next day.)

Shelia agreed on our April Research Day that texts kept a relationship around with you, for later viewing. “With a phone call, it’s out of your head,” Shelia explained. “With a text message it’s still there when you turn on your phone – it still reminds you. You have to delete it if you don’t want it – it’s there to remind you.”

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.===

Mo and Ted agreed that the OneVille Project made student-teacher texting seem normal and acceptable. In the past, for example, Ted probably would not have asked a new student for his texting number so quickly. As Mo put it, “in the past I would wait until I developed a relationship w/ the kid and then get his texting number. I would have waited to overhear a conversation about texting, then say, “oh, you text? You don’t have my number!” and then, start texting.”

Ironically, Ted noted in March that texting could immediately allow more “words” to be exchanged between student and teacher, rather than less: “One word answers [in person] with teenagers are more typical,” but via texting, “This is not one word answers. . .it’s better than “huh.” As Uche put it, “it takes more effort to text than to talk.” Ted added: “even more than they know they are giving – it might seem mindless, just chatting, and next thing you’re their friend!”

“Have good conversations,” Yose advised other teachers considering texting with students as we ended our April Research Day. “Like don’t just talk about school. Also talk about how your day’s going, stuff like that. Don’t just keep it about school.”

Ted finished our Research Day with more overall advice: “It’s up to both people to enhance the texting relationship. If the student is just responding “ok” or “yes” or “no,” that doesn’t allow the texting relationship to develop and to go towards communications that aren’t just ‘be on time.’”

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Politeness and respect while texting! Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.===

On our April Research Day at Harvard, students read transcripts taken from Google Voice (with participants’ permission and anonymized for analysis) and were immediately perceptive about another “pattern in the data”: students and teachers were noticeably polite to each other, texting “thanks and you’re welcome” after texts about permission slips, reminders, and personal check-ins on grades or life. “The kids haven’t been crossing boundaries in any way – no one has been inappropriate,” Mo said that day.

'''VIDEO OF MO HERE FROM RESEARCH DAY?

Obens explained that for texting to be successful, you’ve got to “keep it private, clean, respectful, stuff like that.” When pushed to define respect, he suggested that students should “give the teacher the same respect you’d give them in school. Don’t think that outside you should act different.”

Ted had commented in our March review of texts on the “language the students are using in thanking us – they’re receptive to positive talk that they don’t do verbally with you.”

In person, they don’t necessarily “stop and appreciate you in moments” the way they were doing with texting.

Students were “taking the time to write back, thanking you for letting them know about something – it strengthens the relationship with us and the school.”

In Research Day, several students pointed out the following texting exchange as interesting and important in its level of student-teacher respect. Starting from an unsolicited text from student to teacher, the exchange turned into communications about “putting a grade up” in the class:

Student: Hope your alright man.sorry that happened too u 9:43 PM
Me: I'm cool, thanks tho, have a good weekend 9:47 PM
Student: Alright man have a good n 11:22 PM
Me: Everything ok? 9:30 AM
Student: Ted? 10:39 AM
Me: Yup 11:02 AM
Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM
Me: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM
Student: Alright 11:09 AM

In February, Ted reported that “kids are testing limits w/ texting me while they are standing next to me in school, to get a reaction, not get a reaction – b/c they know they can’t use their phone in school. but they’re not abusing it or anything, they are just testing it.“

In March, Mo noted that one student whose “mouth is a gutter” had “corrected himself” after using the “n word” in a text because “he knows I would say something.” In March, Ted also noted that “A good boundary has unintentionally or intentionally been set by the kids or us – a few texts over weekend at night but didn’t start coming in at one in the morning.” Ted and Mo both agreed that kids had done basically nothing inappropriate with the texts -- as our ground rules had requested.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”===

Shelia and Mo used this phrase on Research Day when looking again at Ted’s text “you need to be in school way more my friend.” Others noted on Research Day that students felt really comfortable with the medium of texting:

“Some people might feel more comfortable saying it via texting more than face to face --- because in person you might feel shy, awkward and not know what to say back,” a student said.

“I’d rather text my parents than call them,” a student added.

We noted many times over the year that texting can handle many “styles” of communication. Ted noted in March that, “Mo is more of a conversationalist with the way she is texting – mine are more announcement style, school 8 a.m. tomorrow, don’t forget boxing tomorrow, stuff they don’t have to respond to. I do that to protect myself a little bit – I don’t want to burden them or feel like I’m waiting for a response from them.” Mo added, “more an FYI type of thing.” Ted agreed: “if they have a follow up they text me back.” Still, Ted later received and sent many joking texts as well and followed up proactively and personally with many a student over the course of the pilot.

By late spring, when Mica asked Ted what his response would be “to a teacher who might say ‘banter’ or misspellings that happen via text are a problem for education,” Ted had this to say, though not all teachers would agree:

Ted: lighten up. Anyone who does text is probably aware that the spellings and capitalization and punctuation are going to be all over the place. So we might need to say, against fear of this tech, ‘get used to this -- this is not going anywhere, this is what people are doing.’ It’s almost unhealthy to fear this at this point; this is where we are going. If you want the perfect sentences, do that in an English class, but that’s not what we’re trying to do.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.===

Pointing out uses of humor in the texts, Yose made another point about how texting could add to student-teacher relationships: people could communicate even if a student was in a bad mood. A face to face conversation might end with the student “shouting” out of anger, unable to help it; with texting, you could “be mad” and still “send a funny text.” With texting you could show the recipient the “emotions” you wanted them to see, and not necessarily what you felt.

Another student elaborated relatedly from across the room: with texting, you could overcome the “intimidation” of possible “rejection” by the other person, by sending lighthearted texts across the private channel that did not have to be responded to immediately. Emotion was “easier to handle” via texts, another student said.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other. ===

Texting somebody back “shows you appreciate the person and you’re thankful they helped you out,” Shelia said. Mo added: “They appreciate (Ted, our Full Circle teacher) taking time out of his own private life to send these texts.” Obens said that texts from Ted had gotten him to school on time.

When we analyzed this next example in Research Day, the students first noted the easy but respectful banter between student and teacher (“ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8”). Then, the student who had sent these texts pointed out that he himself was putting in the time to do back and forth texting about attendance rules, and so he was showing he felt motivated to be there on time. He had “put in the effort” with responses, like “fine” and “I’ll make it [to school] by 8:10.” “I sleep a lot – but I made it before 8:10. It did help. I was used to coming in around 8:30,” he said:

Me: School 8:00am manana 7:10 PM
Student: ok boss 9:33 PM
Me: 8am! 6:19 PM
Student: Ok lol 6:22 PM
Student: 8:10? 6:22 PM
Me: Try for 7:55, and get settled with something to read mi amigo 6:24 PM
Student: That's too early ted. I'm make it before 8:10 6:25 PM
Me: Nooooooo, 8! 6:26 PM
Student: Ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8 6:43 PM
Me: Arrive late, leave early, booo 3:26 PM
Student: I made it on time 3:34 PM
Me: School starts at 8, no later 3:36 PM
Me: You can do it! 3:37 PM
Student: But to be late its 8:10 4:00 PM

Wielding her highlighter in again pointing out Ted’s text to another student (“you need to be in school way more my friend”), Shelia explained that “ I feel like it’s genuine concern.” “It shows connection,” Obens added. “It also shows courage.” He pointed out that Ted was “taking time to text people about stuff – taking time to get a person to school on time. That shows courage on the part of the teacher. Also on the student, by replying back.” Shelia agreed, adding, “It takes the courage to make that bond – from the teacher -- and also for the student to participate in the bond.”

The student above (“Ahhh jesus ted") added, “Who would want to text a teacher – there’s a lot you could be doing at that time. A lot of people won’t do it – that they do it means they really care about what they are doing.”

Ted highlighted this same point: student texts to teachers “show a level of investment. Even if (the text is) not school related, the student is checking in, making that contact, when they don’t have to. It’s really important to understand – the value of doing things not only when you have to do things.”

On Research Day, we left sure that texting had “helped” in these teachers’ classrooms but unsure how it might work in “a school of like 600,” as someone put it. Full Circle/Next Wave are particularly “personal” schools, some pointed out: “in other schools it’s less personal, you get five minutes with that teacher,” Shelia said.

We left with a question: does that sort of lack of “personal” time for face to face attention in other schools make something like texting more likely to get traction or not? More likely to help, or less?

'''These thoughts raised a key COMMUNICATION AHA:

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!===

As Ted put it in March, “if we had serious students who wanted help academically this could get out of control – multiple texts, multiple students, if students do their homework every night and want a question answered every night – so maybe structuring that with a [texting] office hours idea – [a group chat ] a couple days a week.” While computers would be most useful for serious group homework help, “texting is better b/c they don’t need a computer” and many didn’t have them to use.

Further, Ted pointed out that as with any channel, you could just choose how much support you do and don’t offer as a texting teacher.

As Ted put it re. wakeup texts, “I’m going to try not to go as far as the Next Wave (junior high) will go – I’m trying to put more responsibility on the high school student – I’m shying away from the pre-school conversation.”

Students indicated that they were indeed used to getting reminders: “I don’t like getting nagged but it’s what gets me to do stuff,” said a student.

In June, as paperwork and school’s ending takes over, texting began to feel a bit “extra” to the teachers. Mo had stopped doing daily wakeup texts with a few students for now: “The last couple months I haven’t texted as much as I did in the first half of the year,” she said. “There’s so much crap you have to do – paperwork for SPED (Special Education)– time consumed with life,” said Ted, whose wife had just had a baby. “Especially w/ the baby, I haven’t thought about texting kids that much – but I have texted them more on personal stuff b/c I haven’t been in classroom so much. Students were texting him asking “how’s your daughter . .They texted me when the Bruins won.”

While one-to-one relationship-building definitely took time, quick check-ins via text could of course also save time. Some quick check-ins otherwise simply couldn’t happen in person during busy days. Looking at one of Mo’s texts on Research Day, Yose noted, “She’s making sure the kid doesn’t get in trouble – she asks him to call his mom and stuff. She couldn’t do this face to face b/c he wasn’t in school.” Similarly, Mo pointed out a quick student request for useful information that had happened successfully via text: “hey do you think they’re gonna extend the add drop period?” In class, Oben explained, “I don’t feel like bothering (Ted) w/ those types of questions.“

In March, Mo had mentioned that to save time, she really needed a tweaked Google Voice, which typically only allows a text to a group of 5 people. Having “started out texting every Thursday for homework,” she had “got away from it b/c was a pain to do 5 and then 5 – to do all at once will make it a whole lot easier.” Ted argued in June that a texting “blast” to all of his students would save him time, once we worked out the technical kinks.

But time was still a concern in one-to-one texting -- even as for now, the relationship-building made it worth it.

We had some final “ahas” about the use of texting in public schools:

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.===

Several times in the pilot, students lost phones, had their phones shut off b/c of not paying bills, or simply ran out of plan minutes. In March, Mo reported a range of “Someone who lost phone, someone who left in cousin’s car, someone who got it taken away – some shut off – [xx] owes 500 on his phone, so doesn’t have his phone any more. . .and they’re always changing numbers.”

In these cases, it was clear that economics matter in using texting for student support and that texting was hardly a foolproof method of reaching students. But this is the case regardless of whether people are using phones. And relying on phones may be more equitable in some ways than relying on people to have the flexibility to meet you for face to face meetings whenever you’re free, or, expecting them to have computers and internet access.

A student who had 78 texting minutes a month, period, put it this way to Mica:

I think I have email on my phone but I have to pay for it. I could check on my mom’s phone, she has a blackberry. If I’m near a computer. . I’ll check my facebook and then my email. [how often do you check your email?] not often. . I could try to check and let you know. . . I don’t have minutes and so I can’t text. Like when you get a cell phone it runs off of minutes, you have to pay for cell phone, internet, texts. When I have no minutes I have no text messages, no phone calls, nothing. [that’s the situation, til when?] till the 8th or 9th of April. [so If I text you you don’t even get it?] nope. . . . I don’t have a lot so it’s easy to run out – 78 minutes.

This student later got a Droid that allowed her to do texting, internet, even “edit papers.”

And students also made their own solutions within economic limits. Another student showed us his ingenious phone arrangement: to save on texting and internet charges, he carried an unactivated iphone (purchased from a friend for xx) that he used to access the internet over the school’s wifi network. He used smartphone apps for different social networks and did texting over the internet, so he was able to approximate having a full-fledged smartphone while saving money. The student also carried a prepaid phone for calls and texts.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.===

In February, we decided that the HGSE students needed a clearer “role” with the young people even just to check in with them via text on “how is texting going” or “how are you doing.” The FC/NW students also noted that a relationship was needed first before students could feel comfortable texting with new adults. Our decision: HGSE students would return with new roles as college/career readiness mentors on call as well as co-researchers.

A texting relationship really did blossom between youth and the HGSE folks who headed to the school a number of times for personal conversations (and, as one student put it, to crack a few jokes).

One HGSE student had this exchange with a student at FC/NW:

M: Im happy to help you out. What way do you think I could help you best to be successful?
S: You tell me
M: Well I think your teachers and counselor and fam and friends are a good support team. I could help w advice about graduation and college here and there
S: About geting me in 2 a gud collage for consoler for kids
S: I wonder how u get in 2 harvard
S: I need u 2 tell me where can I go and be a gud consoler wit a gud deagree

Privately, Mica had this extended conversation with one student, two months after we began:

March 15, 2011, 9:17 p.m.

M: Hey there – a mentor signed up with district but she wants to mentor in journalism carers. Not your thing, correct? Still seeking science and math person from them.
And, any questions for me on college/academic stuff? I’m always here to be asked
Student: (immediately!): Do you have any info on culinary arts.
M: I know someone starting a restaurant as a chef.
And someone else who made it as a chef in NYC
S: Do you have anything on culinary colleges?
M:I think the chef in NYC went to one. Want me to ask?
S: Yes thanks
M: What’s your email address or how would I put him in touch with you? I have to go through his dad, etc.
S: (email address deleted)
M: Ps is it chef role you are interested in or something else?
S: chef. But I’m also interested in everything actually.
M: everything in the world or everything about culinary school?
S: Culinary school. Lol
M: How about the science of food btw? There’s a course at Harvard about that; maybe google it
S: I’ll google it.
M: ((having googled it myself too)): How about this to get started too – Harvard lectures online from chefs on science and food! http://scientopia.org/blogs/everydaybiology/2011/03/03/harvard-lectures-the-science-of-cooking-and-molecular-gastronomy
S: (10:31): Awesome thanks. I’ll ttyl. Good night
((I have to google “ttyl” and learn it means “talk to you later” (!!!)))

As it turned out, she had no way to look up these links without going to school to use the computers, because her phone had no access to the internet and she had no internet-linked computer at home. Still, we began a conversation about her career interests that expanded in the months to come -- and she later got a smartphone.

Texting afforded immediate career links and also, highlighted a key IMPLEMENTATION AHA:

===IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.===

We promised early on to bring new tutors and mentors on to students’ “teams” if they wanted them. But it took a long time to get recommendations from the district coordinator (who needed clearance from the principal and then, descriptions of students’ precise interests), and it was very hard to schedule the face to face afterschool meetings between the tutors interested and the students. One tutor was only available after 5:00 and on weekends, as she worked. And the student we were seeking this tutor for pointed out that her own work schedule at Kmart changed suddenly “every week”: she never knew how many hours she’d get and when, and she also sometimes had to work on the weekends. In the end, it took several weeks of coordinating texts, emails, and phone calls to try to get one tutor to meet 3 girls face to face in the school. After we finally set up a meeting between the tutor and the girls after school at a nearby Dunkin Donuts, just one student took the tutor up on the opportunity – after Mica sent multiple text messages urging the student to reschedule a conflict and advised the tutor via text through gridlock traffic. No better evidence that face-to-face mentoring just isn't possible all the time!

Texting/ahas

2011-08-11T13:52:06Z

24.60.250.60:

Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.
We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!
-----------------------

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

Do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons: Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth” medium. Also, the sort of support texting could offer immediately seems particularly personal, because it really feels like a private “tube” between two people. Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own “personal lives.”

Instead of just fearing texting, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot explicitly with 40 students and put our joint findings on the internet. But in some ways, FC/NW is a special school: all teachers work in what Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. They work in a “triangle” “between clinician, academic, teacher-counselor, daily.” But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

'''COLORED TEXT BOX: Over time, our overall COMMUNICATION AHA would be about the benefits of texting for student-teacher relationship. But we want to tell you how we got there! We taped a lot of our conversations and so we talk about ourselves in the third person (Ted and Mo, Mica and Uche).

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.===

In February, Ted used GoogleVoice this way: he got last minute info in a staff meeting that a ski trip was available to a new student he’d recently met and had been helping with math. The “kid’s voicemail was full.” So, Ted texted the student to tell him to bring needed info and a signed permission slip the next day. The student’s response? “Lots of exclamation points, ‘thank you,’” Ted said. There was now a ‘high level of communication” with the student. The exchange happened “in an 18 hour turnout” and “allowed us to make a strong connection right when he got to the school.” This was a related example:

Me: Bring in your insurance info tomorrow, the company and your policy number, with 10 bucks, yor going skiing thursday! 3:23 PM
Student: Thank you soo much ted! i will .. ill have it all tomarrow! 4:12 PM
Me: Are you going to school tomorrow? 6:59 PM
Student: Yea .. deffintly 9:36 PM
Me: Boxing club tomorrow 6:18 PM
Student: Ok .. should i bring anything? 6:41 PM
Me: Workout clothes 6:42 PM
Student: Ok .. thanks .. 7:03 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.===

Another student said that he lacked a home phone, so texting helped:

“Sometimes they call your house when there’s no school, but I don’t have a house phone. They might call my mom but she never picks up. If he (Ted) hadn’t texted me (about the snow day), I wouldn’t have woken up for school.”

In another case, a student who had been kicked out of school texted Ted to find out what his situation was and whether he faced expulsion.

And here’s an e.g. of texting that helped when a student was literally absent from school:

Me: Worried about you!! 8:15 PM
Student: im feeling much better now I will deff see u tmr (: 8:16 PM
Me: Good we miss you!! Can mom right a note for the last 2 days 8:17 PM
Student: she called [School admininstrator] today telling him I was out sick not truent 8:18 PM
Me: Good..see you tomorrow..and glad your feeling better!! 8:19 PM
Student: thanks 8:24 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.===

In early March, Uche and Mica got together with Mo and Ted and looked at the GoogleVoice record of all the texts. Our plan: to “pull out examples of texts that you find interesting,” to “label the “type” of communication that occurred,” and to “provide any evidence of any text’s effects on any student’s achievement/motivation/relationship with you.”

It was notable how many different school-related subjects a teacher and student could text about! So far, Mo had primarily been texting with students for wakeup calls, paperwork reminders, discussions of personal updates, updates on other students that students knew about, health check-ins, and discussions of absence. She bantered a lot with the students, too. We laughed often in the pilot about the number of exclamation points Mo tended to use in her texts!!!!!!!!

Ted had reviewed his own Google Voice record and “broke it up into categories – who talks to who about what:

(There’s) a cluster about being on time. Another about dropout prevention, kids who haven’t been to school in a long time, what can we do to transition you out of here easier. And, checkins w/ students about miscellaneous—academics, work, home, if they’re heading toward that dropout prevention category . . . Also snow days, field trips, some kids need to bring attire for electives (gym attire, skates, something they may need for the next day). back to on time, staying a full day – if kids walk out I remind them about the day before. . . . And also, jobs. Kids that want jobs.”

Ted was texting with students about absences and lateness; afterschool activity (he coached a boxing club and led a lot of trips); and for personal checkins, which then often considered academic issues. “New electives, new teachers, new schedules – some confirmations on preparations for the next day – are we going skating, to boxing club tomorrow, to bring in the right clothes.” Students were checking in with him via text about academic issues like credits, the semester change, and their discipline records. One student had texted him to ask how he was doing after a fraught interaction, and how his weekend went. A few kids had texted him for help in class. In some cases he was strongly pushing young people to attend class or keep up their motivation via text. The other texts Ted had been sending in February were “more like routine -- no school, snowstorm, ‘you haven’t been in school where are ya’ type stuff.” “Some kids don’t respond to those at all, some kids do,” he said.

Neither teacher was fielding lots of questions about schoolwork via text. Instead, they were texting more about logistics, reminders, updates, absence explanations -- and in the process, building relationships. As we read all these texts, Ted and Mo expressed surprise and satisfaction with “the language that the kids are using to thank (them)…It’s refreshing to know that they have that capability.” Some students expressed gratitude and other emotions through their texts that Ted and Mo hadn’t experienced with them in the classroom.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.===

If you judged texting by the immediate consequences of a given text, it could sometimes look unsuccessful. Ted said in February that the previous week, a doctor showed up at school for testing one of his students, but “the kid didn’t show up for school that day.” Ted texted the student at 10 (the appt was 9-11); he “texted me right back w/ what sounded like a confirmation that he was coming but then didn’t come. So that was almost a success story but not.”

Mo noted that students she texted to wake up still came late. But, the same students were using text to contact her with serious support needs, even during drug rehab placements. Mo was using her texting to support one young person with depression, so that they eventually came in to school.

Mo had a major aha in March: “Success for a depressed student in a sense is the engagement itself. Even having this exchange.” And as Ted said earlier in the year, “In some ways, it comes down to someone paying attention to them.” As Mo explained of one text she sent to a student in March, “I wanted to make her feel good before she went to bed.” And Mo reported in March that she had this talk with a student the previous day:

"I just wanna make sure you’re ok – when I text you I wanna know you’re ok, safe,” she said, adding, “we worry about you!” He had responded, “I know you guys do, I will definitely write you something.”

Over and over in the pilot, we talked about how texts showed not just connection but true caring. Students pointed out a bunch on our April Research Day:

Mo’s text to a student: “worried about you.” “It shows that she really cares,” Shelia explained.

“You had a bad day yesterday”: a particularly caring teacher “check-in.”

“you made 1 day last week” (“I like the encouragement,” said one student)

“you’re a smart kid” (“That’s really nice because some kids might feel doubt and don’t get many compliments from people,” another student said.

Mo pointed out that one student had asked Ted “how was your weekend.”

Shelia pointed out that overall, the texts could build relationship and simultaneously, the motivation to try. “You need to know [teachers] care in order to do stuff. Otherwise what’s the point in trying. If a person is ‘I’m here for you’ – you feel someone else cares, I should care too.”

In the texts below, the youth was still not in school, but a relationship was being built to get him in the next time. Note the three quick appreciative texts back after a compliment, which many students pointed out on Research Day:

Me: Hey is your mom coming in 8:20 AM
Student: Yah bro waiting for her that's y I ain't in school my G G=grandma lmao ur old 8:21 AM
Me: Not funny....lol 8:23 AM
Student: Ii hate the fact u don't apritiate my jokes 8:24 AM
Student: -_- 8:24 AM
Me: But I appreciate you:-) 8:26 AM
Student: Ahhh good made my morning 8:31 AM
Student: =) 8:32 AM
Student: Lol jk jk idc 8:32 AM
Me: Awwwww 8:33 AM

Similarly, in the texts below it was of course not the actual medical help Ted offered via text that could be supportive to the student, but the caring itself:

Hey I dont think im going to come to school tomorw im wicked sick 7:19 PM
Have a glass of o.j. and drink water often. Get some rest, and you'll feel great in the morning, ready for school 7:44 PM
Ive been doing that all day and it hasnt helped one bit 7:58 PM
Lets have a good full 1/2 day tomorrow 9:31 PM
Idont know if im goin to school tomorrow 9:46 PM
You haven't been putting consecutive full days together, push yourself to improve, you can do it! 9:49 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.===

Just as in face to face conversation, there’s no either/or.

Here’s an exchange that went from a basic schedule update, to a communication about stickers (Somerville “Villen” gear), to fundamental questions about school deadlines:

Me: No school tomorrow 7:09 PM
Student: -_- aww .... Hey do you have any villen stickers by any chance :) jw 7:11 PM
Me: Haha, no 7:12 PM
Student: Aww :( .... I wish there was school tommorrow .... Hey do you think the school will extend the add drop day .... Like give us another week for add drop o 7:16 PM
Student: r no...??? Jw 7:16 PM
Me: Not sure 7:16 PM
Student: Okaii well I hope you have a nice day or two off :) 7:17 PM
Me: Thanks you too 7:19 PM
Student: Ill try -_- ..... :) 7:20 PM

Communications that started about serious school status questions could then turn into banter that was both joking and academically important:

Student: Ted do u kn how long I am suspened for 9:41 PM
Me: [Principal] wanted to have a meeting this week, I will call you tomorrow, sorry so late 10:48 PM
Student: No I kn that I just need to kn wen is the meeting 10:49 PM
Student: Thow 10:54 PM
Me: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM
Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM
Me: Use it! 3:27 PM
Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

Another text exchange between Ted and a student mixed banter and serious stuff:

X: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM
Me: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM
Me: Hurry up! 7:49 AM
X: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM
Me: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM
X: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM
Me: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM
X: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 A
X: Noo! almost closest ive been! 7:27 AM
Me: Good try though, we both have some studying to do over vacation 7:28 AM
X: thanks and i know my eyes will be glued to that rmv book 7:29 AM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.===

Several students texted Ted about sports events: even one student (above with "silly goose") who had been asked to leave school a few months earlier, “texted me after lakers beat the celtics last week, at 10:30 pm”:

Student: Lol wat just happend to ur celtics 10:48 PM
Me: Ha 10:57 PM

When a HGSE student asked one of Ted’s students (who had not been responding to Ted’s texts) about whether texting with teachers was useful, he suggested that he “finds (them) useful, but I just don’t want to text back.” But, he added, he’d like to hear from Ted over the weekend once in a while, even if just to “how his weekend was going.” The student wanted to know more about Ted outside of school: for example, “is he working anywhere else, or is he just a teacher?” Talking about this non school-related stuff, the student claimed, would “make their relationship grow even stronger.”

Many students made similar statements in private interviews and group discussions. Obens, another of Ted’s students, summed up the sentiment in our April Research Day: “When you’re texting you feel like you’re closer to the teacher.” Ted agreed with Obens: “(Texting) definitely strengthens our face to face, day to day relationships.”

Folks pointed out this COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to a more informed face to face conversation.

For example, Ted texted a student this:

Me: I heard you had a bad afternoon at school. Check in first thing tomorrow 7:03 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting relationships could also morph over time from banter to serious exchanges.===

In our March conversation, we realized that it actually could be very useful to a teacher to have an entire “relationship” with a young person documented via texting.

Ted’s first group text that winter prompted this response (Mica’s favorite) from a student who at first did not text at all with Ted. Later, in March, we all realized that she had built a texting and face to face relationship trusting enough that she could reveal serious personal struggles to him:

Me: A reminder that tonight is Parent-Teacher night at NW/FC. Please notify your loved one at home that teachers are at school to meet them from 6:30-7:45pm. 9:05 AM
Student: O please lol 9:10 AM

By March, this student texted Ted about a physical argument with someone; via text, Ted “said we could talk later [in person], and we did.” “She never told me that,” said Mo, adding that it showed real growth in the student-teacher relationship “That she could share something so big, with you, that she trusts you so much that she could tell you that.”

In several other cases, Mo had shown texts with a depressed or self-destructive student to the principal, to say “look, I’m really worried.”

As Ted put it, documenting a relationship helped in less crucial cases as well:

“when I’m texting a kid I creep back up to the history to see what concerns have come up in the past – helpful for me, just so I can keep it all together, keep track. To remind myself – that I would like to help them more, talk to them more frequently.” (Later in the pilot, Ted would also point out the opposite: it became a burden to look back at exchanges that were complicated, and sometimes you just wanted to start clean with a student the next day.)

Shelia agreed on our April Research Day that texts kept a relationship around with you, for later viewing. “With a phone call, it’s out of your head,” Shelia explained. “With a text message it’s still there when you turn on your phone – it still reminds you. You have to delete it if you don’t want it – it’s there to remind you.”

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.===

Mo and Ted agreed that the OneVille Project made student-teacher texting seem normal and acceptable. In the past, for example, Ted probably would not have asked a new student for his texting number so quickly. As Mo put it, “in the past I would wait until I developed a relationship w/ the kid and then get his texting number. I would have waited to overhear a conversation about texting, then say, “oh, you text? You don’t have my number!” and then, start texting.”

Ironically, Ted noted in March that texting could immediately allow more “words” to be exchanged between student and teacher, rather than less: “One word answers [in person] with teenagers are more typical,” but via texting, “This is not one word answers. . .it’s better than “huh.” As Uche put it, “it takes more effort to text than to talk.” Ted added: “even more than they know they are giving – it might seem mindless, just chatting, and next thing you’re their friend!”

“Have good conversations,” Yose advised other teachers considering texting with students as we ended our April Research Day. “Like don’t just talk about school. Also talk about how your day’s going, stuff like that. Don’t just keep it about school.”

Ted finished our Research Day with more overall advice: “It’s up to both people to enhance the texting relationship. If the student is just responding “ok” or “yes” or “no,” that doesn’t allow the texting relationship to develop and to go towards communications that aren’t just ‘be on time.’”

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Politeness and respect while texting! Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.===

On our April Research Day at Harvard, students read transcripts taken from Google Voice (with participants’ permission and anonymized for analysis) and were immediately perceptive about another “pattern in the data”: students and teachers were noticeably polite to each other, texting “thanks and you’re welcome” after texts about permission slips, reminders, and personal check-ins on grades or life. “The kids haven’t been crossing boundaries in any way – no one has been inappropriate,” Mo said that day.

'''VIDEO OF MO HERE FROM RESEARCH DAY?

Obens explained that for texting to be successful, you’ve got to “keep it private, clean, respectful, stuff like that.” When pushed to define respect, he suggested that students should “give the teacher the same respect you’d give them in school. Don’t think that outside you should act different.”

Ted had commented in our March review of texts on the “language the students are using in thanking us – they’re receptive to positive talk that they don’t do verbally with you.”

In person, they don’t necessarily “stop and appreciate you in moments” the way they were doing with texting.

Students were “taking the time to write back, thanking you for letting them know about something – it strengthens the relationship with us and the school.”

In Research Day, several students pointed out the following texting exchange as interesting and important in its level of student-teacher respect. Starting from an unsolicited text from student to teacher, the exchange turned into communications about “putting a grade up” in the class:

Student: Hope your alright man.sorry that happened too u 9:43 PM
Me: I'm cool, thanks tho, have a good weekend 9:47 PM
Student: Alright man have a good n 11:22 PM
Me: Everything ok? 9:30 AM
Student: Ted? 10:39 AM
Me: Yup 11:02 AM
Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM
Me: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM
Student: Alright 11:09 AM

In February, Ted reported that “kids are testing limits w/ texting me while they are standing next to me in school, to get a reaction, not get a reaction – b/c they know they can’t use their phone in school. but they’re not abusing it or anything, they are just testing it.“

In March, Mo noted that one student whose “mouth is a gutter” had “corrected himself” after using the “n word” in a text because “he knows I would say something.” In March, Ted also noted that “A good boundary has unintentionally or intentionally been set by the kids or us – a few texts over weekend at night but didn’t start coming in at one in the morning.” Ted and Mo both agreed that kids had done basically nothing inappropriate with the texts -- as our ground rules had requested.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”===

Shelia and Mo used this phrase on Research Day when looking again at Ted’s text “you need to be in school way more my friend.” Others noted on Research Day that students felt really comfortable with the medium of texting:

“Some people might feel more comfortable saying it via texting more than face to face --- because in person you might feel shy, awkward and not know what to say back,” a student said.

“I’d rather text my parents than call them,” a student added.

We noted many times over the year that texting can handle many “styles” of communication. Ted noted in March that, “Mo is more of a conversationalist with the way she is texting – mine are more announcement style, school 8 a.m. tomorrow, don’t forget boxing tomorrow, stuff they don’t have to respond to. I do that to protect myself a little bit – I don’t want to burden them or feel like I’m waiting for a response from them.” Mo added, “more an FYI type of thing.” Ted agreed: “if they have a follow up they text me back.” Still, Ted later received and sent many joking texts as well and followed up proactively and personally with many a student over the course of the pilot.

By late spring, when Mica asked Ted what his response would be “to a teacher who might say ‘banter’ or misspellings that happen via text are a problem for education,” Ted had this to say, though not all teachers would agree:

Ted: lighten up. Anyone who does text is probably aware that the spellings and capitalization and punctuation are going to be all over the place. So we might need to say, against fear of this tech, ‘get used to this -- this is not going anywhere, this is what people are doing.’ It’s almost unhealthy to fear this at this point; this is where we are going. If you want the perfect sentences, do that in an English class, but that’s not what we’re trying to do.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.===

Pointing out uses of humor in the texts, Yose made another point about how texting could add to student-teacher relationships: people could communicate even if a student was in a bad mood. A face to face conversation might end with the student “shouting” out of anger, unable to help it; with texting, you could “be mad” and still “send a funny text.” With texting you could show the recipient the “emotions” you wanted them to see, and not necessarily what you felt.

Another student elaborated relatedly from across the room: with texting, you could overcome the “intimidation” of possible “rejection” by the other person, by sending lighthearted texts across the private channel that did not have to be responded to immediately. Emotion was “easier to handle” via texts, another student said.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other. ===

Texting somebody back “shows you appreciate the person and you’re thankful they helped you out,” Shelia said. Mo added: “They appreciate (Ted, our Full Circle teacher) taking time out of his own private life to send these texts.” Obens said that texts from Ted had gotten him to school on time.

When we analyzed this next example in Research Day, the students first noted the easy but respectful banter between student and teacher (“ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8”). Then, the student who had sent these texts pointed out that he himself was putting in the time to do back and forth texting about attendance rules, and so he was showing he felt motivated to be there on time. He had “put in the effort” with responses, like “fine” and “I’ll make it [to school] by 8:10.” “I sleep a lot – but I made it before 8:10. It did help. I was used to coming in around 8:30,” he said:

Me: School 8:00am manana 7:10 PM
Student: ok boss 9:33 PM
Me: 8am! 6:19 PM
Student: Ok lol 6:22 PM
Student: 8:10? 6:22 PM
Me: Try for 7:55, and get settled with something to read mi amigo 6:24 PM
Student: That's too early ted. I'm make it before 8:10 6:25 PM
Me: Nooooooo, 8! 6:26 PM
Student: Ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8 6:43 PM
Me: Arrive late, leave early, booo 3:26 PM
Student: I made it on time 3:34 PM
Me: School starts at 8, no later 3:36 PM
Me: You can do it! 3:37 PM
Student: But to be late its 8:10 4:00 PM

Wielding her highlighter in again pointing out Ted’s text to another student (“you need to be in school way more my friend”), Shelia explained that “ I feel like it’s genuine concern.” “It shows connection,” Obens added. “It also shows courage.” He pointed out that Ted was “taking time to text people about stuff – taking time to get a person to school on time. That shows courage on the part of the teacher. Also on the student, by replying back.” Shelia agreed, adding, “It takes the courage to make that bond – from the teacher -- and also for the student to participate in the bond.”

The student above (“Ahhh jesus ted") added, “Who would want to text a teacher – there’s a lot you could be doing at that time. A lot of people won’t do it – that they do it means they really care about what they are doing.”

Ted highlighted this same point: student texts to teachers “show a level of investment. Even if (the text is) not school related, the student is checking in, making that contact, when they don’t have to. It’s really important to understand – the value of doing things not only when you have to do things.”

On Research Day, we left sure that texting had “helped” in these teachers’ classrooms but unsure how it might work in “a school of like 600,” as someone put it. Full Circle/Next Wave are particularly “personal” schools, some pointed out: “in other schools it’s less personal, you get five minutes with that teacher,” Shelia said.

We left with a question: does that sort of lack of “personal” time for face to face attention in other schools make something like texting more likely to get traction or not? More likely to help, or less?

'''These thoughts raised a key COMMUNICATION AHA:

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!===

As Ted put it in March, “if we had serious students who wanted help academically this could get out of control – multiple texts, multiple students, if students do their homework every night and want a question answered every night – so maybe structuring that with a [texting] office hours idea – [a group chat ] a couple days a week.” While computers would be most useful for serious group homework help, “texting is better b/c they don’t need a computer” and many didn’t have them to use.

Further, Ted pointed out that as with any channel, you could just choose how much support you do and don’t offer as a texting teacher.

As Ted put it re. wakeup texts, “I’m going to try not to go as far as the Next Wave (junior high) will go – I’m trying to put more responsibility on the high school student – I’m shying away from the pre-school conversation.”

Students indicated that they were indeed used to getting reminders: “I don’t like getting nagged but it’s what gets me to do stuff,” said a student.

In June, as paperwork and school’s ending takes over, texting began to feel a bit “extra” to the teachers. Mo had stopped doing daily wakeup texts with a few students for now: “The last couple months I haven’t texted as much as I did in the first half of the year,” she said. “There’s so much crap you have to do – paperwork for SPED (Special Education)– time consumed with life,” said Ted, whose wife had just had a baby. “Especially w/ the baby, I haven’t thought about texting kids that much – but I have texted them more on personal stuff b/c I haven’t been in classroom so much. Students were texting him asking “how’s your daughter . .They texted me when the Bruins won.”

While one-to-one relationship-building definitely took time, quick check-ins via text could of course also save time. Some quick check-ins otherwise simply couldn’t happen in person during busy days. Looking at one of Mo’s texts on Research Day, Yose noted, “She’s making sure the kid doesn’t get in trouble – she asks him to call his mom and stuff. She couldn’t do this face to face b/c he wasn’t in school.” Similarly, Mo pointed out a quick student request for useful information that had happened successfully via text: “hey do you think they’re gonna extend the add drop period?” In class, Oben explained, “I don’t feel like bothering (Ted) w/ those types of questions.“

In March, Mo had mentioned that to save time, she really needed a tweaked Google Voice, which typically only allows a text to a group of 5 people. Having “started out texting every Thursday for homework,” she had “got away from it b/c was a pain to do 5 and then 5 – to do all at once will make it a whole lot easier.” Ted argued in June that a texting “blast” to all of his students would save him time, once we worked out the technical kinks.

But time was still a concern in one-to-one texting -- even as for now, the relationship-building made it worth it.

We had some final “ahas” about the use of texting in public schools:

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.===

Several times in the pilot, students lost phones, had their phones shut off b/c of not paying bills, or simply ran out of plan minutes. In March, Mo reported a range of “Someone who lost phone, someone who left in cousin’s car, someone who got it taken away – some shut off – [xx] owes 500 on his phone, so doesn’t have his phone any more. . .and they’re always changing numbers.”

In these cases, it was clear that economics matter in using texting for student support and that texting was hardly a foolproof method of reaching students. But this is the case regardless of whether people are using phones. And relying on phones may be more equitable in some ways than relying on people to have the flexibility to meet you for face to face meetings whenever you’re free, or, expecting them to have computers and internet access.

A student who had 78 texting minutes a month, period, put it this way to Mica:

I think I have email on my phone but I have to pay for it. I could check on my mom’s phone, she has a blackberry. If I’m near a computer. . I’ll check my facebook and then my email. [how often do you check your email?] not often. . I could try to check and let you know. . . I don’t have minutes and so I can’t text. Like when you get a cell phone it runs off of minutes, you have to pay for cell phone, internet, texts. When I have no minutes I have no text messages, no phone calls, nothing. [that’s the situation, til when?] till the 8th or 9th of April. [so If I text you you don’t even get it?] nope. . . . I don’t have a lot so it’s easy to run out – 78 minutes.

This student later got a Droid that allowed her to do texting, internet, even “edit papers.”

And students also made their own solutions within economic limits. Another student showed us his ingenious phone arrangement: to save on texting and internet charges, he carried an unactivated iphone (purchased from a friend for xx) that he used to access the internet over the school’s wifi network. He used smartphone apps for different social networks and did texting over the internet, so he was able to approximate having a full-fledged smartphone while saving money. The student also carried a prepaid phone for calls and texts.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.===

In February, we decided that the HGSE students needed a clearer “role” with the young people even just to check in with them via text on “how is texting going” or “how are you doing.” The FC/NW students also noted that a relationship was needed first before students could feel comfortable texting with new adults. Our decision: HGSE students would return with new roles as college/career readiness mentors on call as well as co-researchers.

A texting relationship really did blossom between youth and the HGSE folks who headed to the school a number of times for personal conversations (and, as one student put it, to crack a few jokes).

One HGSE student had this exchange with a student at FC/NW:

M: Im happy to help you out. What way do you think I could help you best to be successful?
S: You tell me
M: Well I think your teachers and counselor and fam and friends are a good support team. I could help w advice about graduation and college here and there
S: About geting me in 2 a gud collage for consoler for kids
S: I wonder how u get in 2 harvard
S: I need u 2 tell me where can I go and be a gud consoler wit a gud deagree

Privately, Mica had this extended conversation with one student, two months after we began:

March 15, 2011, 9:17 p.m.

M: Hey there – a mentor signed up with district but she wants to mentor in journalism carers. Not your thing, correct? Still seeking science and math person from them.
And, any questions for me on college/academic stuff? I’m always here to be asked
Student: (immediately!): Do you have any info on culinary arts.
M: I know someone starting a restaurant as a chef.
And someone else who made it as a chef in NYC
S: Do you have anything on culinary colleges?
M:I think the chef in NYC went to one. Want me to ask?
S: Yes thanks
M: What’s your email address or how would I put him in touch with you? I have to go through his dad, etc.
S: (email address deleted)
M: Ps is it chef role you are interested in or something else?
S: chef. But I’m also interested in everything actually.
M: everything in the world or everything about culinary school?
S: Culinary school. Lol
M: How about the science of food btw? There’s a course at Harvard about that; maybe google it
S: I’ll google it.
M: ((having googled it myself too)): How about this to get started too – Harvard lectures online from chefs on science and food! http://scientopia.org/blogs/everydaybiology/2011/03/03/harvard-lectures-the-science-of-cooking-and-molecular-gastronomy
S: (10:31): Awesome thanks. I’ll ttyl. Good night
((I have to google “ttyl” and learn it means “talk to you later” (!!!)))

As it turned out, she had no way to look up these links without going to school to use the computers, because her phone had no access to the internet and she had no internet-linked computer at home. Still, we began a conversation about her career interests that expanded in the months to come -- and she later got a smartphone.

Texting afforded immediate career links and also, highlighted a key IMPLEMENTATION AHA:

===IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.===

We promised early on to bring new tutors and mentors on to students’ “teams” if they wanted them. But it took a long time to get recommendations from the district coordinator (who needed clearance from the principal and then, descriptions of students’ precise interests), and it was very hard to schedule the face to face afterschool meetings between the tutors interested and the students. One tutor was only available after 5:00 and on weekends, as she worked. And the student we were seeking this tutor for pointed out that her own work schedule at Kmart changed suddenly “every week”: she never knew how many hours she’d get and when, and she also sometimes had to work on the weekends. In the end, it took several weeks of coordinating texts, emails, and phone calls to try to get one tutor to meet 3 girls face to face in the school. After we finally set up a meeting between the tutor and the girls after school at a nearby Dunkin Donuts, just one student took the tutor up on the opportunity – after Mica sent multiple text messages urging the student to reschedule a conflict and advised the tutor via text through gridlock traffic. No better evidence that face-to-face mentoring just isn't possible all the time!

Texting/ahas

2011-08-11T13:51:53Z

24.60.250.60:

''Note: all this is being edited by teachers right now.

Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.
We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!
-----------------------

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

Do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons: Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth” medium. Also, the sort of support texting could offer immediately seems particularly personal, because it really feels like a private “tube” between two people. Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own “personal lives.”

Instead of just fearing texting, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot explicitly with 40 students and put our joint findings on the internet. But in some ways, FC/NW is a special school: all teachers work in what Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. They work in a “triangle” “between clinician, academic, teacher-counselor, daily.” But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

'''COLORED TEXT BOX: Over time, our overall COMMUNICATION AHA would be about the benefits of texting for student-teacher relationship. But we want to tell you how we got there! We taped a lot of our conversations and so we talk about ourselves in the third person (Ted and Mo, Mica and Uche).

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.===

In February, Ted used GoogleVoice this way: he got last minute info in a staff meeting that a ski trip was available to a new student he’d recently met and had been helping with math. The “kid’s voicemail was full.” So, Ted texted the student to tell him to bring needed info and a signed permission slip the next day. The student’s response? “Lots of exclamation points, ‘thank you,’” Ted said. There was now a ‘high level of communication” with the student. The exchange happened “in an 18 hour turnout” and “allowed us to make a strong connection right when he got to the school.” This was a related example:

Me: Bring in your insurance info tomorrow, the company and your policy number, with 10 bucks, yor going skiing thursday! 3:23 PM
Student: Thank you soo much ted! i will .. ill have it all tomarrow! 4:12 PM
Me: Are you going to school tomorrow? 6:59 PM
Student: Yea .. deffintly 9:36 PM
Me: Boxing club tomorrow 6:18 PM
Student: Ok .. should i bring anything? 6:41 PM
Me: Workout clothes 6:42 PM
Student: Ok .. thanks .. 7:03 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.===

Another student said that he lacked a home phone, so texting helped:

“Sometimes they call your house when there’s no school, but I don’t have a house phone. They might call my mom but she never picks up. If he (Ted) hadn’t texted me (about the snow day), I wouldn’t have woken up for school.”

In another case, a student who had been kicked out of school texted Ted to find out what his situation was and whether he faced expulsion.

And here’s an e.g. of texting that helped when a student was literally absent from school:

Me: Worried about you!! 8:15 PM
Student: im feeling much better now I will deff see u tmr (: 8:16 PM
Me: Good we miss you!! Can mom right a note for the last 2 days 8:17 PM
Student: she called [School admininstrator] today telling him I was out sick not truent 8:18 PM
Me: Good..see you tomorrow..and glad your feeling better!! 8:19 PM
Student: thanks 8:24 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.===

In early March, Uche and Mica got together with Mo and Ted and looked at the GoogleVoice record of all the texts. Our plan: to “pull out examples of texts that you find interesting,” to “label the “type” of communication that occurred,” and to “provide any evidence of any text’s effects on any student’s achievement/motivation/relationship with you.”

It was notable how many different school-related subjects a teacher and student could text about! So far, Mo had primarily been texting with students for wakeup calls, paperwork reminders, discussions of personal updates, updates on other students that students knew about, health check-ins, and discussions of absence. She bantered a lot with the students, too. We laughed often in the pilot about the number of exclamation points Mo tended to use in her texts!!!!!!!!

Ted had reviewed his own Google Voice record and “broke it up into categories – who talks to who about what:

(There’s) a cluster about being on time. Another about dropout prevention, kids who haven’t been to school in a long time, what can we do to transition you out of here easier. And, checkins w/ students about miscellaneous—academics, work, home, if they’re heading toward that dropout prevention category . . . Also snow days, field trips, some kids need to bring attire for electives (gym attire, skates, something they may need for the next day). back to on time, staying a full day – if kids walk out I remind them about the day before. . . . And also, jobs. Kids that want jobs.”

Ted was texting with students about absences and lateness; afterschool activity (he coached a boxing club and led a lot of trips); and for personal checkins, which then often considered academic issues. “New electives, new teachers, new schedules – some confirmations on preparations for the next day – are we going skating, to boxing club tomorrow, to bring in the right clothes.” Students were checking in with him via text about academic issues like credits, the semester change, and their discipline records. One student had texted him to ask how he was doing after a fraught interaction, and how his weekend went. A few kids had texted him for help in class. In some cases he was strongly pushing young people to attend class or keep up their motivation via text. The other texts Ted had been sending in February were “more like routine -- no school, snowstorm, ‘you haven’t been in school where are ya’ type stuff.” “Some kids don’t respond to those at all, some kids do,” he said.

Neither teacher was fielding lots of questions about schoolwork via text. Instead, they were texting more about logistics, reminders, updates, absence explanations -- and in the process, building relationships. As we read all these texts, Ted and Mo expressed surprise and satisfaction with “the language that the kids are using to thank (them)…It’s refreshing to know that they have that capability.” Some students expressed gratitude and other emotions through their texts that Ted and Mo hadn’t experienced with them in the classroom.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.===

If you judged texting by the immediate consequences of a given text, it could sometimes look unsuccessful. Ted said in February that the previous week, a doctor showed up at school for testing one of his students, but “the kid didn’t show up for school that day.” Ted texted the student at 10 (the appt was 9-11); he “texted me right back w/ what sounded like a confirmation that he was coming but then didn’t come. So that was almost a success story but not.”

Mo noted that students she texted to wake up still came late. But, the same students were using text to contact her with serious support needs, even during drug rehab placements. Mo was using her texting to support one young person with depression, so that they eventually came in to school.

Mo had a major aha in March: “Success for a depressed student in a sense is the engagement itself. Even having this exchange.” And as Ted said earlier in the year, “In some ways, it comes down to someone paying attention to them.” As Mo explained of one text she sent to a student in March, “I wanted to make her feel good before she went to bed.” And Mo reported in March that she had this talk with a student the previous day:

"I just wanna make sure you’re ok – when I text you I wanna know you’re ok, safe,” she said, adding, “we worry about you!” He had responded, “I know you guys do, I will definitely write you something.”

Over and over in the pilot, we talked about how texts showed not just connection but true caring. Students pointed out a bunch on our April Research Day:

Mo’s text to a student: “worried about you.” “It shows that she really cares,” Shelia explained.

“You had a bad day yesterday”: a particularly caring teacher “check-in.”

“you made 1 day last week” (“I like the encouragement,” said one student)

“you’re a smart kid” (“That’s really nice because some kids might feel doubt and don’t get many compliments from people,” another student said.

Mo pointed out that one student had asked Ted “how was your weekend.”

Shelia pointed out that overall, the texts could build relationship and simultaneously, the motivation to try. “You need to know [teachers] care in order to do stuff. Otherwise what’s the point in trying. If a person is ‘I’m here for you’ – you feel someone else cares, I should care too.”

In the texts below, the youth was still not in school, but a relationship was being built to get him in the next time. Note the three quick appreciative texts back after a compliment, which many students pointed out on Research Day:

Me: Hey is your mom coming in 8:20 AM
Student: Yah bro waiting for her that's y I ain't in school my G G=grandma lmao ur old 8:21 AM
Me: Not funny....lol 8:23 AM
Student: Ii hate the fact u don't apritiate my jokes 8:24 AM
Student: -_- 8:24 AM
Me: But I appreciate you:-) 8:26 AM
Student: Ahhh good made my morning 8:31 AM
Student: =) 8:32 AM
Student: Lol jk jk idc 8:32 AM
Me: Awwwww 8:33 AM

Similarly, in the texts below it was of course not the actual medical help Ted offered via text that could be supportive to the student, but the caring itself:

Hey I dont think im going to come to school tomorw im wicked sick 7:19 PM
Have a glass of o.j. and drink water often. Get some rest, and you'll feel great in the morning, ready for school 7:44 PM
Ive been doing that all day and it hasnt helped one bit 7:58 PM
Lets have a good full 1/2 day tomorrow 9:31 PM
Idont know if im goin to school tomorrow 9:46 PM
You haven't been putting consecutive full days together, push yourself to improve, you can do it! 9:49 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.===

Just as in face to face conversation, there’s no either/or.

Here’s an exchange that went from a basic schedule update, to a communication about stickers (Somerville “Villen” gear), to fundamental questions about school deadlines:

Me: No school tomorrow 7:09 PM
Student: -_- aww .... Hey do you have any villen stickers by any chance :) jw 7:11 PM
Me: Haha, no 7:12 PM
Student: Aww :( .... I wish there was school tommorrow .... Hey do you think the school will extend the add drop day .... Like give us another week for add drop o 7:16 PM
Student: r no...??? Jw 7:16 PM
Me: Not sure 7:16 PM
Student: Okaii well I hope you have a nice day or two off :) 7:17 PM
Me: Thanks you too 7:19 PM
Student: Ill try -_- ..... :) 7:20 PM

Communications that started about serious school status questions could then turn into banter that was both joking and academically important:

Student: Ted do u kn how long I am suspened for 9:41 PM
Me: [Principal] wanted to have a meeting this week, I will call you tomorrow, sorry so late 10:48 PM
Student: No I kn that I just need to kn wen is the meeting 10:49 PM
Student: Thow 10:54 PM
Me: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM
Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM
Me: Use it! 3:27 PM
Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

Another text exchange between Ted and a student mixed banter and serious stuff:

X: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM
Me: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM
Me: Hurry up! 7:49 AM
X: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM
Me: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM
X: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM
Me: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM
X: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 A
X: Noo! almost closest ive been! 7:27 AM
Me: Good try though, we both have some studying to do over vacation 7:28 AM
X: thanks and i know my eyes will be glued to that rmv book 7:29 AM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.===

Several students texted Ted about sports events: even one student (above with "silly goose") who had been asked to leave school a few months earlier, “texted me after lakers beat the celtics last week, at 10:30 pm”:

Student: Lol wat just happend to ur celtics 10:48 PM
Me: Ha 10:57 PM

When a HGSE student asked one of Ted’s students (who had not been responding to Ted’s texts) about whether texting with teachers was useful, he suggested that he “finds (them) useful, but I just don’t want to text back.” But, he added, he’d like to hear from Ted over the weekend once in a while, even if just to “how his weekend was going.” The student wanted to know more about Ted outside of school: for example, “is he working anywhere else, or is he just a teacher?” Talking about this non school-related stuff, the student claimed, would “make their relationship grow even stronger.”

Many students made similar statements in private interviews and group discussions. Obens, another of Ted’s students, summed up the sentiment in our April Research Day: “When you’re texting you feel like you’re closer to the teacher.” Ted agreed with Obens: “(Texting) definitely strengthens our face to face, day to day relationships.”

Folks pointed out this COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to a more informed face to face conversation.

For example, Ted texted a student this:

Me: I heard you had a bad afternoon at school. Check in first thing tomorrow 7:03 PM

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting relationships could also morph over time from banter to serious exchanges.===

In our March conversation, we realized that it actually could be very useful to a teacher to have an entire “relationship” with a young person documented via texting.

Ted’s first group text that winter prompted this response (Mica’s favorite) from a student who at first did not text at all with Ted. Later, in March, we all realized that she had built a texting and face to face relationship trusting enough that she could reveal serious personal struggles to him:

Me: A reminder that tonight is Parent-Teacher night at NW/FC. Please notify your loved one at home that teachers are at school to meet them from 6:30-7:45pm. 9:05 AM
Student: O please lol 9:10 AM

By March, this student texted Ted about a physical argument with someone; via text, Ted “said we could talk later [in person], and we did.” “She never told me that,” said Mo, adding that it showed real growth in the student-teacher relationship “That she could share something so big, with you, that she trusts you so much that she could tell you that.”

In several other cases, Mo had shown texts with a depressed or self-destructive student to the principal, to say “look, I’m really worried.”

As Ted put it, documenting a relationship helped in less crucial cases as well:

“when I’m texting a kid I creep back up to the history to see what concerns have come up in the past – helpful for me, just so I can keep it all together, keep track. To remind myself – that I would like to help them more, talk to them more frequently.” (Later in the pilot, Ted would also point out the opposite: it became a burden to look back at exchanges that were complicated, and sometimes you just wanted to start clean with a student the next day.)

Shelia agreed on our April Research Day that texts kept a relationship around with you, for later viewing. “With a phone call, it’s out of your head,” Shelia explained. “With a text message it’s still there when you turn on your phone – it still reminds you. You have to delete it if you don’t want it – it’s there to remind you.”

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.===

Mo and Ted agreed that the OneVille Project made student-teacher texting seem normal and acceptable. In the past, for example, Ted probably would not have asked a new student for his texting number so quickly. As Mo put it, “in the past I would wait until I developed a relationship w/ the kid and then get his texting number. I would have waited to overhear a conversation about texting, then say, “oh, you text? You don’t have my number!” and then, start texting.”

Ironically, Ted noted in March that texting could immediately allow more “words” to be exchanged between student and teacher, rather than less: “One word answers [in person] with teenagers are more typical,” but via texting, “This is not one word answers. . .it’s better than “huh.” As Uche put it, “it takes more effort to text than to talk.” Ted added: “even more than they know they are giving – it might seem mindless, just chatting, and next thing you’re their friend!”

“Have good conversations,” Yose advised other teachers considering texting with students as we ended our April Research Day. “Like don’t just talk about school. Also talk about how your day’s going, stuff like that. Don’t just keep it about school.”

Ted finished our Research Day with more overall advice: “It’s up to both people to enhance the texting relationship. If the student is just responding “ok” or “yes” or “no,” that doesn’t allow the texting relationship to develop and to go towards communications that aren’t just ‘be on time.’”

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Politeness and respect while texting! Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.===

On our April Research Day at Harvard, students read transcripts taken from Google Voice (with participants’ permission and anonymized for analysis) and were immediately perceptive about another “pattern in the data”: students and teachers were noticeably polite to each other, texting “thanks and you’re welcome” after texts about permission slips, reminders, and personal check-ins on grades or life. “The kids haven’t been crossing boundaries in any way – no one has been inappropriate,” Mo said that day.

'''VIDEO OF MO HERE FROM RESEARCH DAY?

Obens explained that for texting to be successful, you’ve got to “keep it private, clean, respectful, stuff like that.” When pushed to define respect, he suggested that students should “give the teacher the same respect you’d give them in school. Don’t think that outside you should act different.”

Ted had commented in our March review of texts on the “language the students are using in thanking us – they’re receptive to positive talk that they don’t do verbally with you.”

In person, they don’t necessarily “stop and appreciate you in moments” the way they were doing with texting.

Students were “taking the time to write back, thanking you for letting them know about something – it strengthens the relationship with us and the school.”

In Research Day, several students pointed out the following texting exchange as interesting and important in its level of student-teacher respect. Starting from an unsolicited text from student to teacher, the exchange turned into communications about “putting a grade up” in the class:

Student: Hope your alright man.sorry that happened too u 9:43 PM
Me: I'm cool, thanks tho, have a good weekend 9:47 PM
Student: Alright man have a good n 11:22 PM
Me: Everything ok? 9:30 AM
Student: Ted? 10:39 AM
Me: Yup 11:02 AM
Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM
Me: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM
Student: Alright 11:09 AM

In February, Ted reported that “kids are testing limits w/ texting me while they are standing next to me in school, to get a reaction, not get a reaction – b/c they know they can’t use their phone in school. but they’re not abusing it or anything, they are just testing it.“

In March, Mo noted that one student whose “mouth is a gutter” had “corrected himself” after using the “n word” in a text because “he knows I would say something.” In March, Ted also noted that “A good boundary has unintentionally or intentionally been set by the kids or us – a few texts over weekend at night but didn’t start coming in at one in the morning.” Ted and Mo both agreed that kids had done basically nothing inappropriate with the texts -- as our ground rules had requested.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”===

Shelia and Mo used this phrase on Research Day when looking again at Ted’s text “you need to be in school way more my friend.” Others noted on Research Day that students felt really comfortable with the medium of texting:

“Some people might feel more comfortable saying it via texting more than face to face --- because in person you might feel shy, awkward and not know what to say back,” a student said.

“I’d rather text my parents than call them,” a student added.

We noted many times over the year that texting can handle many “styles” of communication. Ted noted in March that, “Mo is more of a conversationalist with the way she is texting – mine are more announcement style, school 8 a.m. tomorrow, don’t forget boxing tomorrow, stuff they don’t have to respond to. I do that to protect myself a little bit – I don’t want to burden them or feel like I’m waiting for a response from them.” Mo added, “more an FYI type of thing.” Ted agreed: “if they have a follow up they text me back.” Still, Ted later received and sent many joking texts as well and followed up proactively and personally with many a student over the course of the pilot.

By late spring, when Mica asked Ted what his response would be “to a teacher who might say ‘banter’ or misspellings that happen via text are a problem for education,” Ted had this to say, though not all teachers would agree:

Ted: lighten up. Anyone who does text is probably aware that the spellings and capitalization and punctuation are going to be all over the place. So we might need to say, against fear of this tech, ‘get used to this -- this is not going anywhere, this is what people are doing.’ It’s almost unhealthy to fear this at this point; this is where we are going. If you want the perfect sentences, do that in an English class, but that’s not what we’re trying to do.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.===

Pointing out uses of humor in the texts, Yose made another point about how texting could add to student-teacher relationships: people could communicate even if a student was in a bad mood. A face to face conversation might end with the student “shouting” out of anger, unable to help it; with texting, you could “be mad” and still “send a funny text.” With texting you could show the recipient the “emotions” you wanted them to see, and not necessarily what you felt.

Another student elaborated relatedly from across the room: with texting, you could overcome the “intimidation” of possible “rejection” by the other person, by sending lighthearted texts across the private channel that did not have to be responded to immediately. Emotion was “easier to handle” via texts, another student said.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other. ===

Texting somebody back “shows you appreciate the person and you’re thankful they helped you out,” Shelia said. Mo added: “They appreciate (Ted, our Full Circle teacher) taking time out of his own private life to send these texts.” Obens said that texts from Ted had gotten him to school on time.

When we analyzed this next example in Research Day, the students first noted the easy but respectful banter between student and teacher (“ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8”). Then, the student who had sent these texts pointed out that he himself was putting in the time to do back and forth texting about attendance rules, and so he was showing he felt motivated to be there on time. He had “put in the effort” with responses, like “fine” and “I’ll make it [to school] by 8:10.” “I sleep a lot – but I made it before 8:10. It did help. I was used to coming in around 8:30,” he said:

Me: School 8:00am manana 7:10 PM
Student: ok boss 9:33 PM
Me: 8am! 6:19 PM
Student: Ok lol 6:22 PM
Student: 8:10? 6:22 PM
Me: Try for 7:55, and get settled with something to read mi amigo 6:24 PM
Student: That's too early ted. I'm make it before 8:10 6:25 PM
Me: Nooooooo, 8! 6:26 PM
Student: Ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8 6:43 PM
Me: Arrive late, leave early, booo 3:26 PM
Student: I made it on time 3:34 PM
Me: School starts at 8, no later 3:36 PM
Me: You can do it! 3:37 PM
Student: But to be late its 8:10 4:00 PM

Wielding her highlighter in again pointing out Ted’s text to another student (“you need to be in school way more my friend”), Shelia explained that “ I feel like it’s genuine concern.” “It shows connection,” Obens added. “It also shows courage.” He pointed out that Ted was “taking time to text people about stuff – taking time to get a person to school on time. That shows courage on the part of the teacher. Also on the student, by replying back.” Shelia agreed, adding, “It takes the courage to make that bond – from the teacher -- and also for the student to participate in the bond.”

The student above (“Ahhh jesus ted") added, “Who would want to text a teacher – there’s a lot you could be doing at that time. A lot of people won’t do it – that they do it means they really care about what they are doing.”

Ted highlighted this same point: student texts to teachers “show a level of investment. Even if (the text is) not school related, the student is checking in, making that contact, when they don’t have to. It’s really important to understand – the value of doing things not only when you have to do things.”

On Research Day, we left sure that texting had “helped” in these teachers’ classrooms but unsure how it might work in “a school of like 600,” as someone put it. Full Circle/Next Wave are particularly “personal” schools, some pointed out: “in other schools it’s less personal, you get five minutes with that teacher,” Shelia said.

We left with a question: does that sort of lack of “personal” time for face to face attention in other schools make something like texting more likely to get traction or not? More likely to help, or less?

'''These thoughts raised a key COMMUNICATION AHA:

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!===

As Ted put it in March, “if we had serious students who wanted help academically this could get out of control – multiple texts, multiple students, if students do their homework every night and want a question answered every night – so maybe structuring that with a [texting] office hours idea – [a group chat ] a couple days a week.” While computers would be most useful for serious group homework help, “texting is better b/c they don’t need a computer” and many didn’t have them to use.

Further, Ted pointed out that as with any channel, you could just choose how much support you do and don’t offer as a texting teacher.

As Ted put it re. wakeup texts, “I’m going to try not to go as far as the Next Wave (junior high) will go – I’m trying to put more responsibility on the high school student – I’m shying away from the pre-school conversation.”

Students indicated that they were indeed used to getting reminders: “I don’t like getting nagged but it’s what gets me to do stuff,” said a student.

In June, as paperwork and school’s ending takes over, texting began to feel a bit “extra” to the teachers. Mo had stopped doing daily wakeup texts with a few students for now: “The last couple months I haven’t texted as much as I did in the first half of the year,” she said. “There’s so much crap you have to do – paperwork for SPED (Special Education)– time consumed with life,” said Ted, whose wife had just had a baby. “Especially w/ the baby, I haven’t thought about texting kids that much – but I have texted them more on personal stuff b/c I haven’t been in classroom so much. Students were texting him asking “how’s your daughter . .They texted me when the Bruins won.”

While one-to-one relationship-building definitely took time, quick check-ins via text could of course also save time. Some quick check-ins otherwise simply couldn’t happen in person during busy days. Looking at one of Mo’s texts on Research Day, Yose noted, “She’s making sure the kid doesn’t get in trouble – she asks him to call his mom and stuff. She couldn’t do this face to face b/c he wasn’t in school.” Similarly, Mo pointed out a quick student request for useful information that had happened successfully via text: “hey do you think they’re gonna extend the add drop period?” In class, Oben explained, “I don’t feel like bothering (Ted) w/ those types of questions.“

In March, Mo had mentioned that to save time, she really needed a tweaked Google Voice, which typically only allows a text to a group of 5 people. Having “started out texting every Thursday for homework,” she had “got away from it b/c was a pain to do 5 and then 5 – to do all at once will make it a whole lot easier.” Ted argued in June that a texting “blast” to all of his students would save him time, once we worked out the technical kinks.

But time was still a concern in one-to-one texting -- even as for now, the relationship-building made it worth it.

We had some final “ahas” about the use of texting in public schools:

===COMMUNICATION AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.===

Several times in the pilot, students lost phones, had their phones shut off b/c of not paying bills, or simply ran out of plan minutes. In March, Mo reported a range of “Someone who lost phone, someone who left in cousin’s car, someone who got it taken away – some shut off – [xx] owes 500 on his phone, so doesn’t have his phone any more. . .and they’re always changing numbers.”

In these cases, it was clear that economics matter in using texting for student support and that texting was hardly a foolproof method of reaching students. But this is the case regardless of whether people are using phones. And relying on phones may be more equitable in some ways than relying on people to have the flexibility to meet you for face to face meetings whenever you’re free, or, expecting them to have computers and internet access.

A student who had 78 texting minutes a month, period, put it this way to Mica:

I think I have email on my phone but I have to pay for it. I could check on my mom’s phone, she has a blackberry. If I’m near a computer. . I’ll check my facebook and then my email. [how often do you check your email?] not often. . I could try to check and let you know. . . I don’t have minutes and so I can’t text. Like when you get a cell phone it runs off of minutes, you have to pay for cell phone, internet, texts. When I have no minutes I have no text messages, no phone calls, nothing. [that’s the situation, til when?] till the 8th or 9th of April. [so If I text you you don’t even get it?] nope. . . . I don’t have a lot so it’s easy to run out – 78 minutes.

This student later got a Droid that allowed her to do texting, internet, even “edit papers.”

And students also made their own solutions within economic limits. Another student showed us his ingenious phone arrangement: to save on texting and internet charges, he carried an unactivated iphone (purchased from a friend for xx) that he used to access the internet over the school’s wifi network. He used smartphone apps for different social networks and did texting over the internet, so he was able to approximate having a full-fledged smartphone while saving money. The student also carried a prepaid phone for calls and texts.

===COMMUNICATION AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.===

In February, we decided that the HGSE students needed a clearer “role” with the young people even just to check in with them via text on “how is texting going” or “how are you doing.” The FC/NW students also noted that a relationship was needed first before students could feel comfortable texting with new adults. Our decision: HGSE students would return with new roles as college/career readiness mentors on call as well as co-researchers.

A texting relationship really did blossom between youth and the HGSE folks who headed to the school a number of times for personal conversations (and, as one student put it, to crack a few jokes).

One HGSE student had this exchange with a student at FC/NW:

M: Im happy to help you out. What way do you think I could help you best to be successful?
S: You tell me
M: Well I think your teachers and counselor and fam and friends are a good support team. I could help w advice about graduation and college here and there
S: About geting me in 2 a gud collage for consoler for kids
S: I wonder how u get in 2 harvard
S: I need u 2 tell me where can I go and be a gud consoler wit a gud deagree

Privately, Mica had this extended conversation with one student, two months after we began:

March 15, 2011, 9:17 p.m.

M: Hey there – a mentor signed up with district but she wants to mentor in journalism carers. Not your thing, correct? Still seeking science and math person from them.
And, any questions for me on college/academic stuff? I’m always here to be asked
Student: (immediately!): Do you have any info on culinary arts.
M: I know someone starting a restaurant as a chef.
And someone else who made it as a chef in NYC
S: Do you have anything on culinary colleges?
M:I think the chef in NYC went to one. Want me to ask?
S: Yes thanks
M: What’s your email address or how would I put him in touch with you? I have to go through his dad, etc.
S: (email address deleted)
M: Ps is it chef role you are interested in or something else?
S: chef. But I’m also interested in everything actually.
M: everything in the world or everything about culinary school?
S: Culinary school. Lol
M: How about the science of food btw? There’s a course at Harvard about that; maybe google it
S: I’ll google it.
M: ((having googled it myself too)): How about this to get started too – Harvard lectures online from chefs on science and food! http://scientopia.org/blogs/everydaybiology/2011/03/03/harvard-lectures-the-science-of-cooking-and-molecular-gastronomy
S: (10:31): Awesome thanks. I’ll ttyl. Good night
((I have to google “ttyl” and learn it means “talk to you later” (!!!)))

As it turned out, she had no way to look up these links without going to school to use the computers, because her phone had no access to the internet and she had no internet-linked computer at home. Still, we began a conversation about her career interests that expanded in the months to come -- and she later got a smartphone.

Texting afforded immediate career links and also, highlighted a key IMPLEMENTATION AHA:

===IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.===

We promised early on to bring new tutors and mentors on to students’ “teams” if they wanted them. But it took a long time to get recommendations from the district coordinator (who needed clearance from the principal and then, descriptions of students’ precise interests), and it was very hard to schedule the face to face afterschool meetings between the tutors interested and the students. One tutor was only available after 5:00 and on weekends, as she worked. And the student we were seeking this tutor for pointed out that her own work schedule at Kmart changed suddenly “every week”: she never knew how many hours she’d get and when, and she also sometimes had to work on the weekends. In the end, it took several weeks of coordinating texts, emails, and phone calls to try to get one tutor to meet 3 girls face to face in the school. After we finally set up a meeting between the tutor and the girls after school at a nearby Dunkin Donuts, just one student took the tutor up on the opportunity – after Mica sent multiple text messages urging the student to reschedule a conflict and advised the tutor via text through gridlock traffic. No better evidence that face-to-face mentoring just isn't possible all the time!

Texting/ahas

2011-08-11T13:51:31Z

24.60.250.60:

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-09T22:06:39Z

24.60.250.60: /* MAIN SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK */

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------
ADD PHOTOS OF CONNECTORS AND VIDEOS OF THE DIAGRAMS, TO BRING THIS ALIVE. (CONSIDER VIDEO INTERVIEWS W/ SOME CONNECTORS TOO!)

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 whose children shared 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 creating a monthly multilingual coffee hour and holding 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 -- and with getting information written in English translated. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused fully 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 school improvements and vice versa.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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. We immediately started talking to other parents about the idea of “OneVille” -- in this case, linking families who shared a pretty divided school -- and a design partnership at the Healey began to sprout!

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. We sat with other parents in the PTA room and talked about what might pull us together. Tracy and Dave, Maria, Jen, Carrie, Consuelo, Michelle, and others started brainstorming a first Reading Night focused on baking words (Tracy, a parent in the hallway’s “Neighborhood” classroom, had a cookie business and her husband Dave worked in a pizza restaurant).

PHOTO HERE

In doing the work of holding Reading Nights, we built friendships between us parents that would make a difference in the years to come -- and we encountered a bunch of schoolwide communication issues that would shape our thinking about the “infrastructure” needed at the Healey!

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

To get parents in the hallway out to Reading Nights, 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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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 direct channel-home was 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 two 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. 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 one by one is draining the resources of volunteers, try reaching those clustered in one place -- in this case, kids!

ADD 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. (This required parents who could interpret for others.) In part from listening to parents who ended up taking care of the kids, 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 to share information. We tried to post our reading tips as paper sheets on a hallway bulletin board (we used Google Translate, which garbled some of the words) and we 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 still need to figure out ways to get information to parents if they don’t show up to face-to-face events.

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 organizing parent (Maria) later became the head of the PTA and two others (Tracy and Dave) its vice presidents, and others (Michelle) 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 Tracy’s cookie business -- and hooked her up to a reporter in the Boston Globe for press!

We burned out on Reading Night after holding about six of them that year, because it took too much face to face work to create materials from scratch; we sort of reached the outer limit of volunteer time and energy. We also realized that since we weren’t experts on reading, it was more effective for us to focus on venues for gathering parents to talk, period, than on guiding other parents in the content of teaching reading. We also didn’t yet know how to “seed” events so they would replicate without us. But we knew we had created an important space for parents to gather together -- and the friendships we made carried us through our next innovations.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 2: MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR==

While designing Reading Nights, we also 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, and English-speaking parents almost always dominated the conversation.

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. We thought about having language-specific coffee hours but the principal asked for a combined coffee hour, which in the end offered its own benefit -- valuing multilingualism. In the multilingual coffee hour, parents voluntarily translated for other parents wanting to ask questions and hear information from the principal. Enjoying the sound of multiple languages became part of the event.

[JPEG HERE OF COFFEE HR INVITE]]

The experience quickly clued us into a key local resource:

'''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? ANA, CAN YOU PLAN TO GET THIS?)

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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” dialogues to facilitate conversation about this choice. [[link to OV 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 - said they wanted a more rigorous learning experience for their children.

In the parent dialogue work, we also realized again some structural barriers of communication that held back many parents from 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 on the upcoming decision, we realized that many parents – 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.

'''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 EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK==

In the cafeteria one morning in fall 2010, Consuelo and Mica were sitting with several parents from the PTA (Maria and others), talking about how to improve schoolwide communication. Consuelo, whose phone was constantly ringing with calls from Spanish-speaking parents with 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."

[[LINK TO A JPEG OF THIS DIAGRAM IF MICA CAN FIND IT!]]

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: many Healey parents often spoke of 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 had 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.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Lots of parents were very ready to contribute to 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: 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. While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in!

Even as one focus was getting information “out” to all parents, a first question of the Connector project 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 confusing 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 this case, the loop of parent complaint/school response/issue resolution -- a loop affecting every school in the country -- did not go smoothly: the principal’s emails didn’t fully describe his actual efforts to investigate, leaving her uninformed, while she sent a public letter to officials that further challenged a trusting relationship. To all 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 reporting back what was going on. But this “loop” couldn’t overburden 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 supporting communication with immigrant parents, who seemed the most blocked from information flow in both directions. And that meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

A related concern was logistical: how would volunteers connect to a reasonably sized group of parents? Should they just post 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 Connectors, 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 (robocalls, listserv, backpack handouts) or create new simple tools for parent outreach, and what to do with parent issues that came back “in.”

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, 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 events -- 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. (Some of our answering machines still cut the messages off after English!). Somerville’s call-home robocall system, ConnectEd, typically was used by principals who asked Parent Info Center staff to record each translated version. One Connector, Lupe, had suggested we “flip” that typical script in two ways: we’d ask a parent to record a message targeted directly to speakers of a single language. It turned out that ConnectEd could do this and the principal, Jay DeFalco, was excited to try it. 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 a 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 event (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 people shared was to make all parents feel more comfortable approaching school staff themselves to ask questions. But we also knew that parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place and we also knew that parents approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic 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), we modified a district form for reporting bullying incidents and created this Googleform (LINK TO IT OR SHOW JPEG?) for Connectors (and Connector coordinator/principal) to use to keep tabs on parent calls. We edited it together, 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 still advising Connectors to tell non English-speaking parents to approach English-speaking staff to share their needs and arrange interpreters!

We were heading toward understanding the need for “systems” for info flow and translation 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 weeks 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 parents’ 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 of approved parent numbers 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 from 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?

But if unaddressed, what do such barriers to parent-parent contact mean? Children unable to be invited to birthday parties or playdates; parents who can’t be invited personally to gettogethers or hear important explanations of school issues; missed opportunities to pull parents together as partners. It’s just a basic tension.

'''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.

All this is an important example of the need for infrastructure to normalize communications between school and home. One example is an official form allowing parents to easily offer permission to have a Connector, at the beginning of the year.

'''COMMUNICATION/IMPLEMENTATION AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

As we started to link Connectors to parents and make calls, we may have turned off a few Connectors by immediately using technology in our own infrastructure to communicate. For example, at the end of one face-to-face meeting we decided that Connectors might want to “get assigned” parents with whom they had a prior personal relationship, 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 phone 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 requirement to participate. (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 often.). 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. This fall, 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 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 fall 2011 plan: a Connector party, with tequila.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Go with the form of communication that will reach the most people now. Parents need help with ongoing resource and information questions. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities.

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 when so many parents weren’t regularly on email. At a multilingual coffee hour, we asked people how to get basic information out to a lot of parents at once. Michael Quan (PHOTO) suggested a hotline as an immediate 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. At the same time, we held a couple of “email nights” to try to get more parents email access (see below).

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. The goal: create a tool that could let you “press 1 for Spanish,” and leave a message too in that language.

Tona, Maria, and Gina came in to record updates from the principal in Spanish, Portuguese, and Creole, and they also translated answers to parents' Frequently Asked Questions that had been collected by the Connectors. [FIRST SET OF FAQS HERE] They recorded their messages by speaking into Seth’s computer (see photo!). We then honed the hotline over the summer, so that translators can record to it from home.

(PHOTO OF MARIA)

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, including toward parents willing to translate it. How to triage this info so that there wasn’t an overwhelming amount to translate? 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. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, 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 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. But if Translators of the Month did put their translations on paper, we figured the same script could go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks) and that regardless, the basic info could also be referenced in Connector calls home.

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 might require more explanation in 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 paid staff for these aspects of school-parent connection.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating 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. Many 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; the PIC later clarified [[this]] LINK TO REGINA’S DOC?). 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, both parents and educators requested interpreters, but they were not actually present in the final meeting for reasons unknown.

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 rather than any lack of bilingualism in the community. Distributing the resource in a cost-effective way is also crucial: 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’s|dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves!

(other details of using human resources effectively for translation and interpretation: interpreters at public meetings need to announce their availability in audible ways! And, if interpreters go to PTA Night to interpret the big meetings, they also need to be on call for impromptu one on one meetings throughout the night between parents and teachers (the Healey principal had interpreters use walkie-talkies for this purpose!)

We decided that in each call home, 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 via email (cc’ing parent). That required -- paid staff.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. 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 staff. In our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that parents couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it.

We pressed for a 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.

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).

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! We now hope to join brainstorming forces with a parent group from Somerville's Welcome Project (housed in the Mystic Housing Development down the hill from the Healey school) that also wants to focus on translation and interpretation in Somerville (one mom in the group is also a Connector).

POST HERE: FINAL CONNECTOR INFRASTRUCTURE DIAGRAM.

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

'''P.S. NEXT STEPS:

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 and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be 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. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See [[Computer Infrastructure.]]

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-09T21:53:08Z

24.60.250.60: /* MAIN SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK */

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------
ADD PHOTOS OF CONNECTORS AND VIDEOS OF THE DIAGRAMS, TO BRING THIS ALIVE. (CONSIDER VIDEO INTERVIEWS W/ SOME CONNECTORS TOO!)

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 whose children shared 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 creating a monthly multilingual coffee hour and holding 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 -- and with getting information written in English translated. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused fully 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 school improvements and vice versa.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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. We immediately started talking to other parents about the idea of “OneVille” -- in this case, linking families who shared a pretty divided school -- and a design partnership at the Healey began to sprout!

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. We sat with other parents in the PTA room and talked about what might pull us together. Tracy and Dave, Maria, Jen, Carrie, Consuelo, Michelle, and others started brainstorming a first Reading Night focused on baking words (Tracy, a parent in the hallway’s “Neighborhood” classroom, had a cookie business and her husband Dave worked in a pizza restaurant).

PHOTO HERE

In doing the work of holding Reading Nights, we built friendships between us parents that would make a difference in the years to come -- and we encountered a bunch of schoolwide communication issues that would shape our thinking about the “infrastructure” needed at the Healey!

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

To get parents in the hallway out to Reading Nights, 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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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 direct channel-home was 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 two 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. 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 one by one is draining the resources of volunteers, try reaching those clustered in one place -- in this case, kids!

ADD 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. (This required parents who could interpret for others.) In part from listening to parents who ended up taking care of the kids, 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 to share information. We tried to post our reading tips as paper sheets on a hallway bulletin board (we used Google Translate, which garbled some of the words) and we 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 still need to figure out ways to get information to parents if they don’t show up to face-to-face events.

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 organizing parent (Maria) later became the head of the PTA and two others (Tracy and Dave) its vice presidents, and others (Michelle) 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 Tracy’s cookie business -- and hooked her up to a reporter in the Boston Globe for press!

We burned out on Reading Night after holding about six of them that year, because it took too much face to face work to create materials from scratch; we sort of reached the outer limit of volunteer time and energy. We also realized that since we weren’t experts on reading, it was more effective for us to focus on venues for gathering parents to talk, period, than on guiding other parents in the content of teaching reading. We also didn’t yet know how to “seed” events so they would replicate without us. But we knew we had created an important space for parents to gather together -- and the friendships we made carried us through our next innovations.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 2: MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR==

While designing Reading Nights, we also 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, and English-speaking parents almost always dominated the conversation.

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. We thought about having language-specific coffee hours but the principal asked for a combined coffee hour, which in the end offered its own benefit -- valuing multilingualism. In the multilingual coffee hour, parents voluntarily translated for other parents wanting to ask questions and hear information from the principal. Enjoying the sound of multiple languages became part of the event.

[JPEG HERE OF COFFEE HR INVITE]]

The experience quickly clued us into a key local resource:

'''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? ANA, CAN YOU PLAN TO GET THIS?)

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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” dialogues to facilitate conversation about this choice. [[link to OV 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 - said they wanted a more rigorous learning experience for their children.

In the parent dialogue work, we also realized again some structural barriers of communication that held back many parents from 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 on the upcoming decision, we realized that many parents – 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.

'''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 EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK==

In the cafeteria one morning in fall 2010, Consuelo and Mica were sitting with several parents from the PTA (Maria and others), talking about how to improve schoolwide communication. Consuelo, whose phone was constantly ringing with calls from Spanish-speaking parents with 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."

[[LINK TO A JPEG OF THIS DIAGRAM IF MICA CAN FIND IT!]]

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: many Healey parents often spoke of 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 had 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.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Lots of parents were very ready to contribute to 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: 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. While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in!

Even as one focus was getting information “out” to all parents, a first question of the Connector project 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 confusing 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 this case, the loop of parent complaint/school response/issue resolution -- a loop affecting every school in the country -- did not go smoothly: the principal’s emails didn’t fully describe his actual efforts to investigate, leaving her uninformed, while she sent a public letter to officials that further challenged a trusting relationship. To all 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 reporting back what was going on. But this “loop” couldn’t overburden 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 supporting communication with immigrant parents, who seemed the most blocked from information flow in both directions. And that meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

A related concern was logistical: how would volunteers connect to a reasonably sized group of parents? Should they just post 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 Connectors, 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 (robocalls, listserv, backpack handouts) 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.]]

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-09T21:21:16Z

24.60.250.60: /* MAIN SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION INNOVATION: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK */

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------
ADD PHOTOS OF CONNECTORS AND VIDEOS OF THE DIAGRAMS, TO BRING THIS ALIVE. (CONSIDER VIDEO INTERVIEWS W/ SOME CONNECTORS TOO!)

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 whose children shared 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 creating a monthly multilingual coffee hour and holding 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 -- and with getting information written in English translated. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused fully 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 school improvements and vice versa.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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. We immediately started talking to other parents about the idea of “OneVille” -- in this case, linking families who shared a pretty divided school -- and a design partnership at the Healey began to sprout!

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. We sat with other parents in the PTA room and talked about what might pull us together. Tracy and Dave, Maria, Jen, Carrie, Consuelo, Michelle, and others started brainstorming a first Reading Night focused on baking words (Tracy, a parent in the hallway’s “Neighborhood” classroom, had a cookie business and her husband Dave worked in a pizza restaurant).

PHOTO HERE

In doing the work of holding Reading Nights, we built friendships between us parents that would make a difference in the years to come -- and we encountered a bunch of schoolwide communication issues that would shape our thinking about the “infrastructure” needed at the Healey!

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

To get parents in the hallway out to Reading Nights, 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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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 direct channel-home was 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 two 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. 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 one by one is draining the resources of volunteers, try reaching those clustered in one place -- in this case, kids!

ADD 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. (This required parents who could interpret for others.) In part from listening to parents who ended up taking care of the kids, 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 to share information. We tried to post our reading tips as paper sheets on a hallway bulletin board (we used Google Translate, which garbled some of the words) and we 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 still need to figure out ways to get information to parents if they don’t show up to face-to-face events.

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 organizing parent (Maria) later became the head of the PTA and two others (Tracy and Dave) its vice presidents, and others (Michelle) 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 Tracy’s cookie business -- and hooked her up to a reporter in the Boston Globe for press!

We burned out on Reading Night after holding about six of them that year, because it took too much face to face work to create materials from scratch; we sort of reached the outer limit of volunteer time and energy. We also realized that since we weren’t experts on reading, it was more effective for us to focus on venues for gathering parents to talk, period, than on guiding other parents in the content of teaching reading. We also didn’t yet know how to “seed” events so they would replicate without us. But we knew we had created an important space for parents to gather together -- and the friendships we made carried us through our next innovations.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 2: MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR==

While designing Reading Nights, we also 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, and English-speaking parents almost always dominated the conversation.

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. We thought about having language-specific coffee hours but the principal asked for a combined coffee hour, which in the end offered its own benefit -- valuing multilingualism. In the multilingual coffee hour, parents voluntarily translated for other parents wanting to ask questions and hear information from the principal. Enjoying the sound of multiple languages became part of the event.

[JPEG HERE OF COFFEE HR INVITE]]

The experience quickly clued us into a key local resource:

'''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? ANA, CAN YOU PLAN TO GET THIS?)

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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” dialogues to facilitate conversation about this choice. [[link to OV 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 - said they wanted a more rigorous learning experience for their children.

In the parent dialogue work, we also realized again some structural barriers of communication that held back many parents from 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 on the upcoming decision, we realized that many parents – 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.

'''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 EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK==

In the cafeteria one morning in fall 2010, Consuelo and Mica were sitting with several parents from the PTA (Maria and others), talking about how to improve schoolwide communication. Consuelo, whose phone was constantly ringing with calls from Spanish-speaking parents with 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."

[[LINK TO A JPEG OF THIS DIAGRAM IF MICA CAN FIND IT!]]

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: many Healey parents often spoke of 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 had 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.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: Lots of parents were very ready to contribute to 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: 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. While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in!

Even as one focus was getting information “out” to all parents, a first question of the Connector project 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 confusing 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 this case, the loop of parent complaint/school response/issue resolution -- a loop affecting every school in the country -- did not go smoothly: the principal’s emails didn’t fully describe his actual efforts to investigate, leaving her uninformed, while she sent a public letter to officials that further challenged a trusting relationship. To all 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 reporting back what was going on. But this “loop” couldn’t overburden 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 supporting communication with immigrant parents, who seemed the most blocked from information flow in both directions. And that meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''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.]]

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-09T21:08:58Z

24.60.250.60: /* SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION INNOVATION EFFORT 3: PARENT-PARENT ISSUE DIALOGUES */

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------
ADD PHOTOS OF CONNECTORS AND VIDEOS OF THE DIAGRAMS, TO BRING THIS ALIVE. (CONSIDER VIDEO INTERVIEWS W/ SOME CONNECTORS TOO!)

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 whose children shared 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 creating a monthly multilingual coffee hour and holding 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 -- and with getting information written in English translated. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused fully 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 school improvements and vice versa.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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. We immediately started talking to other parents about the idea of “OneVille” -- in this case, linking families who shared a pretty divided school -- and a design partnership at the Healey began to sprout!

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. We sat with other parents in the PTA room and talked about what might pull us together. Tracy and Dave, Maria, Jen, Carrie, Consuelo, Michelle, and others started brainstorming a first Reading Night focused on baking words (Tracy, a parent in the hallway’s “Neighborhood” classroom, had a cookie business and her husband Dave worked in a pizza restaurant).

PHOTO HERE

In doing the work of holding Reading Nights, we built friendships between us parents that would make a difference in the years to come -- and we encountered a bunch of schoolwide communication issues that would shape our thinking about the “infrastructure” needed at the Healey!

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

To get parents in the hallway out to Reading Nights, 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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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 direct channel-home was 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 two 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. 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 one by one is draining the resources of volunteers, try reaching those clustered in one place -- in this case, kids!

ADD 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. (This required parents who could interpret for others.) In part from listening to parents who ended up taking care of the kids, 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 to share information. We tried to post our reading tips as paper sheets on a hallway bulletin board (we used Google Translate, which garbled some of the words) and we 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 still need to figure out ways to get information to parents if they don’t show up to face-to-face events.

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 organizing parent (Maria) later became the head of the PTA and two others (Tracy and Dave) its vice presidents, and others (Michelle) 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 Tracy’s cookie business -- and hooked her up to a reporter in the Boston Globe for press!

We burned out on Reading Night after holding about six of them that year, because it took too much face to face work to create materials from scratch; we sort of reached the outer limit of volunteer time and energy. We also realized that since we weren’t experts on reading, it was more effective for us to focus on venues for gathering parents to talk, period, than on guiding other parents in the content of teaching reading. We also didn’t yet know how to “seed” events so they would replicate without us. But we knew we had created an important space for parents to gather together -- and the friendships we made carried us through our next innovations.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 2: MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR==

While designing Reading Nights, we also 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, and English-speaking parents almost always dominated the conversation.

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. We thought about having language-specific coffee hours but the principal asked for a combined coffee hour, which in the end offered its own benefit -- valuing multilingualism. In the multilingual coffee hour, parents voluntarily translated for other parents wanting to ask questions and hear information from the principal. Enjoying the sound of multiple languages became part of the event.

[JPEG HERE OF COFFEE HR INVITE]]

The experience quickly clued us into a key local resource:

'''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? ANA, CAN YOU PLAN TO GET THIS?)

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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” dialogues to facilitate conversation about this choice. [[link to OV 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 - said they wanted a more rigorous learning experience for their children.

In the parent dialogue work, we also realized again some structural barriers of communication that held back many parents from 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 on the upcoming decision, we realized that many parents – 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.

'''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.]]

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-09T21:05:19Z

24.60.250.60: /* SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION INNOVATION EFFORT 2: MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR */

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------
ADD PHOTOS OF CONNECTORS AND VIDEOS OF THE DIAGRAMS, TO BRING THIS ALIVE. (CONSIDER VIDEO INTERVIEWS W/ SOME CONNECTORS TOO!)

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 whose children shared 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 creating a monthly multilingual coffee hour and holding 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 -- and with getting information written in English translated. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused fully 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 school improvements and vice versa.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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. We immediately started talking to other parents about the idea of “OneVille” -- in this case, linking families who shared a pretty divided school -- and a design partnership at the Healey began to sprout!

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. We sat with other parents in the PTA room and talked about what might pull us together. Tracy and Dave, Maria, Jen, Carrie, Consuelo, Michelle, and others started brainstorming a first Reading Night focused on baking words (Tracy, a parent in the hallway’s “Neighborhood” classroom, had a cookie business and her husband Dave worked in a pizza restaurant).

PHOTO HERE

In doing the work of holding Reading Nights, we built friendships between us parents that would make a difference in the years to come -- and we encountered a bunch of schoolwide communication issues that would shape our thinking about the “infrastructure” needed at the Healey!

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

To get parents in the hallway out to Reading Nights, 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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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 direct channel-home was 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 two 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. 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 one by one is draining the resources of volunteers, try reaching those clustered in one place -- in this case, kids!

ADD 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. (This required parents who could interpret for others.) In part from listening to parents who ended up taking care of the kids, 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 to share information. We tried to post our reading tips as paper sheets on a hallway bulletin board (we used Google Translate, which garbled some of the words) and we 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 still need to figure out ways to get information to parents if they don’t show up to face-to-face events.

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 organizing parent (Maria) later became the head of the PTA and two others (Tracy and Dave) its vice presidents, and others (Michelle) 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 Tracy’s cookie business -- and hooked her up to a reporter in the Boston Globe for press!

We burned out on Reading Night after holding about six of them that year, because it took too much face to face work to create materials from scratch; we sort of reached the outer limit of volunteer time and energy. We also realized that since we weren’t experts on reading, it was more effective for us to focus on venues for gathering parents to talk, period, than on guiding other parents in the content of teaching reading. We also didn’t yet know how to “seed” events so they would replicate without us. But we knew we had created an important space for parents to gather together -- and the friendships we made carried us through our next innovations.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 2: MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR==

While designing Reading Nights, we also 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, and English-speaking parents almost always dominated the conversation.

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. We thought about having language-specific coffee hours but the principal asked for a combined coffee hour, which in the end offered its own benefit -- valuing multilingualism. In the multilingual coffee hour, parents voluntarily translated for other parents wanting to ask questions and hear information from the principal. Enjoying the sound of multiple languages became part of the event.

[JPEG HERE OF COFFEE HR INVITE]]

The experience quickly clued us into a key local resource:

'''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? ANA, CAN YOU PLAN TO GET THIS?)

==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.]]

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-09T21:00:45Z

24.60.250.60: /* SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 1: READING NIGHT */

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------
ADD PHOTOS OF CONNECTORS AND VIDEOS OF THE DIAGRAMS, TO BRING THIS ALIVE. (CONSIDER VIDEO INTERVIEWS W/ SOME CONNECTORS TOO!)

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 whose children shared 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 creating a monthly multilingual coffee hour and holding 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 -- and with getting information written in English translated. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused fully 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 school improvements and vice versa.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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. We immediately started talking to other parents about the idea of “OneVille” -- in this case, linking families who shared a pretty divided school -- and a design partnership at the Healey began to sprout!

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. We sat with other parents in the PTA room and talked about what might pull us together. Tracy and Dave, Maria, Jen, Carrie, Consuelo, Michelle, and others started brainstorming a first Reading Night focused on baking words (Tracy, a parent in the hallway’s “Neighborhood” classroom, had a cookie business and her husband Dave worked in a pizza restaurant).

PHOTO HERE

In doing the work of holding Reading Nights, we built friendships between us parents that would make a difference in the years to come -- and we encountered a bunch of schoolwide communication issues that would shape our thinking about the “infrastructure” needed at the Healey!

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

To get parents in the hallway out to Reading Nights, 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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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 direct channel-home was 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 two 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. 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 one by one is draining the resources of volunteers, try reaching those clustered in one place -- in this case, kids!

ADD 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. (This required parents who could interpret for others.) In part from listening to parents who ended up taking care of the kids, 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 to share information. We tried to post our reading tips as paper sheets on a hallway bulletin board (we used Google Translate, which garbled some of the words) and we 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 still need to figure out ways to get information to parents if they don’t show up to face-to-face events.

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 organizing parent (Maria) later became the head of the PTA and two others (Tracy and Dave) its vice presidents, and others (Michelle) 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 Tracy’s cookie business -- and hooked her up to a reporter in the Boston Globe for press!

We burned out on Reading Night after holding about six of them that year, because it took too much face to face work to create materials from scratch; we sort of reached the outer limit of volunteer time and energy. We also realized that since we weren’t experts on reading, it was more effective for us to focus on venues for gathering parents to talk, period, than on guiding other parents in the content of teaching reading. We also didn’t yet know how to “seed” events so they would replicate without us. But we knew we had created an important space for parents to gather together -- and the friendships we made carried us through our next innovations.

'''IMPLEMENTATION AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

==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.]]

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-09T20:49:22Z

24.60.250.60: /* SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 1: READING NIGHT */

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------
ADD PHOTOS OF CONNECTORS AND VIDEOS OF THE DIAGRAMS, TO BRING THIS ALIVE. (CONSIDER VIDEO INTERVIEWS W/ SOME CONNECTORS TOO!)

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 whose children shared 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 creating a monthly multilingual coffee hour and holding 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 -- and with getting information written in English translated. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused fully 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 school improvements and vice versa.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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. We immediately started talking to other parents about the idea of “OneVille” -- in this case, linking families who shared a pretty divided school -- and a design partnership at the Healey began to sprout!

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. We sat with other parents in the PTA room and talked about what might pull us together. Tracy and Dave, Maria, Jen, Carrie, Consuelo, Michelle, and others started brainstorming a first Reading Night focused on baking words (Tracy, a parent in the hallway’s “Neighborhood” classroom, had a cookie business and her husband Dave worked in a pizza restaurant). PHOTO HERE

In doing the work of holding Reading Nights, we built friendships between us parents that would make a difference in the years to come -- and we encountered a bunch of schoolwide communication issues that would shape our thinking about the “infrastructure” needed at the Healey!

COMMUNICATION AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

To get parents in the hallway out to Reading Nights, 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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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.]]

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-09T20:45:14Z

24.60.250.60:

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------
ADD PHOTOS OF CONNECTORS AND VIDEOS OF THE DIAGRAMS, TO BRING THIS ALIVE. (CONSIDER VIDEO INTERVIEWS W/ SOME CONNECTORS TOO!)

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 whose children shared 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 creating a monthly multilingual coffee hour and holding 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 -- and with getting information written in English translated. Over time, we realized the particular need for improving the communication infrastructure for translation and interpretation and focused fully 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 school improvements and vice versa.

==SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION 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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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.]]

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-08-09T20:37:56Z

24.60.250.60: /* Main communication realizations and implementation realizations */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|The joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)
---------

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also awesome young people, and great research partners!

So far, we have all been testing private texting between teachers and students and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from HGSE who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts (with students’ advance, overall permission), to see if texting was helpful to students and teachers. GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.

'''COLORED TEXT BOX: Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting’s key benefit was individualized, timely student support. Students argued that texts were supporting them to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Texting teachers and students are also having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. Teachers and students said they were experiencing greater trust and strengthened relationship. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

Most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours.
But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age: as Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

In Phase 1, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. We'd now like to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via rapid group texting.

We’ve augmented Google Voice with group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class and group “team” messaging. (with regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time.) Before we tweak that further as an open source tool any school could adapt, we’re going to try xxx to see if group texting even works for people. So, in fall 2011, we’ll be continuing teacher-student texting and starting teacher-full class texting with GoogleVoice, and testing group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
In the texting pilot, we wanted to enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person and each other about how young people were doing personally and academically, and what supports they might need to be more successful -- from both the students' and stakeholders' perspectives. Our vision was to support an entire “team” in rapid communication. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll add next “team” members in fall 2011!

There is often a gap in such rapid communications in schools: people don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. Increasingly, people don’t have (or answer!) home phones. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school; tutors don’t know what youth have to work on; parents are unaware of school goings-on, and more. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication more normal than ever in schools!

It is cell phones that are with us all day. Cell phones allow people to always be connected and available. Texting and other mobile text based communications give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--be it in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:
------

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

===Basic History===

The groundwork needed to support the current work.
-------
Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ ideas, interests and efforts.

Throughout this pilot, though, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to quickly share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? How might texting support needed communications?

We started working on a tech strategy for ongoing youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t enticing if it wasn’t social enough yet. Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/), where all their local and online friends already were, instead of use our private social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal, supportive communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these without a critical mass of interested members. (One successful exception were “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students took immediately to the medium! [LINK TO VIDEO HERE!]). This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about student skills could get students “flowing” in talking about their learning online.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new after school club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, it didn’t work: there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, many of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site. (Again, the eportfolio project may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

1) Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help. One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

2) Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

3) Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people. For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''ADD GRAPHIC HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY

Also, the students expressed that they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that texting was the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over the medium, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big aha came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA/TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than put an entire “team” together at once, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and we held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some series of communications made a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week max) for their time piloting the tool, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal ‘research day,’ and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot; for course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people with questions or thoughts they wanted to share via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention later, logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts; Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. All were invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Texting/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting and have dozens of students and more teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in exploring texting with more of his teachers. And both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for serious school support that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

-------
We want to repeat two core “ahas” we stated earlier:

'''Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Texting is of course not a panacea for other needed youth supports. But it can definitely help. At our April Research Day, students noted that texts could get a student to come in on time; to focus on his classes; to care. Obens summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting got him to school, but couldn’t keep him focused in class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement.

One student made clear that student-teacher texting was a start, but next “links” in her life were needed: “She has been building a better relationship w/ Ted via texting. Dad doesn't have a phone, she says, and she doesn't want Ted texting him. Dad doesn't text, but she does seem to lean on him for some support. Girlfriends not helpful to her for graduation she says. She doesn't know how to apply to college, either. No guidance counselor??”

But, we have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

'''Next COMMUNICATION QUESTION: Is the privacy and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not?

We grappled with this core issue of privacy in envisioning our next step, texting “teams”: Which communications should be private, which public to the “team”? As Ted put it, “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both? He wants to honor the kids’ sense of privacy.” Ted was interested at the beginning in adding parents to the tool. As we wrote in January 2011,

“Ted definitely thinks we should have parents on. He wants to get more parents in w/ the tool. He thinks it won’t happen w/ all the kids, but would like to push to get more parents hooked in.”

Later, he would be more convinced of the need for private student-teacher communication. As one student said, she was up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” Mo raised the same question in late spring 2011, envisioning mistakenly sending a text about “your teen pregnancy!” to a student’s mom.

Earlier in the year, Ted had noted that digital communication of any type could be “forever,” especially if the recipient forwarded it: staff as well as students already warned students that, “when you send it out there, it’s forever. Don’t send anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see.”

Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. At the same time, the privacy of one-to-one texting is exactly what scares some teachers about it. Ted noted the benefits of private messaging throughout the pilot but also said in June that, “One thing that concerns me with the benefits of privacy is the risk that comes with it. The more private it is, the more risk because there’s evidence of [the communication and, the student need] going on . . .”

It was also unclear when keeping information private was helpful and harmful. For example, Ted was texting one boy who was checking in on his brother’s appearance in school; the brother had left home for school that morning but hadn’t shown up. “Now looking back on it, should I be sharing that example w/ his brother?” Ted asked aloud. “‘We’re much looser around here, in a regular public school they might not share that information.” Still, to support students fully, it often felt necessary to tell person A about an issue facing person B. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to actually test “team” texting. Who needs to share which information with whom on the “team,” and can a group texting tool support a complex “team” conversation?

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?
-------------------

The principal is interested in expanding teams to include other current and former teachers within the school. For some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful. Interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team, he thought. While many teachers didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some were newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

When we asked who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting – real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. So, we’re going to go with youth-constructed teams as planned and we’ll see where they take it.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
SETH AND UCHE ADD HERE

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice: Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without incurring texting charges. Teachers can also view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can also choose to have the service forward any texts received to their phones’ regular text messaging accounts. Or, they can check those messages directly on their phones via smartphone apps.

Google Voice also provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement.

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. (SETH EXPLAIN HERE?)

Using the Twilio API, Seth then created a many to many group “chat” tool that we came over time to call a “reply to all” tool. Technologically, it was hard for Seth to quickly create a tool where people could choose to text some in the “team” but not others. A student already noted that getting your own text back in group chat felt a bit weird. Kinks to be worked out! In the meantime, before we seriously tweak an open source version, we’ll test xxx software just to see if group texting even works in personal terms!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T20:37:05Z

24.60.250.60: /* Next Steps */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

-------
Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

Today, systems for getting information to all families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – as long as the tech is basic and parents and staff are shown how to use it. In multilingual schools, people also need to organize to tap a key local resource: bilingualism. Such structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. (In fact, we've learned that nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents!)

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. 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 more explanation.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much.

A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents (in ways that also help unite the school), and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff.

In particular, our final aha of the year was that communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?
-------------------
'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;

:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents use phones, Google forms, and the open source hotline to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families;

:c) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts. [[link here to instructions on starting and using Googledocs. Jedd, can you find these translated? Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?]])

We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.

As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short [[VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?]]

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: [[Regina’s sheet here??]].

In our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it [[SHOW PHOTO]]. Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, we xxxxx. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?

:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?

:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?

:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-08-09T20:36:32Z

24.60.250.60: /* Main communication realizations and implementation realizations */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|The joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)
---------

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also awesome young people, and great research partners!

So far, we have all been testing private texting between teachers and students and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from HGSE who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts (with students’ advance, overall permission), to see if texting was helpful to students and teachers. GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.

'''COLORED TEXT BOX: Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting’s key benefit was individualized, timely student support. Students argued that texts were supporting them to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Texting teachers and students are also having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. Teachers and students said they were experiencing greater trust and strengthened relationship. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

Most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours.
But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age: as Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

In Phase 1, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. We'd now like to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via rapid group texting.

We’ve augmented Google Voice with group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class and group “team” messaging. (with regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time.) Before we tweak that further as an open source tool any school could adapt, we’re going to try xxx to see if group texting even works for people. So, in fall 2011, we’ll be continuing teacher-student texting and starting teacher-full class texting with GoogleVoice, and testing group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
In the texting pilot, we wanted to enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person and each other about how young people were doing personally and academically, and what supports they might need to be more successful -- from both the students' and stakeholders' perspectives. Our vision was to support an entire “team” in rapid communication. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll add next “team” members in fall 2011!

There is often a gap in such rapid communications in schools: people don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. Increasingly, people don’t have (or answer!) home phones. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school; tutors don’t know what youth have to work on; parents are unaware of school goings-on, and more. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication more normal than ever in schools!

It is cell phones that are with us all day. Cell phones allow people to always be connected and available. Texting and other mobile text based communications give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--be it in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:
------

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

===Basic History===

The groundwork needed to support the current work.
-------
Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ ideas, interests and efforts.

Throughout this pilot, though, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to quickly share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? How might texting support needed communications?

We started working on a tech strategy for ongoing youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t enticing if it wasn’t social enough yet. Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/), where all their local and online friends already were, instead of use our private social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal, supportive communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these without a critical mass of interested members. (One successful exception were “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students took immediately to the medium! [LINK TO VIDEO HERE!]). This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about student skills could get students “flowing” in talking about their learning online.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new after school club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, it didn’t work: there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, many of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site. (Again, the eportfolio project may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

1) Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help. One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

2) Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

3) Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people. For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''ADD GRAPHIC HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY

Also, the students expressed that they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that texting was the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over the medium, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big aha came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA/TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than put an entire “team” together at once, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and we held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some series of communications made a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week max) for their time piloting the tool, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal ‘research day,’ and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot; for course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people with questions or thoughts they wanted to share via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention later, logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts; Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. All were invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Texting/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting and have dozens of students and more teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in exploring texting with more of his teachers. And both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for serious school support that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

-------
We want to repeat two core “ahas” we stated earlier:

'''Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Texting is of course not a panacea for other needed youth supports. But it can definitely help. At our April Research Day, students noted that texts could get a student to come in on time; to focus on his classes; to care. Obens summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting got him to school, but couldn’t keep him focused in class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement.

One student made clear that student-teacher texting was a start, but next “links” in her life were needed: “She has been building a better relationship w/ Ted via texting. Dad doesn't have a phone, she says, and she doesn't want Ted texting him. Dad doesn't text, but she does seem to lean on him for some support. Girlfriends not helpful to her for graduation she says. She doesn't know how to apply to college, either. No guidance counselor??”

But, we have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

'''Next COMMUNICATION QUESTION: Is the privacy and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not?

We grappled with this core issue of privacy in envisioning our next step, texting “teams”: Which communications should be private, which public to the “team”? As Ted put it, “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both? He wants to honor the kids’ sense of privacy.” Ted was interested at the beginning in adding parents to the tool. As we wrote in January 2011,

“Ted definitely thinks we should have parents on. He wants to get more parents in w/ the tool. He thinks it won’t happen w/ all the kids, but would like to push to get more parents hooked in.”

Later, he would be more convinced of the need for private student-teacher communication. As one student said, she was up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” Mo raised the same question in late spring 2011, envisioning mistakenly sending a text about “your teen pregnancy!” to a student’s mom.

Earlier in the year, Ted had noted that digital communication of any type could be “forever,” especially if the recipient forwarded it: staff as well as students already warned students that, “when you send it out there, it’s forever. Don’t send anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see.”

Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. At the same time, the privacy of one-to-one texting is exactly what scares some teachers about it. Ted noted the benefits of private messaging throughout the pilot but also said in June that, “One thing that concerns me with the benefits of privacy is the risk that comes with it. The more private it is, the more risk because there’s evidence of [the communication and, the student need] going on . . .”

It was also unclear when keeping information private was helpful and harmful. For example, Ted was texting one boy who was checking in on his brother’s appearance in school; the brother had left home for school that morning but hadn’t shown up. “Now looking back on it, should I be sharing that example w/ his brother?” Ted asked aloud. “‘We’re much looser around here, in a regular public school they might not share that information.” Still, to support students fully, it often felt necessary to tell person A about an issue facing person B. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to actually test “team” texting. Who needs to share which information with whom on the “team,” and can a group texting tool support a complex “team” conversation?

The principal is interested in expanding teams to include other current and former teachers within the school. For some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful. Interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team, he thought. While many teachers didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some were newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

When we asked who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting – real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. So, we’re going to go with youth-constructed teams as planned and we’ll see where they take it.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
SETH AND UCHE ADD HERE

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice: Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without incurring texting charges. Teachers can also view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can also choose to have the service forward any texts received to their phones’ regular text messaging accounts. Or, they can check those messages directly on their phones via smartphone apps.

Google Voice also provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement.

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. (SETH EXPLAIN HERE?)

Using the Twilio API, Seth then created a many to many group “chat” tool that we came over time to call a “reply to all” tool. Technologically, it was hard for Seth to quickly create a tool where people could choose to text some in the “team” but not others. A student already noted that getting your own text back in group chat felt a bit weird. Kinks to be worked out! In the meantime, before we seriously tweak an open source version, we’ll test xxx software just to see if group texting even works in personal terms!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T20:33:46Z

24.60.250.60: /* Main communication realizations and implementation realizations */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

-------
Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

Today, systems for getting information to all families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – as long as the tech is basic and parents and staff are shown how to use it. In multilingual schools, people also need to organize to tap a key local resource: bilingualism. Such structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. (In fact, we've learned that nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents!)

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. 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 more explanation.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much.

A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents (in ways that also help unite the school), and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff.

In particular, our final aha of the year was that communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?
-------------------
'''NEXT STEPS: Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;

:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents use phones, Google forms, and the open source hotline to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families;

:c) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts. [[link here to instructions on starting and using Googledocs. Jedd, can you find these translated? Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?]])

We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.

As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short [[VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?]]

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: [[Regina’s sheet here??]].

In our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it [[SHOW PHOTO]]. Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, we xxxxx. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?

:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?

:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?

:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T20:30:43Z

24.60.250.60: /* Main communication realizations and implementation realizations */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

Today, systems for getting information to all families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – as long as the tech is basic and parents and staff are shown how to use it. In multilingual schools, people also need to organize to tap a key local resource: bilingualism. Such structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. (In fact, we've learned that nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents!)

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. 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 more explanation.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much.

A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents (in ways that also help unite the school), and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff.

In particular, our final aha of the year was that communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

'''NEXT STEPS: Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;

:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents use phones, Google forms, and the open source hotline to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families;

:c) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts. [[link here to instructions on starting and using Googledocs. Jedd, can you find these translated? Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?]])

We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.

As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short [[VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?]]

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: [[Regina’s sheet here??]].

In our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it [[SHOW PHOTO]]. Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, we xxxxx. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?

:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?

:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?

:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-09T20:15:50Z

24.60.250.60:

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------

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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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.]]

Parent connector network/ahas

2011-08-09T20:15:32Z

24.60.250.60:

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas.” We’ll 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?

'''We’ll share our 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 we redirected the project accordingly, after a communication aha or an implementation aha.

We’ll share visual examples and use photos or videos of people whenever we can!

--------------------

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!

[[Image:consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|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.]]

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T20:08:38Z

24.60.250.60: /* Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

Today, systems for getting information to all families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – as long as the tech is basic and parents and staff are shown how to use it. In multilingual schools, people also need to organize to tap a key local resource: bilingualism. Such structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. 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 more explanation.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much.

A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents (in ways that also help unite the school), and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff.

In particular, our final aha of the year was that communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts. [[link here to instructions on starting and using Googledocs. Jedd, can you find these translated? Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?]])

We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.

As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short [[VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?]]

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: [[Regina’s sheet here??]].

In our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it [[SHOW PHOTO]]. Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, we xxxxx. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?

:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?

:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?

:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-08-09T20:05:26Z

24.60.250.60: /* Technological how-tos */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|The joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)
---------

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also awesome young people, and great research partners!

So far, we have all been testing private texting between teachers and students and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from HGSE who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts (with students’ advance, overall permission), to see if texting was helpful to students and teachers. GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.

'''COLORED TEXT BOX: Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting’s key benefit was individualized, timely student support. Students argued that texts were supporting them to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Texting teachers and students are also having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. Teachers and students said they were experiencing greater trust and strengthened relationship. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

Most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours.
But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age: as Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

In Phase 1, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. We'd now like to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via rapid group texting.

We’ve augmented Google Voice with group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class and group “team” messaging. (with regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time.) Before we tweak that further as an open source tool any school could adapt, we’re going to try xxx to see if group texting even works for people. So, in fall 2011, we’ll be continuing teacher-student texting and starting teacher-full class texting with GoogleVoice, and testing group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
In the texting pilot, we wanted to enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person and each other about how young people were doing personally and academically, and what supports they might need to be more successful -- from both the students' and stakeholders' perspectives. Our vision was to support an entire “team” in rapid communication. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll add next “team” members in fall 2011!

There is often a gap in such rapid communications in schools: people don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. Increasingly, people don’t have (or answer!) home phones. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school; tutors don’t know what youth have to work on; parents are unaware of school goings-on, and more. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication more normal than ever in schools!

It is cell phones that are with us all day. Cell phones allow people to always be connected and available. Texting and other mobile text based communications give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--be it in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:
------

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

===Basic History===

The groundwork needed to support the current work.
-------
Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ ideas, interests and efforts.

Throughout this pilot, though, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to quickly share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? How might texting support needed communications?

We started working on a tech strategy for ongoing youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t enticing if it wasn’t social enough yet. Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/), where all their local and online friends already were, instead of use our private social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal, supportive communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these without a critical mass of interested members. (One successful exception were “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students took immediately to the medium! [LINK TO VIDEO HERE!]). This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about student skills could get students “flowing” in talking about their learning online.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new after school club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, it didn’t work: there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, many of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site. (Again, the eportfolio project may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

1) Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help. One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

2) Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

3) Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people. For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''ADD GRAPHIC HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY

Also, the students expressed that they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that texting was the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over the medium, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big aha came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA/TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than put an entire “team” together at once, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and we held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some series of communications made a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week max) for their time piloting the tool, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal ‘research day,’ and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot; for course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people with questions or thoughts they wanted to share via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention later, logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts; Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. All were invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Texting/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting and have dozens of students and more teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in exploring texting with more of his teachers. And both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for serious school support that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
We want to repeat two core “ahas” we stated earlier:

'''Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Texting is of course not a panacea for other needed youth supports. But it can definitely help. At our April Research Day, students noted that texts could get a student to come in on time; to focus on his classes; to care. Obens summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting got him to school, but couldn’t keep him focused in class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement.

One student made clear that student-teacher texting was a start, but next “links” in her life were needed: “She has been building a better relationship w/ Ted via texting. Dad doesn't have a phone, she says, and she doesn't want Ted texting him. Dad doesn't text, but she does seem to lean on him for some support. Girlfriends not helpful to her for graduation she says. She doesn't know how to apply to college, either. No guidance counselor??”

But, we have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

'''Next COMMUNICATION QUESTION: Is the privacy and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not?

We grappled with this core issue of privacy in envisioning our next step, texting “teams”: Which communications should be private, which public to the “team”? As Ted put it, “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both? He wants to honor the kids’ sense of privacy.” Ted was interested at the beginning in adding parents to the tool. As we wrote in January 2011,

“Ted definitely thinks we should have parents on. He wants to get more parents in w/ the tool. He thinks it won’t happen w/ all the kids, but would like to push to get more parents hooked in.”

Later, he would be more convinced of the need for private student-teacher communication. As one student said, she was up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” Mo raised the same question in late spring 2011, envisioning mistakenly sending a text about “your teen pregnancy!” to a student’s mom.

Earlier in the year, Ted had noted that digital communication of any type could be “forever,” especially if the recipient forwarded it: staff as well as students already warned students that, “when you send it out there, it’s forever. Don’t send anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see.”

Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. At the same time, the privacy of one-to-one texting is exactly what scares some teachers about it. Ted noted the benefits of private messaging throughout the pilot but also said in June that, “One thing that concerns me with the benefits of privacy is the risk that comes with it. The more private it is, the more risk because there’s evidence of [the communication and, the student need] going on . . .”

It was also unclear when keeping information private was helpful and harmful. For example, Ted was texting one boy who was checking in on his brother’s appearance in school; the brother had left home for school that morning but hadn’t shown up. “Now looking back on it, should I be sharing that example w/ his brother?” Ted asked aloud. “‘We’re much looser around here, in a regular public school they might not share that information.” Still, to support students fully, it often felt necessary to tell person A about an issue facing person B. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to actually test “team” texting. Who needs to share which information with whom on the “team,” and can a group texting tool support a complex “team” conversation?

The principal is interested in expanding teams to include other current and former teachers within the school. For some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful. Interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team, he thought. While many teachers didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some were newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

When we asked who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting – real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. So, we’re going to go with youth-constructed teams as planned and we’ll see where they take it.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
SETH AND UCHE ADD HERE

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice: Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without incurring texting charges. Teachers can also view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can also choose to have the service forward any texts received to their phones’ regular text messaging accounts. Or, they can check those messages directly on their phones via smartphone apps.

Google Voice also provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement.

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. (SETH EXPLAIN HERE?)

Using the Twilio API, Seth then created a many to many group “chat” tool that we came over time to call a “reply to all” tool. Technologically, it was hard for Seth to quickly create a tool where people could choose to text some in the “team” but not others. A student already noted that getting your own text back in group chat felt a bit weird. Kinks to be worked out! In the meantime, before we seriously tweak an open source version, we’ll test xxx software just to see if group texting even works in personal terms!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T20:05:01Z

24.60.250.60: /* Technological how-tos */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

Today, systems for getting information to all families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – as long as the tech is basic and parents and staff are shown how to use it. In multilingual schools, people also need to organize to tap a key local resource: bilingualism. Such structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. 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 more explanation.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much.

A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents (in ways that also help unite the school), and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff.

In particular, our final aha of the year was that communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts. [[link here to instructions on starting and using Googledocs. Jedd, can you find these translated? Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?]])

We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.

As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short [[VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?]]

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: [[Regina’s sheet here??]].

In our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it [[SHOW PHOTO]]. Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, we xxxxx. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T19:58:22Z

24.60.250.60: /* Main communication realizations and implementation realizations */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

Today, systems for getting information to all families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – as long as the tech is basic and parents and staff are shown how to use it. In multilingual schools, people also need to organize to tap a key local resource: bilingualism. Such structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. 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 more explanation.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much.

A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents (in ways that also help unite the school), and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff.

In particular, our final aha of the year was that communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T19:55:57Z

24.60.250.60: /* Main communication realizations and implementation realizations */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

Today, systems for getting information to all families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – as long as the tech is basic and parents and staff are shown how to use it. In multilingual schools, people also need to organize to tap a key local resource: bilingualism. Such structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. 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 more explanation.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much.

A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents, and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff. In particular, our final aha of the year was that communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T19:55:40Z

24.60.250.60: /* Main communication realizations and implementation realizations */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
'''Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

Today, systems for getting information to all families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – as long as the tech is basic and parents and staff are shown how to use it. In multilingual schools, people also need to organize to tap a key local resource: bilingualism. Such structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. 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 more explanation.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much.

A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents, and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff. In particular, our final aha of the year was that communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T17:45:01Z

24.60.250.60: /* Basic History */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, schools need systems for getting information to and from everyone. Diverse schools particularly do. Structural barriers to information-sharing (in both directions) mean that partnerships that could happen, don’t. Structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. Today, getting information to all families and get input from all families requires using some technology -- basic technology, that includes rather than excludes! More broadly, though, it also requires creating a thoughtful infrastructure tapping (and in some cases, paying for) a key local resource: bilingualism. Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but structural disorganization certainly can block communication too. The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation: otherwise, stuff doesn’t get translated despite good intentions.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of school infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full range of experiences from which to brainstorm those supports. 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.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” to make schoolwide translation efficient, and to make the Connectors' volunteer role not overly time-consuming.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Because a school with good family relationships serves everyone better, the people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. The key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to “connect” to other parents and “infrastructure” that helps school staff get info out and address individual parents’ needs. In particular, our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T17:23:02Z

24.60.250.60: /* Summary */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

'''Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, schools need systems for getting information to and from everyone. Diverse schools particularly do. Structural barriers to information-sharing (in both directions) mean that partnerships that could happen, don’t. Structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. Today, getting information to all families and get input from all families requires using some technology -- basic technology, that includes rather than excludes! More broadly, though, it also requires creating a thoughtful infrastructure tapping (and in some cases, paying for) a key local resource: bilingualism. Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but structural disorganization certainly can block communication too. The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation: otherwise, stuff doesn’t get translated despite good intentions.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of school infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full range of experiences from which to brainstorm those supports. 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.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” to make schoolwide translation efficient, and to make the Connectors' volunteer role not overly time-consuming.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Because a school with good family relationships serves everyone better, the people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. The key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to “connect” to other parents and “infrastructure” that helps school staff get info out and address individual parents’ needs. In particular, our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T17:19:11Z

24.60.250.60: /* Concrete communication improvements */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
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 volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[link again to the PPT]]

We are finishing our hotline this summer so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped to draft fall “Parent Communication form” that will help parents sign up to get a Connector and make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers [[link to final form!]]. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, schools need systems for getting information to and from everyone. Diverse schools particularly do. Structural barriers to information-sharing (in both directions) mean that partnerships that could happen, don’t. Structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. Today, getting information to all families and get input from all families requires using some technology -- basic technology, that includes rather than excludes! More broadly, though, it also requires creating a thoughtful infrastructure tapping (and in some cases, paying for) a key local resource: bilingualism. Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but structural disorganization certainly can block communication too. The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation: otherwise, stuff doesn’t get translated despite good intentions.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of school infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full range of experiences from which to brainstorm those supports. 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.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” to make schoolwide translation efficient, and to make the Connectors' volunteer role not overly time-consuming.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Because a school with good family relationships serves everyone better, the people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. The key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to “connect” to other parents and “infrastructure” that helps school staff get info out and address individual parents’ needs. In particular, our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T17:14:23Z

24.60.250.60: /* Basic History */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

:1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

:2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the unified Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall. We have two great leaders. We hope that one of the two, already a Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the information translation process we’ve come up with:

INFRASTRUCTURE JPEG HERE.

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc collecting schoolwide information for them to translate. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, schools need systems for getting information to and from everyone. Diverse schools particularly do. Structural barriers to information-sharing (in both directions) mean that partnerships that could happen, don’t. Structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. Today, getting information to all families and get input from all families requires using some technology -- basic technology, that includes rather than excludes! More broadly, though, it also requires creating a thoughtful infrastructure tapping (and in some cases, paying for) a key local resource: bilingualism. Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but structural disorganization certainly can block communication too. The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation: otherwise, stuff doesn’t get translated despite good intentions.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of school infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full range of experiences from which to brainstorm those supports. 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.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” to make schoolwide translation efficient, and to make the Connectors' volunteer role not overly time-consuming.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Because a school with good family relationships serves everyone better, the people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. The key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to “connect” to other parents and “infrastructure” that helps school staff get info out and address individual parents’ needs. In particular, our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T17:10:38Z

24.60.250.60: /* Communication we hoped to improve */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher; many such families also sat on committees that met after school and so, took the opportunity to contribute ideas to the school. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed [[here]]. The Parent Connector Network is a key component, but it's not the only one!

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

2) the full communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make a lot of friends with other parents who cared deeply about including everyone.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the unified Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall. We have two great leaders. We hope that one of the two, already a Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the information translation process we’ve come up with:

INFRASTRUCTURE JPEG HERE.

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc collecting schoolwide information for them to translate. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, schools need systems for getting information to and from everyone. Diverse schools particularly do. Structural barriers to information-sharing (in both directions) mean that partnerships that could happen, don’t. Structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. Today, getting information to all families and get input from all families requires using some technology -- basic technology, that includes rather than excludes! More broadly, though, it also requires creating a thoughtful infrastructure tapping (and in some cases, paying for) a key local resource: bilingualism. Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but structural disorganization certainly can block communication too. The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation: otherwise, stuff doesn’t get translated despite good intentions.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of school infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full range of experiences from which to brainstorm those supports. 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.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” to make schoolwide translation efficient, and to make the Connectors' volunteer role not overly time-consuming.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Because a school with good family relationships serves everyone better, the people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. The key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to “connect” to other parents and “infrastructure” that helps school staff get info out and address individual parents’ needs. In particular, our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T17:08:25Z

24.60.250.60: /* Summary */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Barriers of language keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- and, gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some are middle-class parents who email the principal and Superintendent constantly. Others are left out of the most basic communications of schooling. Some parents have no computers and no internet. One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. One Portuguese-speaking dad we knew of worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a 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.) Time for “face time” itself is key to school-home communication: some families have time to volunteer countless hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home communication, particularly for immigrant families and those without computer access/knowledge and those who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms/Google spreadsheets, and a multilingual hotline we made, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share a school.

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, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating 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 did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

2) the full communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make a lot of friends with other parents who cared deeply about including everyone.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the unified Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall. We have two great leaders. We hope that one of the two, already a Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the information translation process we’ve come up with:

INFRASTRUCTURE JPEG HERE.

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc collecting schoolwide information for them to translate. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, schools need systems for getting information to and from everyone. Diverse schools particularly do. Structural barriers to information-sharing (in both directions) mean that partnerships that could happen, don’t. Structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. Today, getting information to all families and get input from all families requires using some technology -- basic technology, that includes rather than excludes! More broadly, though, it also requires creating a thoughtful infrastructure tapping (and in some cases, paying for) a key local resource: bilingualism. Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but structural disorganization certainly can block communication too. The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation: otherwise, stuff doesn’t get translated despite good intentions.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of school infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full range of experiences from which to brainstorm those supports. 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.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” to make schoolwide translation efficient, and to make the Connectors' volunteer role not overly time-consuming.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Because a school with good family relationships serves everyone better, the people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. The key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to “connect” to other parents and “infrastructure” that helps school staff get info out and address individual parents’ needs. In particular, our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-08-09T17:00:28Z

24.60.250.60: /* Summary */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|The joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)
---------

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also awesome young people, and great research partners!

So far, we have all been testing private texting between teachers and students and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from HGSE who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts (with students’ advance, overall permission), to see if texting was helpful to students and teachers. GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.

'''COLORED TEXT BOX: Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting’s key benefit was individualized, timely student support. Students argued that texts were supporting them to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Texting teachers and students are also having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. Teachers and students said they were experiencing greater trust and strengthened relationship. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

Most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours.
But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age: as Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

In Phase 1, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. We'd now like to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via rapid group texting.

We’ve augmented Google Voice with group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class and group “team” messaging. (with regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time.) Before we tweak that further as an open source tool any school could adapt, we’re going to try xxx to see if group texting even works for people. So, in fall 2011, we’ll be continuing teacher-student texting and starting teacher-full class texting with GoogleVoice, and testing group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
In the texting pilot, we wanted to enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person and each other about how young people were doing personally and academically, and what supports they might need to be more successful -- from both the students' and stakeholders' perspectives. Our vision was to support an entire “team” in rapid communication. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll add next “team” members in fall 2011!

There is often a gap in such rapid communications in schools: people don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. Increasingly, people don’t have (or answer!) home phones. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school; tutors don’t know what youth have to work on; parents are unaware of school goings-on, and more. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication more normal than ever in schools!

It is cell phones that are with us all day. Cell phones allow people to always be connected and available. Texting and other mobile text based communications give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--be it in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:
------

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

===Basic History===

The groundwork needed to support the current work.
-------
Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ ideas, interests and efforts.

Throughout this pilot, though, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to quickly share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? How might texting support needed communications?

We started working on a tech strategy for ongoing youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t enticing if it wasn’t social enough yet. Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/), where all their local and online friends already were, instead of use our private social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal, supportive communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these without a critical mass of interested members. (One successful exception were “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students took immediately to the medium! [LINK TO VIDEO HERE!]). This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about student skills could get students “flowing” in talking about their learning online.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new after school club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, it didn’t work: there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, many of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site. (Again, the eportfolio project may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

1) Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help. One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

2) Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

3) Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people. For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''ADD GRAPHIC HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY

Also, the students expressed that they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that texting was the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over the medium, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big aha came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA/TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than put an entire “team” together at once, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and we held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some series of communications made a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week max) for their time piloting the tool, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal ‘research day,’ and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot; for course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people with questions or thoughts they wanted to share via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention later, logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts; Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. All were invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Texting/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting and have dozens of students and more teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in exploring texting with more of his teachers. And both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for serious school support that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
We want to repeat two core “ahas” we stated earlier:

'''Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Texting is of course not a panacea for other needed youth supports. But it can definitely help. At our April Research Day, students noted that texts could get a student to come in on time; to focus on his classes; to care. Obens summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting got him to school, but couldn’t keep him focused in class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement.

One student made clear that student-teacher texting was a start, but next “links” in her life were needed: “She has been building a better relationship w/ Ted via texting. Dad doesn't have a phone, she says, and she doesn't want Ted texting him. Dad doesn't text, but she does seem to lean on him for some support. Girlfriends not helpful to her for graduation she says. She doesn't know how to apply to college, either. No guidance counselor??”

But, we have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

'''Next COMMUNICATION QUESTION: Is the privacy and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not?

We grappled with this core issue of privacy in envisioning our next step, texting “teams”: Which communications should be private, which public to the “team”? As Ted put it, “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both? He wants to honor the kids’ sense of privacy.” Ted was interested at the beginning in adding parents to the tool. As we wrote in January 2011,

“Ted definitely thinks we should have parents on. He wants to get more parents in w/ the tool. He thinks it won’t happen w/ all the kids, but would like to push to get more parents hooked in.”

Later, he would be more convinced of the need for private student-teacher communication. As one student said, she was up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” Mo raised the same question in late spring 2011, envisioning mistakenly sending a text about “your teen pregnancy!” to a student’s mom.

Earlier in the year, Ted had noted that digital communication of any type could be “forever,” especially if the recipient forwarded it: staff as well as students already warned students that, “when you send it out there, it’s forever. Don’t send anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see.”

Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. At the same time, the privacy of one-to-one texting is exactly what scares some teachers about it. Ted noted the benefits of private messaging throughout the pilot but also said in June that, “One thing that concerns me with the benefits of privacy is the risk that comes with it. The more private it is, the more risk because there’s evidence of [the communication and, the student need] going on . . .”

It was also unclear when keeping information private was helpful and harmful. For example, Ted was texting one boy who was checking in on his brother’s appearance in school; the brother had left home for school that morning but hadn’t shown up. “Now looking back on it, should I be sharing that example w/ his brother?” Ted asked aloud. “‘We’re much looser around here, in a regular public school they might not share that information.” Still, to support students fully, it often felt necessary to tell person A about an issue facing person B. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to actually test “team” texting. Who needs to share which information with whom on the “team,” and can a group texting tool support a complex “team” conversation?

The principal is interested in expanding teams to include other current and former teachers within the school. For some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful. Interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team, he thought. While many teachers didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some were newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

When we asked who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting – real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. So, we’re going to go with youth-constructed teams as planned and we’ll see where they take it.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
SETH AND UCHE ADD HERE

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice: Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without incurring texting charges. Teachers can also view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can also choose to have the service forward any texts received to their phones’ regular text messaging accounts. Or, they can check those messages directly on their phones via smartphone apps.

Google Voice also provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement.

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. (SETH EXPLAIN HERE?)

Using the Twilio API, Seth then created a many to many group “chat” tool that we came over time to call a “reply to all” tool. Technologically, it was hard for Seth to quickly create a tool where people could choose to text some in the “team” but not others. A student already noted that getting your own text back in group chat felt a bit weird. Kinks to be worked out! In the meantime, before we seriously tweak an open source version, we’ll test xxx software just to see if group texting even works in personal terms!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T16:59:55Z

24.60.250.60: /* Summary */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff. Info out, input in!

Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (one Connector even got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping out the full infrastructure that we’ll continue to develop in 2011-12. We’ve made a video of our model [[here]].

Here's one MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network. In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Barriers of language keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- and, gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some are middle-class parents who email the principal and Superintendent constantly. Others are left out of the most basic communications of schooling. Some parents have no computers and no internet. One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. One Portuguese-speaking dad we knew of worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a 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.) Time for “face time” itself is key to school-home communication: some families have time to volunteer countless hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home communication, particularly for immigrant families and those without computer access/knowledge and those who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms/Google spreadsheets, and a multilingual hotline we made, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share a school.

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, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating 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 did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

2) the full communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make a lot of friends with other parents who cared deeply about including everyone.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the unified Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall. We have two great leaders. We hope that one of the two, already a Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the information translation process we’ve come up with:

INFRASTRUCTURE JPEG HERE.

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc collecting schoolwide information for them to translate. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, schools need systems for getting information to and from everyone. Diverse schools particularly do. Structural barriers to information-sharing (in both directions) mean that partnerships that could happen, don’t. Structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. Today, getting information to all families and get input from all families requires using some technology -- basic technology, that includes rather than excludes! More broadly, though, it also requires creating a thoughtful infrastructure tapping (and in some cases, paying for) a key local resource: bilingualism. Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but structural disorganization certainly can block communication too. The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation: otherwise, stuff doesn’t get translated despite good intentions.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of school infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full range of experiences from which to brainstorm those supports. 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.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” to make schoolwide translation efficient, and to make the Connectors' volunteer role not overly time-consuming.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Because a school with good family relationships serves everyone better, the people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. The key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to “connect” to other parents and “infrastructure” that helps school staff get info out and address individual parents’ needs. In particular, our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T16:21:54Z

24.60.250.60:

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was a key 2010-11 effort of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, we have been working to help ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them into the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school.

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping it out! (We’ll show you some diagrams later.)

'''(COLORED TEXT BOX: Here's ONE MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network: in a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's document each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Barriers of language keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- and, gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some are middle-class parents who email the principal and Superintendent constantly. Others are left out of the most basic communications of schooling. Some parents have no computers and no internet. One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. One Portuguese-speaking dad we knew of worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a 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.) Time for “face time” itself is key to school-home communication: some families have time to volunteer countless hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home communication, particularly for immigrant families and those without computer access/knowledge and those who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms/Google spreadsheets, and a multilingual hotline we made, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share a school.

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, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating 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 did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

2) the full communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make a lot of friends with other parents who cared deeply about including everyone.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the unified Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall. We have two great leaders. We hope that one of the two, already a Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the information translation process we’ve come up with:

INFRASTRUCTURE JPEG HERE.

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc collecting schoolwide information for them to translate. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, schools need systems for getting information to and from everyone. Diverse schools particularly do. Structural barriers to information-sharing (in both directions) mean that partnerships that could happen, don’t. Structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. Today, getting information to all families and get input from all families requires using some technology -- basic technology, that includes rather than excludes! More broadly, though, it also requires creating a thoughtful infrastructure tapping (and in some cases, paying for) a key local resource: bilingualism. Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but structural disorganization certainly can block communication too. The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation: otherwise, stuff doesn’t get translated despite good intentions.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of school infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full range of experiences from which to brainstorm those supports. 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.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” to make schoolwide translation efficient, and to make the Connectors' volunteer role not overly time-consuming.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Because a school with good family relationships serves everyone better, the people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. The key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to “connect” to other parents and “infrastructure” that helps school staff get info out and address individual parents’ needs. In particular, our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-08-09T15:12:02Z

24.60.250.60: /* Main communication realizations and implementation realizations */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|The joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)
---------

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also awesome young people, and great research partners!

So far, we have all been testing private texting between teachers and students and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from HGSE who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts (with students’ advance, overall permission), to see if texting was helpful to students and teachers. GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.

'''COLORED TEXT BOX: Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting’s key benefit was individualized, timely student support. Students argued that texts were supporting them to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Texting teachers and students are also having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. Teachers and students said they were experiencing greater trust and strengthened relationship. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

Most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours.
But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age: as Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

In Phase 1, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. We'd now like to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via rapid group texting.

We’ve augmented Google Voice with group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class and group “team” messaging. (with regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time.) Before we tweak that further as an open source tool any school could adapt, we’re going to try xxx to see if group texting even works for people. So, in fall 2011, we’ll be continuing teacher-student texting and starting teacher-full class texting with GoogleVoice, and testing group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
In the texting pilot, we wanted to enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person and each other about how young people were doing personally and academically, and what supports they might need to be more successful -- from both the students' and stakeholders' perspectives. Our vision was to support an entire “team” in rapid communication. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll add next “team” members in fall 2011!

There is often a gap in such rapid communications in schools: people don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. Increasingly, people don’t have (or answer!) home phones. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school; tutors don’t know what youth have to work on; parents are unaware of school goings-on, and more. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication more normal than ever in schools!

It is cell phones that are with us all day. Cell phones allow people to always be connected and available. Texting and other mobile text based communications give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--be it in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:
------

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

===Basic History===

The groundwork needed to support the current work.
-------
Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ ideas, interests and efforts.

Throughout this pilot, though, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to quickly share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? How might texting support needed communications?

We started working on a tech strategy for ongoing youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t enticing if it wasn’t social enough yet. Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/), where all their local and online friends already were, instead of use our private social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal, supportive communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these without a critical mass of interested members. (One successful exception were “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students took immediately to the medium! [LINK TO VIDEO HERE!]). This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about student skills could get students “flowing” in talking about their learning online.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new after school club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, it didn’t work: there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, many of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site. (Again, the eportfolio project may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

1) Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help. One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

2) Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

3) Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people. For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''ADD GRAPHIC HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY

Also, the students expressed that they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that texting was the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over the medium, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big aha came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA/TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than put an entire “team” together at once, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and we held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some series of communications made a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week max) for their time piloting the tool, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal ‘research day,’ and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot; for course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people with questions or thoughts they wanted to share via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention later, logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts; Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. All were invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Texting/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting and have dozens of students and more teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in exploring texting with more of his teachers. And both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for serious school support that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
We want to repeat two core “ahas” we stated earlier:

'''Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Texting is of course not a panacea for other needed youth supports. But it can definitely help. At our April Research Day, students noted that texts could get a student to come in on time; to focus on his classes; to care. Obens summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting got him to school, but couldn’t keep him focused in class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement.

One student made clear that student-teacher texting was a start, but next “links” in her life were needed: “She has been building a better relationship w/ Ted via texting. Dad doesn't have a phone, she says, and she doesn't want Ted texting him. Dad doesn't text, but she does seem to lean on him for some support. Girlfriends not helpful to her for graduation she says. She doesn't know how to apply to college, either. No guidance counselor??”

But, we have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

'''Next COMMUNICATION QUESTION: Is the privacy and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not?

We grappled with this core issue of privacy in envisioning our next step, texting “teams”: Which communications should be private, which public to the “team”? As Ted put it, “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both? He wants to honor the kids’ sense of privacy.” Ted was interested at the beginning in adding parents to the tool. As we wrote in January 2011,

“Ted definitely thinks we should have parents on. He wants to get more parents in w/ the tool. He thinks it won’t happen w/ all the kids, but would like to push to get more parents hooked in.”

Later, he would be more convinced of the need for private student-teacher communication. As one student said, she was up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” Mo raised the same question in late spring 2011, envisioning mistakenly sending a text about “your teen pregnancy!” to a student’s mom.

Earlier in the year, Ted had noted that digital communication of any type could be “forever,” especially if the recipient forwarded it: staff as well as students already warned students that, “when you send it out there, it’s forever. Don’t send anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see.”

Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. At the same time, the privacy of one-to-one texting is exactly what scares some teachers about it. Ted noted the benefits of private messaging throughout the pilot but also said in June that, “One thing that concerns me with the benefits of privacy is the risk that comes with it. The more private it is, the more risk because there’s evidence of [the communication and, the student need] going on . . .”

It was also unclear when keeping information private was helpful and harmful. For example, Ted was texting one boy who was checking in on his brother’s appearance in school; the brother had left home for school that morning but hadn’t shown up. “Now looking back on it, should I be sharing that example w/ his brother?” Ted asked aloud. “‘We’re much looser around here, in a regular public school they might not share that information.” Still, to support students fully, it often felt necessary to tell person A about an issue facing person B. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to actually test “team” texting. Who needs to share which information with whom on the “team,” and can a group texting tool support a complex “team” conversation?

The principal is interested in expanding teams to include other current and former teachers within the school. For some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful. Interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team, he thought. While many teachers didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some were newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

When we asked who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting – real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. So, we’re going to go with youth-constructed teams as planned and we’ll see where they take it.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
SETH AND UCHE ADD HERE

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice: Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without incurring texting charges. Teachers can also view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can also choose to have the service forward any texts received to their phones’ regular text messaging accounts. Or, they can check those messages directly on their phones via smartphone apps.

Google Voice also provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement.

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. (SETH EXPLAIN HERE?)

Using the Twilio API, Seth then created a many to many group “chat” tool that we came over time to call a “reply to all” tool. Technologically, it was hard for Seth to quickly create a tool where people could choose to text some in the “team” but not others. A student already noted that getting your own text back in group chat felt a bit weird. Kinks to be worked out! In the meantime, before we seriously tweak an open source version, we’ll test xxx software just to see if group texting even works in personal terms!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T15:11:24Z

24.60.250.60: /* Main communication realizations and implementation realizations */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Gina d'Haiti, Tona Delmonico, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was a key 2010-11 effort of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, we have been working to help ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them into the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school.

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping it out! (We’ll show you some diagrams later.)

'''(COLORED TEXT BOX: Here's ONE MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network: in a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's document each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Barriers of language keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- and, gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some are middle-class parents who email the principal and Superintendent constantly. Others are left out of the most basic communications of schooling. Some parents have no computers and no internet. One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. One Portuguese-speaking dad we knew of worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a 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.) Time for “face time” itself is key to school-home communication: some families have time to volunteer countless hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home communication, particularly for immigrant families and those without computer access/knowledge and those who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms/Google spreadsheets, and a multilingual hotline we made, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share a school.

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, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating 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 did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

2) the full communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make a lot of friends with other parents who cared deeply about including everyone.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the unified Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall. We have two great leaders. We hope that one of the two, already a Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the information translation process we’ve come up with:

INFRASTRUCTURE JPEG HERE.

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc collecting schoolwide information for them to translate. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, schools need systems for getting information to and from everyone. Diverse schools particularly do. Structural barriers to information-sharing (in both directions) mean that partnerships that could happen, don’t. Structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. Today, getting information to all families and get input from all families requires using some technology -- basic technology, that includes rather than excludes! More broadly, though, it also requires creating a thoughtful infrastructure tapping (and in some cases, paying for) a key local resource: bilingualism. Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but structural disorganization certainly can block communication too. The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation: otherwise, stuff doesn’t get translated despite good intentions.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of school infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full range of experiences from which to brainstorm those supports. 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.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” to make schoolwide translation efficient, and to make the Connectors' volunteer role not overly time-consuming.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Because a school with good family relationships serves everyone better, the people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. The key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to “connect” to other parents and “infrastructure” that helps school staff get info out and address individual parents’ needs. In particular, our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-08-09T15:10:14Z

24.60.250.60: /* Main communication realizations and implementation realizations */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|The joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)
---------

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also awesome young people, and great research partners!

So far, we have all been testing private texting between teachers and students and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from HGSE who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts (with students’ advance, overall permission), to see if texting was helpful to students and teachers. GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.

'''COLORED TEXT BOX: Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting’s key benefit was individualized, timely student support. Students argued that texts were supporting them to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Texting teachers and students are also having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. Teachers and students said they were experiencing greater trust and strengthened relationship. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

Most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours.
But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age: as Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

In Phase 1, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. We'd now like to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via rapid group texting.

We’ve augmented Google Voice with group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class and group “team” messaging. (with regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time.) Before we tweak that further as an open source tool any school could adapt, we’re going to try xxx to see if group texting even works for people. So, in fall 2011, we’ll be continuing teacher-student texting and starting teacher-full class texting with GoogleVoice, and testing group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
In the texting pilot, we wanted to enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person and each other about how young people were doing personally and academically, and what supports they might need to be more successful -- from both the students' and stakeholders' perspectives. Our vision was to support an entire “team” in rapid communication. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll add next “team” members in fall 2011!

There is often a gap in such rapid communications in schools: people don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. Increasingly, people don’t have (or answer!) home phones. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school; tutors don’t know what youth have to work on; parents are unaware of school goings-on, and more. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication more normal than ever in schools!

It is cell phones that are with us all day. Cell phones allow people to always be connected and available. Texting and other mobile text based communications give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--be it in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:
------

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

===Basic History===

The groundwork needed to support the current work.
-------
Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ ideas, interests and efforts.

Throughout this pilot, though, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to quickly share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? How might texting support needed communications?

We started working on a tech strategy for ongoing youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t enticing if it wasn’t social enough yet. Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/), where all their local and online friends already were, instead of use our private social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal, supportive communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these without a critical mass of interested members. (One successful exception were “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students took immediately to the medium! [LINK TO VIDEO HERE!]). This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about student skills could get students “flowing” in talking about their learning online.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new after school club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, it didn’t work: there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, many of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site. (Again, the eportfolio project may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

1) Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help. One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

2) Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

3) Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people. For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''ADD GRAPHIC HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY

Also, the students expressed that they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that texting was the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over the medium, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big aha came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA/TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than put an entire “team” together at once, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and we held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some series of communications made a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week max) for their time piloting the tool, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal ‘research day,’ and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot; for course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people with questions or thoughts they wanted to share via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention later, logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts; Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. All were invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Texting/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting and have dozens of students and more teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in exploring texting with more of his teachers. And both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for serious school support that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
We want to repeat two core “ahas” we stated earlier:

'''Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Texting is of course not a panacea for other needed youth supports. But it can definitely help. At our April Research Day, students noted that texts could get a student to come in on time; to focus on his classes; to care. Obens summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting got him to school, but couldn’t keep him focused in class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement.

One student made clear that student-teacher texting was a start, but next “links” in her life were needed: “She has been building a better relationship w/ Ted via texting. Dad doesn't have a phone, she says, and she doesn't want Ted texting him. Dad doesn't text, but she does seem to lean on him for some support. Girlfriends not helpful to her for graduation she says. She doesn't know how to apply to college, either. No guidance counselor??”

But, we have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

'''Next COMMUNICATION QUESTION: Is the privacy and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not?

We grappled with this core issue of privacy in envisioning our next step, texting “teams”: Which communications should be private, which public to the “team”? As Ted put it, “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both? He wants to honor the kids’ sense of privacy.” Ted was interested at the beginning in adding parents to the tool. As we wrote in January 2011,

“Ted definitely thinks we should have parents on. He wants to get more parents in w/ the tool. He thinks it won’t happen w/ all the kids, but would like to push to get more parents hooked in.”

Later, he would be more convinced of the need for private student-teacher communication. As one student said, she was up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” Mo raised the same question in late spring 2011, envisioning mistakenly sending a text about “your teen pregnancy!” to a student’s mom.

Earlier in the year, Ted had noted that digital communication of any type could be “forever,” especially if the recipient forwarded it: staff as well as students already warned students that, “when you send it out there, it’s forever. Don’t send anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see.”

Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. At the same time, the privacy of one-to-one texting is exactly what scares some teachers about it. Ted noted the benefits of private messaging throughout the pilot but also said in June that, “One thing that concerns me with the benefits of privacy is the risk that comes with it. The more private it is, the more risk because there’s evidence of [the communication and, the student need] going on . . .”

It was also unclear when keeping information private was helpful and harmful. For example, Ted was texting one boy who was checking in on his brother’s appearance in school; the brother had left home for school that morning but hadn’t shown up. “Now looking back on it, should I be sharing that example w/ his brother?” Ted asked aloud. “‘We’re much looser around here, in a regular public school they might not share that information.” Still, to support students fully, it often felt necessary to tell person A about an issue facing person B. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to actually test “team” texting. Who needs to share which information with whom on the “team,” and can a group texting tool support a complex “team” conversation?

The principal is interested in expanding teams to include other current and former teachers within the school. For some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful. Interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team, he thought. While many teachers didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some were newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

When we asked who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting – real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. So, we’re going to go with youth-constructed teams as planned and we’ll see where they take it.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
SETH AND UCHE ADD HERE

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice: Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without incurring texting charges. Teachers can also view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can also choose to have the service forward any texts received to their phones’ regular text messaging accounts. Or, they can check those messages directly on their phones via smartphone apps.

Google Voice also provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement.

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. (SETH EXPLAIN HERE?)

Using the Twilio API, Seth then created a many to many group “chat” tool that we came over time to call a “reply to all” tool. Technologically, it was hard for Seth to quickly create a tool where people could choose to text some in the “team” but not others. A student already noted that getting your own text back in group chat felt a bit weird. Kinks to be worked out! In the meantime, before we seriously tweak an open source version, we’ll test xxx software just to see if group texting even works in personal terms!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-08-09T15:09:55Z

24.60.250.60: /* Main communication realizations and implementation realizations */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|The joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)
---------

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also awesome young people, and great research partners!

So far, we have all been testing private texting between teachers and students and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from HGSE who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts (with students’ advance, overall permission), to see if texting was helpful to students and teachers. GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.

'''COLORED TEXT BOX: Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting’s key benefit was individualized, timely student support. Students argued that texts were supporting them to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Texting teachers and students are also having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. Teachers and students said they were experiencing greater trust and strengthened relationship. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

Most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours.
But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age: as Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

In Phase 1, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. We'd now like to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via rapid group texting.

We’ve augmented Google Voice with group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class and group “team” messaging. (with regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time.) Before we tweak that further as an open source tool any school could adapt, we’re going to try xxx to see if group texting even works for people. So, in fall 2011, we’ll be continuing teacher-student texting and starting teacher-full class texting with GoogleVoice, and testing group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
In the texting pilot, we wanted to enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person and each other about how young people were doing personally and academically, and what supports they might need to be more successful -- from both the students' and stakeholders' perspectives. Our vision was to support an entire “team” in rapid communication. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll add next “team” members in fall 2011!

There is often a gap in such rapid communications in schools: people don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. Increasingly, people don’t have (or answer!) home phones. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school; tutors don’t know what youth have to work on; parents are unaware of school goings-on, and more. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication more normal than ever in schools!

It is cell phones that are with us all day. Cell phones allow people to always be connected and available. Texting and other mobile text based communications give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--be it in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:
------

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

===Basic History===

The groundwork needed to support the current work.
-------
Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ ideas, interests and efforts.

Throughout this pilot, though, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to quickly share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? How might texting support needed communications?

We started working on a tech strategy for ongoing youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t enticing if it wasn’t social enough yet. Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/), where all their local and online friends already were, instead of use our private social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal, supportive communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these without a critical mass of interested members. (One successful exception were “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students took immediately to the medium! [LINK TO VIDEO HERE!]). This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about student skills could get students “flowing” in talking about their learning online.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new after school club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, it didn’t work: there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, many of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site. (Again, the eportfolio project may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

1) Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help. One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

2) Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

3) Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people. For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''ADD GRAPHIC HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY

Also, the students expressed that they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that texting was the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over the medium, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big aha came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA/TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than put an entire “team” together at once, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and we held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some series of communications made a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week max) for their time piloting the tool, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal ‘research day,’ and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot; for course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people with questions or thoughts they wanted to share via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention later, logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts; Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. All were invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Texting/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting and have dozens of students and more teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in exploring texting with more of his teachers. And both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for serious school support that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

''What do we plan to do next?
-------
We want to repeat two core “ahas” we stated earlier:

'''Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Texting is of course not a panacea for other needed youth supports. But it can definitely help. At our April Research Day, students noted that texts could get a student to come in on time; to focus on his classes; to care. Obens summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting got him to school, but couldn’t keep him focused in class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement.

One student made clear that student-teacher texting was a start, but next “links” in her life were needed: “She has been building a better relationship w/ Ted via texting. Dad doesn't have a phone, she says, and she doesn't want Ted texting him. Dad doesn't text, but she does seem to lean on him for some support. Girlfriends not helpful to her for graduation she says. She doesn't know how to apply to college, either. No guidance counselor??”

But, we have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

'''Next COMMUNICATION QUESTION: Is the privacy and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not?

We grappled with this core issue of privacy in envisioning our next step, texting “teams”: Which communications should be private, which public to the “team”? As Ted put it, “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both? He wants to honor the kids’ sense of privacy.” Ted was interested at the beginning in adding parents to the tool. As we wrote in January 2011,

“Ted definitely thinks we should have parents on. He wants to get more parents in w/ the tool. He thinks it won’t happen w/ all the kids, but would like to push to get more parents hooked in.”

Later, he would be more convinced of the need for private student-teacher communication. As one student said, she was up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” Mo raised the same question in late spring 2011, envisioning mistakenly sending a text about “your teen pregnancy!” to a student’s mom.

Earlier in the year, Ted had noted that digital communication of any type could be “forever,” especially if the recipient forwarded it: staff as well as students already warned students that, “when you send it out there, it’s forever. Don’t send anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see.”

Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. At the same time, the privacy of one-to-one texting is exactly what scares some teachers about it. Ted noted the benefits of private messaging throughout the pilot but also said in June that, “One thing that concerns me with the benefits of privacy is the risk that comes with it. The more private it is, the more risk because there’s evidence of [the communication and, the student need] going on . . .”

It was also unclear when keeping information private was helpful and harmful. For example, Ted was texting one boy who was checking in on his brother’s appearance in school; the brother had left home for school that morning but hadn’t shown up. “Now looking back on it, should I be sharing that example w/ his brother?” Ted asked aloud. “‘We’re much looser around here, in a regular public school they might not share that information.” Still, to support students fully, it often felt necessary to tell person A about an issue facing person B. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to actually test “team” texting. Who needs to share which information with whom on the “team,” and can a group texting tool support a complex “team” conversation?

The principal is interested in expanding teams to include other current and former teachers within the school. For some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful. Interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team, he thought. While many teachers didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some were newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

When we asked who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting – real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. So, we’re going to go with youth-constructed teams as planned and we’ll see where they take it.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
SETH AND UCHE ADD HERE

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice: Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without incurring texting charges. Teachers can also view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can also choose to have the service forward any texts received to their phones’ regular text messaging accounts. Or, they can check those messages directly on their phones via smartphone apps.

Google Voice also provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement.

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. (SETH EXPLAIN HERE?)

Using the Twilio API, Seth then created a many to many group “chat” tool that we came over time to call a “reply to all” tool. Technologically, it was hard for Seth to quickly create a tool where people could choose to text some in the “team” but not others. A student already noted that getting your own text back in group chat felt a bit weird. Kinks to be worked out! In the meantime, before we seriously tweak an open source version, we’ll test xxx software just to see if group texting even works in personal terms!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-08-09T15:08:34Z

24.60.250.60: /* Findings/Endpoints */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|The joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)
---------

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also awesome young people, and great research partners!

So far, we have all been testing private texting between teachers and students and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from HGSE who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts (with students’ advance, overall permission), to see if texting was helpful to students and teachers. GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.

'''COLORED TEXT BOX: Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting’s key benefit was individualized, timely student support. Students argued that texts were supporting them to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Texting teachers and students are also having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. Teachers and students said they were experiencing greater trust and strengthened relationship. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

Most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours.
But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age: as Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

In Phase 1, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. We'd now like to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via rapid group texting.

We’ve augmented Google Voice with group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class and group “team” messaging. (with regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time.) Before we tweak that further as an open source tool any school could adapt, we’re going to try xxx to see if group texting even works for people. So, in fall 2011, we’ll be continuing teacher-student texting and starting teacher-full class texting with GoogleVoice, and testing group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
In the texting pilot, we wanted to enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person and each other about how young people were doing personally and academically, and what supports they might need to be more successful -- from both the students' and stakeholders' perspectives. Our vision was to support an entire “team” in rapid communication. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll add next “team” members in fall 2011!

There is often a gap in such rapid communications in schools: people don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. Increasingly, people don’t have (or answer!) home phones. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school; tutors don’t know what youth have to work on; parents are unaware of school goings-on, and more. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication more normal than ever in schools!

It is cell phones that are with us all day. Cell phones allow people to always be connected and available. Texting and other mobile text based communications give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--be it in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:
------

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

===Basic History===

The groundwork needed to support the current work.
-------
Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ ideas, interests and efforts.

Throughout this pilot, though, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to quickly share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? How might texting support needed communications?

We started working on a tech strategy for ongoing youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t enticing if it wasn’t social enough yet. Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/), where all their local and online friends already were, instead of use our private social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal, supportive communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these without a critical mass of interested members. (One successful exception were “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students took immediately to the medium! [LINK TO VIDEO HERE!]). This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about student skills could get students “flowing” in talking about their learning online.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new after school club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, it didn’t work: there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, many of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site. (Again, the eportfolio project may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

1) Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help. One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

2) Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

3) Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people. For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''ADD GRAPHIC HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY

Also, the students expressed that they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that texting was the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over the medium, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big aha came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA/TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than put an entire “team” together at once, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and we held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some series of communications made a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week max) for their time piloting the tool, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal ‘research day,’ and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot; for course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people with questions or thoughts they wanted to share via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention later, logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts; Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. All were invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Texting/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting and have dozens of students and more teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in exploring texting with more of his teachers. And both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for serious school support that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what's your main realization about improving communications in public education? (Give us your main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]]. What big changes would you recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

What’s the main thing you’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would you expand or do differently were you to do this again?)

What do you plan to do next?
-------
We want to repeat two core “ahas” we stated earlier:

'''Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Texting is of course not a panacea for other needed youth supports. But it can definitely help. At our April Research Day, students noted that texts could get a student to come in on time; to focus on his classes; to care. Obens summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting got him to school, but couldn’t keep him focused in class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement.

One student made clear that student-teacher texting was a start, but next “links” in her life were needed: “She has been building a better relationship w/ Ted via texting. Dad doesn't have a phone, she says, and she doesn't want Ted texting him. Dad doesn't text, but she does seem to lean on him for some support. Girlfriends not helpful to her for graduation she says. She doesn't know how to apply to college, either. No guidance counselor??”

But, we have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

'''Next COMMUNICATION QUESTION: Is the privacy and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not?

We grappled with this core issue of privacy in envisioning our next step, texting “teams”: Which communications should be private, which public to the “team”? As Ted put it, “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both? He wants to honor the kids’ sense of privacy.” Ted was interested at the beginning in adding parents to the tool. As we wrote in January 2011,

“Ted definitely thinks we should have parents on. He wants to get more parents in w/ the tool. He thinks it won’t happen w/ all the kids, but would like to push to get more parents hooked in.”

Later, he would be more convinced of the need for private student-teacher communication. As one student said, she was up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” Mo raised the same question in late spring 2011, envisioning mistakenly sending a text about “your teen pregnancy!” to a student’s mom.

Earlier in the year, Ted had noted that digital communication of any type could be “forever,” especially if the recipient forwarded it: staff as well as students already warned students that, “when you send it out there, it’s forever. Don’t send anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see.”

Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. At the same time, the privacy of one-to-one texting is exactly what scares some teachers about it. Ted noted the benefits of private messaging throughout the pilot but also said in June that, “One thing that concerns me with the benefits of privacy is the risk that comes with it. The more private it is, the more risk because there’s evidence of [the communication and, the student need] going on . . .”

It was also unclear when keeping information private was helpful and harmful. For example, Ted was texting one boy who was checking in on his brother’s appearance in school; the brother had left home for school that morning but hadn’t shown up. “Now looking back on it, should I be sharing that example w/ his brother?” Ted asked aloud. “‘We’re much looser around here, in a regular public school they might not share that information.” Still, to support students fully, it often felt necessary to tell person A about an issue facing person B. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to actually test “team” texting. Who needs to share which information with whom on the “team,” and can a group texting tool support a complex “team” conversation?

The principal is interested in expanding teams to include other current and former teachers within the school. For some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful. Interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team, he thought. While many teachers didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some were newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

When we asked who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting – real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. So, we’re going to go with youth-constructed teams as planned and we’ll see where they take it.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
SETH AND UCHE ADD HERE

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice: Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without incurring texting charges. Teachers can also view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can also choose to have the service forward any texts received to their phones’ regular text messaging accounts. Or, they can check those messages directly on their phones via smartphone apps.

Google Voice also provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement.

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. (SETH EXPLAIN HERE?)

Using the Twilio API, Seth then created a many to many group “chat” tool that we came over time to call a “reply to all” tool. Technologically, it was hard for Seth to quickly create a tool where people could choose to text some in the “team” but not others. A student already noted that getting your own text back in group chat felt a bit weird. Kinks to be worked out! In the meantime, before we seriously tweak an open source version, we’ll test xxx software just to see if group texting even works in personal terms!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
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Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-08-09T15:08:12Z

24.60.250.60: /* Findings/Endpoints */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Gina d'Haiti, Tona Delmonico, and Ana Maria Nieto, for the Parent Connector project

'''As we documented this project, we thought about OneVille's project-wide 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?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. Communication we hoped to improve. (What aspect of communicating about or with young people did the project address, or hope to improve?)

''(Where did people want to go with the project? When did the project take place? Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent?)

''b. Concrete communication improvement(s). What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have been accomplished?

''c. Main communication realizations and implementation realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to [[OneVille's research questions]], above!)

------------
The Parent Connector Network was a key 2010-11 effort of an overall Working Group exploring Schoolwide Communication at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville. In this Working Group, we have been working to help ensure that all parents in a multilingual and socially diverse school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them into the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in this loop of school information and input. We focused on creating a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") use phones, Googleforms and a phone-messaging hotline to help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school.

This past year the Connectors have also become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. We spent late spring 2011 mapping it out! (We’ll show you some diagrams later.)

'''(COLORED TEXT BOX: Here's ONE MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION from the Parent Connector Network: in a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires getting more organized about effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's document each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Barriers of language keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- and, gaps in personal relationship and connections.

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some are middle-class parents who email the principal and Superintendent constantly. Others are left out of the most basic communications of schooling. Some parents have no computers and no internet. One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher. One Portuguese-speaking dad we knew of worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a 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.) Time for “face time” itself is key to school-home communication: some families have time to volunteer countless hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Parents who saw each other regularly at face to face school events made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home communication, particularly for immigrant families and those without computer access/knowledge and those who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school. A listserv has long enrolled only some. 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.

Throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded Healey 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 also use Google forms/Google spreadsheets, and a multilingual hotline we made, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share a school.

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, as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating 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 did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:

===Basic History===

'''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
------
As a multilingual group of parents (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

2) the full communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections. Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11. (We tell the full story in the next section! See Parent connector network/ahas!)

Most of all, we had to make a lot of friends with other parents who cared deeply about including everyone.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

'''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. An “aha” refers to the moments when we said “Aha! we’ve figured out something really helpful!” Or, “Aha! Now we understand!” “Turning points” refer to moments when we used these ahas to make changes to our work. To read the full accounting (our main documentation of this project!), see main article: [[Parent connector network/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

'''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the unified Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls and ready for fall. We have two great leaders. We hope that one of the two, already a Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school 10 hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the information translation process we’ve come up with:

INFRASTRUCTURE JPEG HERE.

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc collecting schoolwide information for them to translate. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

'''At this point, what's your main realization about improving communications in public education? (Give us your main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]]. What big changes would you recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

What’s the main thing you’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would you expand or do differently were you to do this again?)

What do you plan to do next?
-------
'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Along with strong intentions to include all families, schools need systems for getting information to and from everyone. Diverse schools particularly do. Structural barriers to information-sharing (in both directions) mean that partnerships that could happen, don’t. Structural improvements can help include everyone and send the message that everyone is to be included.

Communication from school to home and back again is a huge issue in any diverse school, particularly across boundaries of language and tech access/training. Today, getting information to all families and get input from all families requires using some technology -- basic technology, that includes rather than excludes! More broadly, though, it also requires creating a thoughtful infrastructure tapping (and in some cases, paying for) a key local resource: bilingualism. Commitment to fully including all parents is key, but structural disorganization certainly can block communication too. The principal made clear that he needs to think in terms of “systems” for translation: otherwise, stuff doesn’t get translated despite good intentions.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of school infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full range of experiences from which to brainstorm those supports. 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.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” to make schoolwide translation efficient, and to make the Connectors' volunteer role not overly time-consuming.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Because a school with good family relationships serves everyone better, the people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. The key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can/will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals? We’ve been exploring a hybrid of volunteer efforts to “connect” to other parents and “infrastructure” that helps school staff get info out and address individual parents’ needs. In particular, our final aha of the year was that the core "loop" of communication on serious parent needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and people linking other parents TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their kids or legal assistance for their families. But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.

MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Nothing can stop a creative group of committed parents.

===Technological how-tos===

'''Describe "how to" use every tool you used, so that others could do the same. Describe "how to" make every tool you made!
-----
We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. We use some Google forms for Connectors to record parents’ needs.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using the district’s existing system for school-home calls (ConnectEd), but targeting the calls to be specific to language groups and at times, recorded by friendly parent voices.

Still, as a group of non-technologists, Googleform and Googlespreadsheet setup took us a bit of learning! (describe? screen shots?)

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s 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. SETH ADD HERE!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:

-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them? Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?

-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?

-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?

-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?

-How could you eventually make more efficient translation/interpretation/parent liaison efforts a task of school staff? (In our case, we streamlined a way of getting school information out to everyone and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 10 hrs/week to run it. Her part-time job will include running the Connector project!)