Oneville Wiki - User contributions [en]

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-10-05T04:51:23Z

Jc:

Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, Josh Wairi, and Seth Woodworth for the dashboard project

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

''Who needs to communicate what info to whom, in order to support young people?

''Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome? Which media might help?

''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. What communication did we hope to improve, change, or create? Why?

''b. Main efforts, and concrete communication improvement(s). (Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have become more possible?)

''c. Main 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!)

-----------------
With teacher Josh Wairi, principals Jason DeFalco and then Purnima Vadhera, parents, and students at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, and young local technologists, we have worked to create an open source dashboard -- a data display that sits “on top of” the district’s student information system and displays data in ways that partners (parents, teachers, administrators, students) can quickly view and comment on. By "dashboard," we mean a single place to go to get a quick view -- like the front “dashboard” on your car. But our tools are also designed to support people to communicate about what they see.

We’ve designed three “dashboard” tools. We started in 2009 by tweaking a great color-coded Excel spreadsheet that Greg Nadeau, a Somerville parent, had made for the Healey principal (see [[Dashboard/ahas]] for specifics). We ended up codesigning an administrator's data view with Healey administrators, and a teacher’s view that presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view:

[[Image: admin view.jpg|admin view]]

We also designed an individual view, with additional data, for parents, students, afterschool providers and teachers to communicate in a team about each individual student:

[[Image: individual view.jpg|individual view]]

For that view, we built on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York, combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product!

Our goal in 2011-12 is to test and tweak these three tools with educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers, and to link these tools electronically so that in any given team meeting, educators have access to all the data at once. We also want to see how they should be designed to support face to face and email-based conversations about “the data.”

Why’d we do this? Well, in education these days, we talk a lot about “data-sharing.” Typically, we mean making sure that educators or afterschool providers can see information on students' demographics and progress as measured with basic numbers (e.g.,: test scores, days absent). These indicators never show "the whole child" ([[ePortfolio|eportfolios]] can help with that!), but they are still very important to know. They show how students are doing on measures that many educators treat as very important (e.g., grades on a report card) and that do tend to predict important events like “dropping out” (e.g., absences from school).

Gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting a young person remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation (was Jose absent, or not?).

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there’s no reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately!

But most tools for simple data display in schools cost districts a lot of money. And so, many districts don’t have them. To clarify: a typical district has a “student information system” (a database of student information), but many districts don’t have any easy tools for quickly displaying that information to multiple partners at once (or letting them sort the data to see patterns in it). In Somerville, administrators had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers have had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand.

When districts do have online data display tools, finally, they typically aren't designed by educators or parents. In fact, families are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card) and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://www.nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html)

Somerville educators were very interested in a “dashboard” and so, this was the main working group on the OneVille Project where we decided to try to make a tool from scratch. We spent Ford funding on supporting local technologists, Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard, and a 5th grade teacher, Josh Wairi -- all in their late twenties and early thirties -- to design and build a tool that Somerville might eventually be able to use for free, if it worked.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Putting info online can put student supporters “all on the same page,” as Josh put it one day: that’s because rather than passing paper folders around, everyone can see the same data at once.

Putting data online also means that more people can join the “team” analyzing the data. When schools and districts have data teams, they typically involve teachers and administrators, not parents; more rarely do afterschool providers, parents, or students themselves communicate about student data they are all seeing at once.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: A gap in data equals a gap in student services.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, along with various students we talked to in our other pilots, all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, faster, could support faster interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

While many communications have to happen in person so that people build trust and share details (a parent-teacher meeting; a student support team meeting), having everyone online can also mean that a group conversation can be sparked at any time. When people rely on paper folders, the person who leaves with the folder leaves with the record of care due the child!

At the same time, relying only on tech-based conversations would leave out people with less access to tech (or knowledge of it). And so, improving basic data sharing in education is still about ensuring that all necessary stakeholders are aware of students' most basic situation in a timely manner. That means supporting people to see data quickly instead of sorting through separate folders, and, it means making tech easy and common-denominator rather than complicated; it also means doing things like training parents on email or putting a computer in the PTA room (part of our [[Schoolwide communication toolkit|schoolwide communication]] efforts). And, just "getting data" on a student is never enough: people need to then converse (online, in person, or otherwise) about how the young person is doing and how they might be assisted. Just knowing how many days a child is absent is the first step, but then you need to have a conversation about why and what to do about it!

==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?
------------------------
Lots of people in Somerville talked about the need to improve data display at the parent/student level, the teacher level, the afterschool provider level, and the administrator level.

[[Image:Aspen X2 3.jpg|thumb|Aspen X2 3]]

In Somerville, older students and parents can log into X2, the student information system, to see updates on their grades, absences, etc. But many don't have passwords or don't know they have them; students told us they often forgot them. More importantly, once they get to X2, some found the data there hard to understand. Information isn't translated for non-English speakers. And viewers can’t comment ON the data seen. X2 is set up only to house student data -- not to help people talk about it. In talking about dashboard prototypes with parents, the major feature everyone emphasized was the ability to immediately comment ON data, rather than simply “look at it.”

When you get “into” X2 as a teacher or administrator, you also can’t easily see patterns in student data. Josh had to create spreadsheets for his own class by hand. At the administrator level, the Healey principal was also never able to easily sort any of his data within X2. Doing so requires queries to a busy central office, which runs data analyses and releases data reports once a week. Getting new data during a meeting, for immediate discussion, is not feasible.

While some afterschool providers had access to X2 directly, many didn’t, meaning they had trouble knowing basic information like whether students who were coming to afterschool were going to school. So, these providers typically kept their information in separate computer databases or even on paper. In our many discussions with people about basic data issues, they raised a key point:

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: It is crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

For example, afterschool attendance and MAP score changes, or student demographics and achievement data, shouldn’t be scattered in inaccessible places! Supporters need to able to see these basic “indicators” all in one place.

So, the goal became to create a simple data display that could help all these folks see some basic data kept in X2 in a single view. This included creating a translated display easily understandable by an immigrant parent. Over time, we also decided that we wanted to co-create tools designed explicitly to help teachers, administrators, parents, and tutors to communicate about the basic data and about students' progress toward standard benchmarks -- not just see it!

Our rationale: Many data displays in schools are a) on paper and b) one-way. Think a report card or a quarterly report on one’s “scores”: schools or districts just “display” to kids their scores or show parents their child’s absences. Since OneVille’s goal is to support diverse partners in running communication about pursuing the success of young people, we wanted to make sure that parents could communicate back ABOUT data, to teachers -- and that tutors, teachers, and parents could over time communicate with one another.

Finally, we wanted to work to create a free/open source tool so that other districts could adapt what we made. In an era when many districts are strapped for money, it just seems wrong to pay lots of cash just to see basic information!

So, we made three views, each designed to support a different conversation. Our administrator and teacher dashboard views present data such as attendance, grades, and MCAS and MAP test scores and growth. The principal wants to try using this view in student support team meetings when people have typically struggled to see patterns in data by hand. Josh wants to use his live, more-often-refreshed view instead of his Excel spreadsheet! In the individual dashboard view, parents and other supporters are encouraged to shape their conversation around Somerville's existing rubrics for student achievement, also making them more attuned to those rubrics. The principal, and Josh, want to try using this view in face to face conversations with parents. Online viewers can also message the teacher from home or work through the dashboard's comment/question boxes; messages show up in the teacher’s email. In our pilot, we will support members of a “team” of family, teachers, and afterschool staff to view the dashboards text boxes and to use text boxes/email to communicate as needed about goals for/progress on student achievement. We’ll also see how the dashboard views can be designed to support face to face communication!

==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 we began the OneVille Project, we proposed to create a “dashboard” displaying basic data linking many youth- and child-related databases in the city, because lots of people in the field say that the more data seen by more people, the better. The district was first interested in getting all of its own basic data viewable, quickly -- and that’s what we ended up working on in the end. We bit off a bit more than we could chew at first, especially with all of the other projects we had going: we proposed to link all of the databases in the community, before realizing that this was a) a huge data effort, b) politically very complicated, and c) not clearly necessary at the level of the individual, familiy, teacher, and school administrator (does a teacher actually need to know a student’s police record in order to serve him better?). So, to get started, we focused for the first 2 years on co-designing and producing a dashboard that could work to display school data at the level of the school and the family. SomerPromise, the Mayor's new site-based initiative to provide comprehensive youth services, was also interested in linking databases across agencies and we felt they were better positioned to pursue that goal even as we worked to lay groundwork for the effort by creating administrative and family-level views of school data alone.

As it turned out, Greg Nadeau, Somerville resident, had already made an Excel spreadsheet for the Healey Principal the year before we began work on the dashboard. It was an early Excel version of what later became our Administrator Dashboard View.

[[Image: greg nadeau view.jpg|greg nadeau view]]

So, the main need at the school was entering updated data into it -- by hand. So, Susan, who would later become the lead organizer for the eportfolio project, did some valiant handywork (assisted by colleague Al Willis) to clean up the current year’s spreadsheet and to add new data typically not kept in X2 that the principal also wanted to see, like afterschool enrollment. We also had some regular meetings via phone conference with Greg and the principal to consider the patterns the principal wanted to see and the new "fields" for data that he felt needed to be created permanently in the district student information system (e.g., attendance in the afterschool programs. Afterschool programs weren't keeping this data in Somerville's core data system, X2, and still don’t.)

Josh Wairi, a 5th grade teacher at the Healey, got interested in the dashboard design when we stopped by his classroom one day after school. Looking together at his computer and printouts, we realized he was already creating spreadsheets of student data from X2 by hand. He was interested in quickly displaying and sorting basic data, to supplement his face to face and phone conversations with students and parents. His work showed us the need for what would become the “Teacher View,” a class-size version of the school-wide Administrator View.

Stories of parents’ own needs to communicate with teachers about their children’s report cards prompted us to push forward on an “Individual View” that included the report card instead of just absences, grades, and test scores. We had been inspired by the New Visions for New Schools project, which had a view that could give parents and students a quick, accurate understanding of how the student was performing on the latter kind of data. https://knowledgebase.newvisions.org/resource/loadresource.aspx?ArtifactId=3298

Compared with New Visions' view, ours had the additional feature of allowing parents to comment on students' progress, send these comments to the teacher, and begin a conversation about how to support the student at home and in school:

[[Image:new visions view.jpg|new visions]]

At the time we were designing the “Individual View,” the District was ceasing to assign its elementary students numerical grades, or their equivalents on the typical A, B, C... scale, and moving to a standards-based K-6 report card. So, we made Somerville's new K-6 report card (handed out on paper to families) online and color-coded.

[[Image:individual view grades.jpg|individual view grades]]

We added statistics about the student’s attendance and MCAS and MAP scores to the Individual View, which also includes the teacher’s quarterly summary comments.

[[Image: attendance.jpg|thumb|Individual student attendance: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image:test scores.jpg|thumb|individual student test scores: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image: teacher comments.jpg|thumb|Individual student teacher comments: Click to enlarge]]

As we work to import the district’s translations of the basic report card rubrics, we have considered encouraging immigrant parents to use Google Translate as a first step to translate teachers’ own comments and to write back to teachers about their reactions.

===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. This section captures our learning across the project. Learn the story at: [[Dashboard/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Please 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?
-------
The prototypes of the administrative, teacher, and individual views are nearly complete. In the fall, we plan to test and modify the admin view with new Healey Principal Purnima Vadhera (she wants to use the view in student support team meetings and to share data patterns with teachers) and to test and tweak the teacher and individual views with Josh and his students’ families. We’ll also support an email-based communication among a "team" of educators, family, and afterschool providers around each student in his class.

===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?)
-------

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Nobody in this day and age should be in the dark about basic progress info on the young people in their lives.

Communities able to invest in high-end communication infrastructure just buy expensive tools to help them view and sort their data. What about districts that can't afford this? They keep basic data in drawers; they send requests for data sorting to central administrators and wait. Or, young people fall "through the cracks" -- a gap in basic information and response. Student service should never be held back by struggles to view the most basic of data! Basic data is always a shallow view of the whole student, but it’s part of the “view” -- and these basic indicators tell us some important things about how youth are faring in the school’s terms.

And districts shouldn't pay big money for seeing and sorting this data, either.

Open source tools save districts money because they don’t have to buy the product itself; districts only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), a fraction of the cost. (Our technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services, but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to storebought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US Schools.”

If our tools prove helpful, our next task (or someone else’s) could be to make these adaptable anywhere in the country, and to create a model for supporting districts to use the free tools.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that parents, students, administrators, and local technologists can fundamentally help design tools for sharing and communicating about basic data in schools.

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?

As stated above, we’ll be piloting our three “views” this fall and will report out what we learn.

Ongoing Challenges: We face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. The same work schedules that make parent-teacher meetings hard also make it hard for some parents to coordinate their schedules with the computer labs at local libraries or in the housing projects where some families live. (Also, to look at an online data display together, educators too need internet access -- not always easy if people meet in a room without a computer, wireless, or a laptop to plug into an ethernet cable.)

We hope to work with the PTA this year to create a model of parent-parent, basic computer and email training for Healey parents who need this support. We’ll be reaching out to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet. Several years from now, the proliferation of smartphones and iphones will likely shrink this challenge dramatically, making it easier than ever for partners to join the conversation about student data.

We also will continue to consider bigger issues about “data” in schools: basic quant data on students is never the whole story, which makes linking a dashboard to an eportfolio even more important.

===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 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!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

-Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?

-If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?

- If so, how could low cost tech support such information-sharing?

-To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?

-What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?

-What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment where you live to test which works for what?

Data dashboard

2011-10-05T04:50:09Z

Jc: moved Data dashboard to Data dashboards: Old page was getting spammed

#REDIRECT [[Data dashboards]]

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-10-05T04:50:09Z

Jc: moved Data dashboard to Data dashboards: Old page was getting spammed

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Next Steps

2011-10-04T22:16:06Z

Jc: /* Another Next Layer: National Networks for Sharing Local Efforts Like These? */

==Our next steps==

In Somerville in 2011-12, we'll continue to test texting "groups," pilot and tweak our dashboard views with principal, teachers and families, and continue to develop the efforts of the Parent Connector Network and the broader schoolwide communication toolkit. We also want to learn what happens when the ePortfolio seeds across Somerville High School!

In 2011-12, with funding from the Digital Media and Learning Hub at UC Irvine (itself funded by the MacArthur Foundation), we'll be inviting OneVille participants to share their work and ideas in person and online with Boston-area folks concerned with how youth and adults in public schools can innovate such uses of everyday tech. One goal for the year will be to keep honing online documentation like this wiki's. What online reporting would best link diverse communities exploring such uses of commonplace and low-cost tech in public school communities? Uche will be leading the Boston-area coordination, Jedd will keep helping with gluing documentation together, and the authors of the main working group pages on this website, with some additions, will be reporting out on their ongoing work!

Mica will be starting a West Coast effort to improve the communication infrastructure of partnership in public education and working to link San Diego innovators to Somerville innovators! She has moved to direct CREATE (the Center for Research on Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence) at the University of California San Diego (http://www.create.ucsd.edu). There, with new colleagues and community, she'll be focused particularly on developing communication infrastructure for partnership between people in a university and local K-12 teachers, families, and young people. CREATE also particularly hosts professional development programs and youth development efforts, so Mica will be working with West Coast colleagues to learn how to help network local teachers to each other, youth to teachers, and mentors to youth.

So, we'll now be working bicoastally to improve the communication infrastructure of public education. Starting this year, we hope to work with many people toward a "toolkit" for public education in multiple communities, by creating and testing free/low cost tools and strategies for supporting communication and collaboration between the diverse people who share young people's lives.

== The Next Layer: Connecting to Folks Doing Similar Work in Other Communities.==

We'd love to spark a lively exchange on this website between people working on similar things. It takes a local network to raise a child; it takes a national network to brainstorm the infrastructure for doing it. So, we've tried to create a lot of places where people could add comments.

===Want to talk further?===

Our goal with this website has been to connect to, inform, and support people doing related work elsewhere.

Are you working on improving communications in your own school or community?

Contact us directly at xxxxx ['''add someone's email? or cut this?].'''

===How'd we do in sharing our own first efforts?===

We want to connect to more people improving communications in public education and so, we've been experimenting with sharing our own work online!

Tell us:

*Did we format our examples in useful ways?
*Did we offer too much information on what we did, or not enough?
*Do you want to know more about what we've been doing?
*Would you contact us to share what you've been doing?

Some issues we’ve been thinking about (related to our [[Vision for OneVille documentation]]) and haven't resolved:

* Audience: can researchers, teachers, families, and youth all share one form of documentation? (That’s what we’ve tried to do here.)
* How do you most effectively show examples of local efforts and innovations in public education? How many words can you use? When might you use pictures or videos? How/when can words and visuals go together?

==Another Next Layer: National Networks for Sharing Local Efforts Like These?==

Think about it: What might happen if lots of youth, families, and educators started sharing out their educational innovations more generally, online? Innovating solutions for public education is fun -- and it pulls people together. In an era where lots of people are criticizing public schools' teachers, parents, and students, we need to connect to others who believe that there’s no limit to what these partners can do.

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:54:41Z

Jc: /* MAIN SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK */

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

[[Image:A busy library at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|A busy library at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Parents and children working together at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Parents and children working together at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night]]

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

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

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

[[Image:(2)Slide1.jpg|(2)Slide1.jpg]]

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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.

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria and Seth, working on the Connector Network]]

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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).

[[Image:(2)Slide7.jpg|(2)Slide7.jpg]]

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:53:28Z

Jc: /* MAIN SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK */

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

[[Image:A busy library at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|A busy library at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Parents and children working together at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Parents and children working together at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night]]

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

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

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

[[Image:(2)Slide1.jpg|(2)Slide1.jpg]]

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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.

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria and Seth, working on the Connector Network]]

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:53:01Z

Jc: /* MAIN SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK */

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

[[Image:A busy library at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|A busy library at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Parents and children working together at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Parents and children working together at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night]]

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

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

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

[[Image:(2)Slide1.jpg|thumb|]]

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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.

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria and Seth, working on the Connector Network]]

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:51:25Z

Jc: /* MAIN SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT: THE PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK */

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

[[Image:A busy library at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|A busy library at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Parents and children working together at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Parents and children working together at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night]]

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

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

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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.

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria and Seth, working on the Connector Network]]

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:48:29Z

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

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

[[Image:A busy library at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|A busy library at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Parents and children working together at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Parents and children working together at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night]]

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

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

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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 AND SETH HERE.

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:47:41Z

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

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

[[Image:A busy library at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|A busy library at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Parents and children working together at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Parents and children working together at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night]]

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

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

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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 AND SETH HERE.

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:46:12Z

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

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

[[Image:A busy library at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|A busy library at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Parents and children working together at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Parents and children working together at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night]]

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

(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?)

Tracy, PTA and 2011 Healey community council (her cookie business was the focus of our first Reading Night!)
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.

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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 AND SETH HERE.

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:43:28Z

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

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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:Consuelo's pizza: our best Reading Night advertisement.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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

[[Image:A busy library at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|A busy library at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Parents and children working together at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Parents and children working together at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night]]

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

(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?)

Tracy, PTA and 2011 Healey community council (her cookie business was the focus of our first Reading Night!)
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.

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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 AND SETH HERE.

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:42:56Z

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

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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:Consuelo's pizza: our best Reading Night advertisement.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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

[[Image:A busy library at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|A busy library at Reading Night]]
[[Image:Parents and children working together at Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Parents and children working together at Reading Night]]
[[Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night]]

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

(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?)

Tracy, PTA and 2011 Healey community council (her cookie business was the focus of our first Reading Night!)
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.

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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 AND SETH HERE.

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:39:33Z

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

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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!

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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

A busy library at Reading Night
Parents and children working together at Reading Night
Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

(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?)

Tracy, PTA and 2011 Healey community council (her cookie business was the focus of our first Reading Night!)
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.

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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 AND SETH HERE.

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:38:58Z

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

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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!

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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

A busy library at Reading Night
Parents and children working together at Reading Night
Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

(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?)

Tracy, PTA and 2011 Healey community council (her cookie business was the focus of our first Reading Night!)
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.

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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 AND SETH HERE.

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:37:12Z

Jc:

=Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!=

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.

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==

Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

'''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!

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.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

A busy library at Reading Night
Parents and children working together at Reading Night
Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

'''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:

'''AHA: 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!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

(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?)

Tracy, PTA and 2011 Healey community council (her cookie business was the focus of our first Reading Night!)
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.

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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."

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

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.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

'''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.”

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

'''AHA: 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!

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.

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.

'''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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

'''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.

So, 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).

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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 AND SETH HERE.

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

'''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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Expanded story: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T14:04:01Z

Jc: Created page with 'Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points! In 2009 when we began our work, the K-…'

Schoolwide communication toolkit, particularly the Parent Connector Network: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!

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.

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.

[edit] SCHOOLWIDE COMMUNICATION EFFORT 1: READING NIGHT
Running up the Healey stairs to a 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. With that, 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).

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!

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!
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.

AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

A busy library at Reading Night
Parents and children working together at Reading Night
Bern Ewah, Healey parent, tells folk tales from Nigeria at a Reading Night

AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

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.

AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.
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 (see below). We saw other benefits to parent-parent connections: since our first Reading Night focused on sharing words about baking, 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.

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.
[edit] 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:

AHA: 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!

AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

(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?)

Tracy, PTA and 2011 Healey community council (her cookie business was the focus of our first Reading Night!)
Dave, multilingual coffee hour enthusiast and 2011 PTA president
[edit] 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.

AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

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. That’s because so few people had heard these voices before.

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.

AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

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.
[edit] 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."

AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

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.

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.

AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

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). 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!

TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

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.

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.”

AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.
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.

AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

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 approaching staff one by one would be an inefficient way of getting basic answers out -- it was also often impossible, because parents needed interpreters to approach school staff in the first place.

AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

At the time, we had another core concern as well: 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.

One implementation stumbling block clued us in to a need for a system:

AHA: 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!

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.

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.

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. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

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.

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.

So, 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).

AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

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.

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 started planning “email nights” to try to get more parents email access.

AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

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 AND SETH HERE.

After Seth prototyped the hotline, the question became how to regularly get translated school information, on to the hotline! As piles of paper in backpacks demonstrated, the school had a giant wave of information heading toward parents at all times; parents willing to translate information were chaotically being asked to do that. How to triage this information 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.

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. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

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. This was to lessen the chaotic requests for translation. 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 realized the same script could then go out via other channels (the listserv; in backpacks). And, the same 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. Then, the Principal and lead Connectors 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 and share that script for other school media. 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.) We’re still making that!

In those early Connector calls, we experienced the following incidents, convincing us of the final need for additional infrastructure for handling serious 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 to 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.

AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

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. Some educators didn’t know how to find translators to talk in emergencies to parents. (As afterschool staff, 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.

AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

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" to do phone-based translation during certain hours. Parents have recommended that our [[dashboard]] family view also have a calendar at its end, helping parents schedule meetings with teachers themselves. We’re trying it!

Organizing translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom!

The resource of bilingualism also has to be actively tapped: Our colleagues at the Welcome Project in Somerville have pointed out other details of using local bilingual 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!

In the end, we pressed for a part-time Parent Liaison slot at 10 hrs/week and advocated for Gina to play that role. We decided that in each call home, Connectors would also ask parents if they had individual questions or personal needs, and document those needs for Gina on the Google spreadsheet or on paper. If parents needed personal meetings with teachers or others, Connectors would get some of parents’ preferred meeting times and then pass the scheduling to Gina via email.

By fall 2011, we had finished our set of [[diagrams of components of the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a school.]]

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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people kept old fliers so they didn’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc to collect school information because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-09-17T13:51:06Z

Jc:

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-16T03:09:15Z

Jc: /* Summary */

''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 and Jedd Cohen

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

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)
-------

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 mixed-income 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 the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now 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 also 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.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have 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 completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: 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.

'''AHA: 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. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for 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==

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. 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.

So, 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!

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 need. 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 person.

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 are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families 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.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many 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.

'''AHA: 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.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

'''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------

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 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click here for that backstory!

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!===

'''AHA: 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 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 links TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children 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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – in a hybrid with face to face relationships! That’s because technology can help people get a bit more organized. But only if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people keep old fliers so they don’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors whose role it was to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Organized translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom! It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

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 this 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, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five 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 [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline 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 the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. 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.

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 have become seen as 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.

'''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 use of 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 make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) 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.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-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?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-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 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===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.
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 used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

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: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that 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!

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-16T03:08:47Z

Jc: /* Our work, and our AHAs */

''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 and Jedd Cohen

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

==Summary==

What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)
-------

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 mixed-income 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 the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now 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 also 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.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have 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 completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: 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.

'''AHA: 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. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for 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==

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. 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.

So, 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!

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 need. 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 person.

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 are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families 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.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many 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.

'''AHA: 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.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

'''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------

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 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click here for that backstory!

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!===

'''AHA: 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 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 links TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children 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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – in a hybrid with face to face relationships! That’s because technology can help people get a bit more organized. But only if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people keep old fliers so they don’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors whose role it was to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Organized translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom! It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

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 this 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, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five 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 [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline 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 the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. 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.

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 have become seen as 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.

'''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 use of 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 make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) 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.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-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?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-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 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===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.
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 used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

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: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that 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!

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-16T03:08:07Z

Jc: /* Technological how-tos */

''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 and Jedd Cohen

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

==Summary==

What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)
-------

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 mixed-income 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 the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now 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 also 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.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have 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 completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: 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.

'''AHA: 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. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for 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==

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. 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.

So, 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!

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 need. 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 person.

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 are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families 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.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many 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.

'''AHA: 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.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''' ''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------

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 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click here for that backstory!

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!===

'''AHA: 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 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 links TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children 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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – in a hybrid with face to face relationships! That’s because technology can help people get a bit more organized. But only if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people keep old fliers so they don’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors whose role it was to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Organized translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom! It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

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 this 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, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five 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 [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline 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 the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. 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.

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 have become seen as 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.

'''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 use of 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 make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) 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.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-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?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-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 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===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.
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 used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

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: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that 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!

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-16T03:07:48Z

Jc: /* 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, with input from parents across the Healey School and Jedd Cohen

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

==Summary==

What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)
-------

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 mixed-income 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 the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now 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 also 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.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have 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 completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: 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.

'''AHA: 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. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for 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==

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. 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.

So, 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!

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 need. 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 person.

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 are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families 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.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many 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.

'''AHA: 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.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''' ''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------

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 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click here for that backstory!

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!===

'''AHA: 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 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 links TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children 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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – in a hybrid with face to face relationships! That’s because technology can help people get a bit more organized. But only if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people keep old fliers so they don’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors whose role it was to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Organized translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom! It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

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 this 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, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five 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 [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline 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 the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. 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.

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 have become seen as 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.

'''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 use of 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 make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) 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.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-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?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-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 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===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.
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 used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

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: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that 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!

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-16T03:07:08Z

Jc: /* Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps */

''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 and Jedd Cohen

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

==Summary==

What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)
-------

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 mixed-income 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 the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now 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 also 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.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have 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 completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: 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.

'''AHA: 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. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for 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==

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. 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.

So, 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!

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 need. 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 person.

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 are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families 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.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many 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.

'''AHA: 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.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''' ''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------

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 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click here for that backstory!

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!===

'''AHA: 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 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 links TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children 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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – in a hybrid with face to face relationships! That’s because technology can help people get a bit more organized. But only if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people keep old fliers so they don’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors whose role it was to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Organized translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom! It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

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 this 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, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five 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 [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline 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 the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. 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.

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 have become seen as 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.

'''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 use of 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 make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) 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.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-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?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-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 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===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.
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 used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

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: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that 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!

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-16T03:06:35Z

Jc:

''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 and Jedd Cohen

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

==Summary==

What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)
-------

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 mixed-income 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 the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now 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 also 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.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have 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 completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: 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.

'''AHA: 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. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for 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==

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. 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.

So, 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!

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 need. 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 person.

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 are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families 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.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many 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.

'''AHA: 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.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''' ''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------

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 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click here for that backstory!

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!===

'''AHA: 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 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 links TO paid staff. Volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children 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.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – in a hybrid with face to face relationships! That’s because technology can help people get a bit more organized. But only if people are shown how to use it.

Even in our own efforts to translate documents and call parents, we saw that technology could help us get organized so we didn’t waste each others’ time. Having an archive of googledocs where people keep old fliers so they don’t have to be translated again saved us hours. So did an online spreadsheet where we collectively chose point Connectors whose role it was to call a bounded set of families, and provided their numbers. (When one Connector was using a paper spreadsheet of her “assigned” families’ names and numbers, it kept getting misplaced and at one point was lost.) Organized translation and interpretation is of course far more cost- and time-effective than a scattered process where no one knows who is translating what or interpreting what for whom! It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

Google Translate helped some of us quickly translate a document and then check it for accuracy; we made a Googledoc because we needed one place where school leaders could put the many things that ideally would get translated (and then triage that information in a face to face meeting). But people need to know how to use each tool! Otherwise, glitches in training slow things down even more.

'''AHA: Tech just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. 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.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

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 this 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, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five 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 here.

We are finishing our hotline 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 the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. 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.

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 have become seen as 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.

'''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 use of 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 make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) 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.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-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?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-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 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===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.
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 used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

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: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that 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!

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-16T02:34:21Z

Jc:

''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 and Jedd Cohen

[[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. What communication did we hope to improve, change, or create? Why?

''b. Main efforts, and concrete communication improvement(s). (Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have become more possible?)

''c. Main 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.

[[Image:(2)Slide2.jpg|(2)Slide2.jpg]]

Begun in Winter 2010, 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.) We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role for one staff Connector so that she can help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters.

[[Image:(2)Slide3-.jpg|(2)Slide3-.jpg]]

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 completely [[Full set of multilingual infrastructure diagrams|here]].

[[Image:(2)Slide7.jpg|Slide7.jpg]]

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. This section captures our learning across the project. Learn the story at: [[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?
-------
[[Image:(2)Slide4.jpg|(2)Slide4.jpg]]

[[Image:(2)Slide5.jpg|(2)Slide5.jpg]]

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, Gina, 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 [[here]].

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.

[[Image:(2)Slide7.jpg|Slide7.jpg]]

===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. http://translate.google.com/support/ [[(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!

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see 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

2011-09-16T02:10:07Z

Jc:

==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.]]

Reading Nights

2011-09-16T02:09:25Z

Jc: Created page with ''''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas” -- the moments when we figured something important out. '''W…'

Schoolwide communication toolkit

2011-09-16T02:06:14Z

Jc:

'''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!

Research base

2011-09-16T01:29:36Z

Jc: Created page with '==Research Base: Why should we improve the communication infrastructure of public education?== Onevillesocialnetworkslide.jpg Lots of re…'

==Research Base: Why should we improve the communication infrastructure of public education?==

[[Image:Onevillesocialnetworkslide.jpg|Onevillesocialnetworkslide.jpg]]

Lots of research shows that if people have a "high expectations, high help" frame of mind about doing what it takes to support young people's full potential (Ferguson 2008), students do better when the key people in their lives communicate about how they are doing and what they can do -- and about the resources available to help.

To partner in young people’s success, people need tools and strategies helping them to communicate about the individual children they share (What does Jose love to learn? How is he doing on credits toward graduation?); about the classrooms they share (what’s the homework? Who has an idea on the assignment?), about the schools they share (what afterschool opportunities are available for children? What actions would improve the school?), and about the city they share (where’s the free science fair? How might we improve education here?).

Finally, supporting young people requires a combination of face to face communications (like a parent-teacher meeting, an afterschool discussion between student and teacher, or a parent coffee hour where people share information and build relationships), print communications (like a handout in a backpack, a sign on the wall informing a parent of an opportunity, or a copy of student work at a parent-teacher conference), and electronic communications (like a student checking her grades online or a parent posting a local resource on a school listserv).

But the communication infrastructure of partnership in public education is pretty underdeveloped, in an era when commonplace and free technology could make communication and information-sharing in education easier than ever.

Examples: across the country, principals serving low-income children remain unable to quickly view and sort basic information on children, because they can’t afford the software to do it. Reliant on face to face meetings that are hard to schedule, overloaded teachers and afterschool providers rarely communicate about what students need to work on. Due to translation and tech-skills barriers, many immigrant parents remain unaware of educational opportunities available in their schools or community. Teachers and afterschool providers, or parents and teachers, or teachers and students, often rarely exchange information on how students are doing personally or what they love to learn – even as youth communicate constantly about both via tech outside of school.

Wealthy districts are investing in expensive technology for information-sharing between partners. We've wanted to test the potential of free and commonplace technology and low-cost communication strategies for supporting diverse partners in young people’s lives to collaborate. And, we've wanted to do this in collaboration with diverse educators, youth, families, and technologists.

So, we’ve been working to test -- and then, as necessary, create -- free, open-source, and low-cost tools and strategies for linking diverse partners in desired communications across lines of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Our goal has become to hone, over time and in collaboration with folks elsewhere, a toolkit of such tools and strategies enabling diverse supporters to collaborate in student success.

So far, we’ve built new tools only when we found no free tool available to test (our dashboards and hotline). We've also been testing existing free tools, to see how they can help link diverse partners. We’ve tested Google Voice in our texting pilot (and modified it to afford one-to-many texting). We’ve tested Google Translate, Googledocs, Google spreadsheets, and Gmail in our schoolwide toolkit. We’ve tested Googlesites in our ePortfolio pilot, as well as Wikispaces, and we’ve used Wordpress to blog out and Mediawiki to organize our ideas for this website!

While testing technologies, we are also figuring out ways to tap local people power more efficiently. For example, bilingual parents have been figuring out how they, as volunteers, might be willing to make monthly calls to other immigrant parents as “Connectors” or translate key info from a Googleform onto a hotline.

We've also been training more people to use the technology around them (the ePortfolio project is a great example) and, making the case for better and more available hardware and internet access in public schools too.

You might call all this "improving the communication infrastructure of public education." Our goal now is to connect with people doing similar work in other places.

Click here to learn more about other basic research undergirding our work.

2011-09-16T00:55:45Z

Jc: /* Research Base: Why should we improve the communication infrastructure of public education? */

Click here to learn more about other basic research undergirding our work.

2011-09-16T00:54:19Z

Jc: Created page with '==Research Base: Why should we improve the communication infrastructure of public education?== Onevillesocialnetworkslide.jpg Lots of re…'

==Research Base: Why should we improve the communication infrastructure of public education?==

[[Image:Onevillesocialnetworkslide.jpg|Onevillesocialnetworkslide.jpg]]

Lots of research shows that if people have a "high expectations, high help" frame of mind about doing what it takes to support young people's full potential (Ferguson 2008), students do better when the key people in their lives communicate about how they are doing and what they can do -- and about the resources available to help.
To partner in young people’s success, people need tools and strategies helping them to communicate about the individual children they share (What does Jose love to learn? How is he doing on credits toward graduation?); about the classrooms they share (what’s the homework? Who has an idea on the assignment?), about the schools they share (what afterschool opportunities are available for children? What actions would improve the school?), and about the city they share (where’s the free science fair? How might we improve education here?).
Finally, supporting young people requires a combination of face to face communications (like a parent-teacher meeting, an afterschool discussion between student and teacher, or a parent coffee hour where people share information and build relationships), print communications (like a handout in a backpack, a sign on the wall informing a parent of an opportunity, or a copy of student work at a parent-teacher conference), and electronic communications (like a student checking her grades online or a parent posting a local resource on a school listserv).
But the communication infrastructure of partnership in public education is pretty underdeveloped, in an era when commonplace and free technology could make communication and information-sharing in education easier than ever.
Examples: across the country, principals serving low-income children remain unable to quickly view and sort basic information on children, because they can’t afford the software to do it. Reliant on face to face meetings that are hard to schedule, overloaded teachers and afterschool providers rarely communicate about what students need to work on. Due to translation and tech-skills barriers, many immigrant parents remain unaware of educational opportunities available in their schools or community. Teachers and afterschool providers, or parents and teachers, or teachers and students, often rarely exchange information on how students are doing personally or what they love to learn – even as youth communicate constantly about both via tech outside of school.
Wealthy districts are investing in expensive technology for information-sharing between partners. We've wanted to test the potential of free and commonplace technology and low-cost communication strategies for supporting diverse partners in young people’s lives to collaborate. And, we've wanted to do this in collaboration with diverse educators, youth, families, and technologists.
So, we’ve been working to test -- and then, as necessary, create -- free, open-source, and low-cost tools and strategies for linking diverse partners in desired communications across lines of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Our goal has become to hone, over time and in collaboration with folks elsewhere, a toolkit of such tools and strategies enabling diverse supporters to collaborate in student success.
So far, we’ve built new tools only when we found no free tool available to test (our dashboards and hotline). We've also been testing existing free tools, to see how they can help link diverse partners. We’ve tested Google Voice in our texting pilot (and modified it to afford one-to-many texting). We’ve tested Google Translate, Googledocs, Google spreadsheets, and Gmail in our schoolwide toolkit. We’ve tested Googlesites in our ePortfolio pilot, as well as Wikispaces, and we’ve used Wordpress to blog out and Mediawiki to organize our ideas for this website!
While testing technologies, we are also figuring out ways to tap local people power more efficiently. For example, bilingual parents have been figuring out how they, as volunteers, might be willing to make monthly calls to other immigrant parents as “Connectors” or translate key info from a Googleform onto a hotline.
We've also been training more people to use the technology around them (the ePortfolio project is a great example) and, making the case for better and more available hardware and internet access in public schools too.
You might call all this "improving the communication infrastructure of public education." Our goal now is to connect with people doing similar work in other places.

Principles

2011-09-16T00:45:08Z

Jc: Created page with '==Our principles== Throughout the OneVille Project, our core goal has been to support diverse partners to collaborate in the success of each young person. We’ve wanted to figu…'

==Our principles==

Throughout the OneVille Project, our core goal has been to support diverse partners to collaborate in the success of each young person. We’ve wanted to figure out which free/low-cost tech tools and communication strategies could help.
In this work, we have held tight to the following principles:
:-Our goal is the success of each young person who shares the community. The success of each buoys the success of all.
:- By "success," we don’t just mean graduation. We mean tapping each young person's full potential to contribute intellectually, socially, and creatively to society.
:- We want to support partnership in student success across lines of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy.
:- That means building relationships between the full range of key supporters in young people’s lives, including people not regularly included in the conversation (e.g., families who don’t speak English; peers; afterschool providers).
:- To partner effectively, these key supporters must be able to share and access necessary forms of information about young people’s progress and experience, and about available resources and opportunities.
:- Any tech tool we test or create should employ free/low cost and as possible, open-source technology, so that any community can adapt strategies that work.
:- Any communication strategy we come up with should be low cost and sustainable so that others can do it.
:- Communication solutions designed in and by diverse and mixed-income communities are more likely to be embraced and used in them.

Dashboard/ahas

2011-09-14T09:34:29Z

Jc: /* IMPLEMENTATION AHA: When designing tools for communication within a system, no single person has enough info OR PERSPECTIVE to do it alone. Ongoing collaboration is necessary. */

Dashboard/ahas

2011-09-14T09:31:02Z

Jc: /* MAIN 'COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: One-stop shopping: It’s crucial to have a display that shows all the relevant data together. */

Dashboard/ahas

2011-09-14T09:30:16Z

Jc:

Dashboard/ahas

2011-09-14T09:29:08Z

Jc:

Texting/ahas

2011-09-14T09:22:25Z

Jc:

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas” -- the moments when we figured something important out.

'''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!

Dashboard/ahas

2011-09-14T09:14:38Z

Jc:

Dashboard/ahas

2011-09-14T09:13:36Z

Jc:

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-09-14T05:28:06Z

Jc: /* Basic History */

Dashboard/ahas

2011-09-14T05:04:29Z

Jc: Created page with 'Data Dashboard/AHAS '''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas” -- the moments when we figured something …'

Data Dashboard/AHAS

'''Here’s where we’ll talk about how we figured things out, over time. Our main goal is to share our “ahas” -- the moments when we figured something important out.

'''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!

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-09-14T04:58:09Z

Jc: /* Communication we hoped to improve */

Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, Josh Wairi, and Seth Woodworth for the dashboard project

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

''Who needs to communicate what info to whom, in order to support young people?

''Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome? Which media might help?

''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. What communication did we hope to improve, change, or create? Why?

''b. Main efforts, and concrete communication improvement(s). (Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have become more possible?)

''c. Main 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!)

-----------------
With teacher Josh Wairi, principals Jason DeFalco and then Purnima Vadhera, parents, and students at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, and young local technologists, we have worked to create an open source dashboard -- a data display that sits “on top of” the district’s student information system and displays data in ways that partners (parents, teachers, administrators, students) can quickly view and comment on. By "dashboard," we mean a single place to go to get a quick view -- like the front “dashboard” on your car. But our tools are also designed to support people to communicate about what they see.

We’ve designed three “dashboard” tools. We started in 2009 by tweaking a great color-coded Excel spreadsheet that Greg Nadeau, a Somerville parent, had made for the Healey principal (see [[Dashboard/ahas]] for specifics). We ended up codesigning an administrator's data view with Healey administrators, and a teacher’s view that presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view:

[[Image: admin view.jpg|admin view]]

We also designed an individual view, with additional data, for parents, students, afterschool providers and teachers to communicate in a team about each individual student:

[[Image: individual view.jpg|individual view]]

For that view, we built on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York, combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product!

Our goal in 2011-12 is to test and tweak these three tools with educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers, and to link these tools electronically so that in any given team meeting, educators have access to all the data at once. We also want to see how they should be designed to support face to face and email-based conversations about “the data.”

Why’d we do this? Well, in education these days, we talk a lot about “data-sharing.” Typically, we mean making sure that educators or afterschool providers can see information on students' demographics and progress as measured with basic numbers (e.g.,: test scores, days absent). These indicators never show "the whole child" ([[ePortfolio|eportfolios]] can help with that!), but they are still very important to know. They show how students are doing on measures that many educators treat as very important (e.g., grades on a report card) and that do tend to predict important events like “dropping out” (e.g., absences from school).

Gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting a young person remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation (was Jose absent, or not?).

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there’s no reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately!

But most tools for simple data display in schools cost districts a lot of money. And so, many districts don’t have them. To clarify: a typical district has a “student information system” (a database of student information), but many districts don’t have any easy tools for quickly displaying that information to multiple partners at once (or letting them sort the data to see patterns in it). In Somerville, administrators had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers have had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand.

When districts do have online data display tools, finally, they typically aren't designed by educators or parents. In fact, families are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card) and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://www.nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html)

Somerville educators were very interested in a “dashboard” and so, this was the main working group on the OneVille Project where we decided to try to make a tool from scratch. We spent Ford funding on supporting local technologists, Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard, and a 5th grade teacher, Josh Wairi -- all in their late twenties and early thirties -- to design and build a tool that Somerville might eventually be able to use for free, if it worked.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Putting info online can put student supporters “all on the same page,” as Josh put it one day: that’s because rather than passing paper folders around, everyone can see the same data at once.

Putting data online also means that more people can join the “team” analyzing the data. When schools and districts have data teams, they typically involve teachers and administrators, not parents; more rarely do afterschool providers, parents, or students themselves communicate about student data they are all seeing at once.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: A gap in data equals a gap in student services.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, along with various students we talked to in our other pilots, all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, faster, could support faster interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

While many communications have to happen in person so that people build trust and share details (a parent-teacher meeting; a student support team meeting), having everyone online can also mean that a group conversation can be sparked at any time. When people rely on paper folders, the person who leaves with the folder leaves with the record of care due the child!

At the same time, relying only on tech-based conversations would leave out people with less access to tech (or knowledge of it). And so, improving basic data sharing in education is still about ensuring that all necessary stakeholders are aware of students' most basic situation in a timely manner. That means supporting people to see data quickly instead of sorting through separate folders, and, it means making tech easy and common-denominator rather than complicated; it also means doing things like training parents on email or putting a computer in the PTA room (part of our [[Schoolwide communication toolkit|schoolwide communication]] efforts). And, just "getting data" on a student is never enough: people need to then converse (online, in person, or otherwise) about how the young person is doing and how they might be assisted. Just knowing how many days a child is absent is the first step, but then you need to have a conversation about why and what to do about it!

==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?
------------------------
Lots of people in Somerville talked about the need to improve data display at the parent/student level, the teacher level, the afterschool provider level, and the administrator level.

[[Image:Aspen X2 3.jpg|thumb|Aspen X2 3]]

In Somerville, older students and parents can log into X2, the student information system, to see updates on their grades, absences, etc. But many don't have passwords or don't know they have them; students told us they often forgot them. More importantly, once they get to X2, some found the data there hard to understand. Information isn't translated for non-English speakers. And viewers can’t comment ON the data seen. X2 is set up only to house student data -- not to help people talk about it. In talking about dashboard prototypes with parents, the major feature everyone emphasized was the ability to immediately comment ON data, rather than simply “look at it.”

When you get “into” X2 as a teacher or administrator, you also can’t easily see patterns in student data. Josh had to create spreadsheets for his own class by hand. At the administrator level, the Healey principal was also never able to easily sort any of his data within X2. Doing so requires queries to a busy central office, which runs data analyses and releases data reports once a week. Getting new data during a meeting, for immediate discussion, is not feasible.

While some afterschool providers had access to X2 directly, many didn’t, meaning they had trouble knowing basic information like whether students who were coming to afterschool were going to school. So, these providers typically kept their information in separate computer databases or even on paper. In our many discussions with people about basic data issues, they raised a key point:

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: It is crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

For example, afterschool attendance and MAP score changes, or student demographics and achievement data, shouldn’t be scattered in inaccessible places! Supporters need to able to see these basic “indicators” all in one place.

So, the goal became to create a simple data display that could help all these folks see some basic data kept in X2 in a single view. This included creating a translated display easily understandable by an immigrant parent. Over time, we also decided that we wanted to co-create tools designed explicitly to help teachers, administrators, parents, and tutors to communicate about the basic data and about students' progress toward standard benchmarks -- not just see it!

Our rationale: Many data displays in schools are a) on paper and b) one-way. Think a report card or a quarterly report on one’s “scores”: schools or districts just “display” to kids their scores or show parents their child’s absences. Since OneVille’s goal is to support diverse partners in running communication about pursuing the success of young people, we wanted to make sure that parents could communicate back ABOUT data, to teachers -- and that tutors, teachers, and parents could over time communicate with one another.

Finally, we wanted to work to create a free/open source tool so that other districts could adapt what we made. In an era when many districts are strapped for money, it just seems wrong to pay lots of cash just to see basic information!

So, we made three views, each designed to support a different conversation. Our administrator and teacher dashboard views present data such as attendance, grades, and MCAS and MAP test scores and growth. The principal wants to try using this view in student support team meetings when people have typically struggled to see patterns in data by hand. Josh wants to use his live, more-often-refreshed view instead of his Excel spreadsheet! In the individual dashboard view, parents and other supporters are encouraged to shape their conversation around Somerville's existing rubrics for student achievement, also making them more attuned to those rubrics. The principal, and Josh, want to try using this view in face to face conversations with parents. Online viewers can also message the teacher from home or work through the dashboard's comment/question boxes; messages show up in the teacher’s email. In our pilot, we will support members of a “team” of family, teachers, and afterschool staff to view the dashboards text boxes and to use text boxes/email to communicate as needed about goals for/progress on student achievement. We’ll also see how the dashboard views can be designed to support face to face communication!

==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 we began the OneVille Project, we proposed to create a “dashboard” displaying basic data linking many youth- and child-related databases in the city, because lots of people in the field say that the more data seen by more people, the better. The district was first interested in getting all of its own basic data viewable, quickly -- and that’s what we ended up working on in the end. We bit off a bit more than we could chew at first, especially with all of the other projects we had going: we proposed to link all of the databases in the community, before realizing that this was a) a huge data effort, b) politically very complicated, and c) not clearly necessary at the level of the individual, familiy, teacher, and school administrator (does a teacher actually need to know a student’s police record in order to serve him better?). So, to get started, we focused for the first 2 years on co-designing and producing a dashboard that could work to display school data at the level of the school and the family. SomerPromise, the Mayor's new site-based initiative to provide comprehensive youth services, was also interested in linking databases across agencies and we felt they were better positioned to pursue that goal even as we worked to lay groundwork for the effort by creating administrative and family-level views of school data alone.

As it turned out, Greg Nadeau, Somerville resident, had already made an Excel spreadsheet for the Healey Principal the year before we began work on the dashboard. It was an early Excel version of what later became our Administrator Dashboard View.

[[Image: greg nadeau view.jpg|greg nadeau view]]

So, the main need at the school was entering updated data into it -- by hand. So, Susan, who would later become the lead organizer for the eportfolio project, did some valiant handywork (assisted by colleague Al Willis) to clean up the current year’s spreadsheet and to add new data typically not kept in X2 that the principal also wanted to see, like afterschool enrollment. We also had some regular meetings via phone conference with Greg and the principal to consider the patterns the principal wanted to see and the new "fields" for data that he felt needed to be created permanently in the district student information system (e.g., attendance in the afterschool programs. Afterschool programs weren't keeping this data in Somerville's core data system, X2, and still don’t.)

Josh Wairi, a 5th grade teacher at the Healey, got interested in the dashboard design when we stopped by his classroom one day after school. Looking together at his computer and printouts, we realized he was already creating spreadsheets of student data from X2 by hand. He was interested in quickly displaying and sorting basic data, to supplement his face to face and phone conversations with students and parents. His work showed us the need for what would become the “Teacher View,” a class-size version of the school-wide Administrator View.

Stories of parents’ own needs to communicate with teachers about their children’s report cards prompted us to push forward on an “Individual View” that included the report card instead of just absences, grades, and test scores. (We had been inspired by the New Visions for New Schools project, which had a view that could give parents and students a quick, accurate understanding of how the student was performing on the latter kind of data). https://knowledgebase.newvisions.org/resource/loadresource.aspx?ArtifactId=3298

[[Image:new visions view.jpg|new visions]]

At the time we were designing the “Individual View,” the District was ceasing to assign its elementary students numerical grades, or their equivalents on the typical A, B, C... scale, and moving to a standards-based K-6 report card. So, we made Somerville's new K-6 report card (handed out on paper to families) online and color-coded.

[[Image:individual view grades.jpg|individual view grades]]

We added statistics about the student’s attendance and MCAS and MAP scores to the Individual View, which also includes the teacher’s quarterly summary comments.

[[Image: attendance.jpg|thumb|Individual student attendance: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image:test scores.jpg|thumb|individual student test scores: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image: teacher comments.jpg|thumb|Individual student teacher comments: Click to enlarge]]

As we work to import the district’s translations of the basic report card rubrics, we have considered encouraging immigrant parents to use Google Translate as a first step to translate teachers’ own comments and to write back to teachers about their reactions.

===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. This section captures our learning across the project. Learn the story at: [[Dashboard/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Please 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?
-------
The prototypes of the administrative, teacher, and individual views are nearly complete. In the fall, we plan to test and modify the admin view with new Healey Principal Purnima Vadhera (she wants to use the view in student support team meetings and to share data patterns with teachers) and to test and tweak the teacher and individual views with Josh and his students’ families. We’ll also support an email-based communication among a "team" of educators, family, and afterschool providers around each student in his class.

===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?)
-------

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Nobody in this day and age should be in the dark about basic progress info on the young people in their lives.

Communities able to invest in high-end communication infrastructure just buy expensive tools to help them view and sort their data. What about districts that can't afford this? They keep basic data in drawers; they send requests for data sorting to central administrators and wait. Or, young people fall "through the cracks" -- a gap in basic information and response. Student service should never be held back by struggles to view the most basic of data! Basic data is always a shallow view of the whole student, but it’s part of the “view” -- and these basic indicators tell us some important things about how youth are faring in the school’s terms.

And districts shouldn't pay big money for seeing and sorting this data, either.

Open source tools save districts money because they don’t have to buy the product itself; districts only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), a fraction of the cost. (Our technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services, but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to storebought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US Schools.”

If our tools prove helpful, our next task (or someone else’s) could be to make these adaptable anywhere in the country, and to create a model for supporting districts to use the free tools.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that parents, students, administrators, and local technologists can fundamentally help design tools for sharing and communicating about basic data in schools.

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?

As stated above, we’ll be piloting our three “views” this fall and will report out what we learn.

Ongoing Challenges: We face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. The same work schedules that make parent-teacher meetings hard also make it hard for some parents to coordinate their schedules with the computer labs at local libraries or in the housing projects where some families live. (Also, to look at an online data display together, educators too need internet access -- not always easy if people meet in a room without a computer, wireless, or a laptop to plug into an ethernet cable.)

We hope to work with the PTA this year to create a model of parent-parent, basic computer and email training for Healey parents who need this support. We’ll be reaching out to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet. Several years from now, the proliferation of smartphones and iphones will likely shrink this challenge dramatically, making it easier than ever for partners to join the conversation about student data.

We also will continue to consider bigger issues about “data” in schools: basic quant data on students is never the whole story, which makes linking a dashboard to an eportfolio even more important.

===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 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!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

-Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?

-If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?

- If so, how could low cost tech support such information-sharing?

-To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?

-What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?

-What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment where you live to test which works for what?

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-09-14T04:57:26Z

Jc: /* Communication we hoped to improve */

Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, Josh Wairi, and Seth Woodworth for the dashboard project

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

''Who needs to communicate what info to whom, in order to support young people?

''Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome? Which media might help?

''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. What communication did we hope to improve, change, or create? Why?

''b. Main efforts, and concrete communication improvement(s). (Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have become more possible?)

''c. Main 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!)

-----------------
With teacher Josh Wairi, principals Jason DeFalco and then Purnima Vadhera, parents, and students at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, and young local technologists, we have worked to create an open source dashboard -- a data display that sits “on top of” the district’s student information system and displays data in ways that partners (parents, teachers, administrators, students) can quickly view and comment on. By "dashboard," we mean a single place to go to get a quick view -- like the front “dashboard” on your car. But our tools are also designed to support people to communicate about what they see.

We’ve designed three “dashboard” tools. We started in 2009 by tweaking a great color-coded Excel spreadsheet that Greg Nadeau, a Somerville parent, had made for the Healey principal (see [[Dashboard/ahas]] for specifics). We ended up codesigning an administrator's data view with Healey administrators, and a teacher’s view that presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view:

[[Image: admin view.jpg|admin view]]

We also designed an individual view, with additional data, for parents, students, afterschool providers and teachers to communicate in a team about each individual student:

[[Image: individual view.jpg|individual view]]

For that view, we built on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York, combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product!

Our goal in 2011-12 is to test and tweak these three tools with educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers, and to link these tools electronically so that in any given team meeting, educators have access to all the data at once. We also want to see how they should be designed to support face to face and email-based conversations about “the data.”

Why’d we do this? Well, in education these days, we talk a lot about “data-sharing.” Typically, we mean making sure that educators or afterschool providers can see information on students' demographics and progress as measured with basic numbers (e.g.,: test scores, days absent). These indicators never show "the whole child" ([[ePortfolio|eportfolios]] can help with that!), but they are still very important to know. They show how students are doing on measures that many educators treat as very important (e.g., grades on a report card) and that do tend to predict important events like “dropping out” (e.g., absences from school).

Gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting a young person remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation (was Jose absent, or not?).

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there’s no reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately!

But most tools for simple data display in schools cost districts a lot of money. And so, many districts don’t have them. To clarify: a typical district has a “student information system” (a database of student information), but many districts don’t have any easy tools for quickly displaying that information to multiple partners at once (or letting them sort the data to see patterns in it). In Somerville, administrators had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers have had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand.

When districts do have online data display tools, finally, they typically aren't designed by educators or parents. In fact, families are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card) and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://www.nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html)

Somerville educators were very interested in a “dashboard” and so, this was the main working group on the OneVille Project where we decided to try to make a tool from scratch. We spent Ford funding on supporting local technologists, Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard, and a 5th grade teacher, Josh Wairi -- all in their late twenties and early thirties -- to design and build a tool that Somerville might eventually be able to use for free, if it worked.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Putting info online can put student supporters “all on the same page,” as Josh put it one day: that’s because rather than passing paper folders around, everyone can see the same data at once.

Putting data online also means that more people can join the “team” analyzing the data. When schools and districts have data teams, they typically involve teachers and administrators, not parents; more rarely do afterschool providers, parents, or students themselves communicate about student data they are all seeing at once.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: A gap in data equals a gap in student services.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, along with various students we talked to in our other pilots, all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, faster, could support faster interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

While many communications have to happen in person so that people build trust and share details (a parent-teacher meeting; a student support team meeting), having everyone online can also mean that a group conversation can be sparked at any time. When people rely on paper folders, the person who leaves with the folder leaves with the record of care due the child!

At the same time, relying only on tech-based conversations would leave out people with less access to tech (or knowledge of it). And so, improving basic data sharing in education is still about ensuring that all necessary stakeholders are aware of students' most basic situation in a timely manner. That means supporting people to see data quickly instead of sorting through separate folders, and, it means making tech easy and common-denominator rather than complicated; it also means doing things like training parents on email or putting a computer in the PTA room (part of our [[Schoolwide communication toolkit|schoolwide communication]] efforts). And, just "getting data" on a student is never enough: people need to then converse (online, in person, or otherwise) about how the young person is doing and how they might be assisted. Just knowing how many days a child is absent is the first step, but then you need to have a conversation about why and what to do about it!

==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?
------------------------
Lots of people in Somerville talked about the need to improve data display at the parent/student level, the teacher level, the afterschool provider level, and the administrator level.

In Somerville, older students and parents can log into X2, the student information system, to see updates on their grades, absences, etc. But many don't have passwords or don't know they have them; students told us they often forgot them. More importantly, once they get to X2, some found the data there hard to understand. Information isn't translated for non-English speakers. And viewers can’t comment ON the data seen. X2 is set up only to house student data -- not to help people talk about it. In talking about dashboard prototypes with parents, the major feature everyone emphasized was the ability to immediately comment ON data, rather than simply “look at it.”

[[Image:Aspen X2 3.jpg|thumb|Aspen X2 3]]

When you get “into” X2 as a teacher or administrator, you also can’t easily see patterns in student data. Josh had to create spreadsheets for his own class by hand. At the administrator level, the Healey principal was also never able to easily sort any of his data within X2. Doing so requires queries to a busy central office, which runs data analyses and releases data reports once a week. Getting new data during a meeting, for immediate discussion, is not feasible.

While some afterschool providers had access to X2 directly, many didn’t, meaning they had trouble knowing basic information like whether students who were coming to afterschool were going to school. So, these providers typically kept their information in separate computer databases or even on paper. In our many discussions with people about basic data issues, they raised a key point:

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: It is crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

For example, afterschool attendance and MAP score changes, or student demographics and achievement data, shouldn’t be scattered in inaccessible places! Supporters need to able to see these basic “indicators” all in one place.

So, the goal became to create a simple data display that could help all these folks see some basic data kept in X2 in a single view. This included creating a translated display easily understandable by an immigrant parent. Over time, we also decided that we wanted to co-create tools designed explicitly to help teachers, administrators, parents, and tutors to communicate about the basic data and about students' progress toward standard benchmarks -- not just see it!

Our rationale: Many data displays in schools are a) on paper and b) one-way. Think a report card or a quarterly report on one’s “scores”: schools or districts just “display” to kids their scores or show parents their child’s absences. Since OneVille’s goal is to support diverse partners in running communication about pursuing the success of young people, we wanted to make sure that parents could communicate back ABOUT data, to teachers -- and that tutors, teachers, and parents could over time communicate with one another.

Finally, we wanted to work to create a free/open source tool so that other districts could adapt what we made. In an era when many districts are strapped for money, it just seems wrong to pay lots of cash just to see basic information!

So, we made three views, each designed to support a different conversation. Our administrator and teacher dashboard views present data such as attendance, grades, and MCAS and MAP test scores and growth. The principal wants to try using this view in student support team meetings when people have typically struggled to see patterns in data by hand. Josh wants to use his live, more-often-refreshed view instead of his Excel spreadsheet! In the individual dashboard view, parents and other supporters are encouraged to shape their conversation around Somerville's existing rubrics for student achievement, also making them more attuned to those rubrics. The principal, and Josh, want to try using this view in face to face conversations with parents. Online viewers can also message the teacher from home or work through the dashboard's comment/question boxes; messages show up in the teacher’s email. In our pilot, we will support members of a “team” of family, teachers, and afterschool staff to view the dashboards text boxes and to use text boxes/email to communicate as needed about goals for/progress on student achievement. We’ll also see how the dashboard views can be designed to support face to face communication!

==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 we began the OneVille Project, we proposed to create a “dashboard” displaying basic data linking many youth- and child-related databases in the city, because lots of people in the field say that the more data seen by more people, the better. The district was first interested in getting all of its own basic data viewable, quickly -- and that’s what we ended up working on in the end. We bit off a bit more than we could chew at first, especially with all of the other projects we had going: we proposed to link all of the databases in the community, before realizing that this was a) a huge data effort, b) politically very complicated, and c) not clearly necessary at the level of the individual, familiy, teacher, and school administrator (does a teacher actually need to know a student’s police record in order to serve him better?). So, to get started, we focused for the first 2 years on co-designing and producing a dashboard that could work to display school data at the level of the school and the family. SomerPromise, the Mayor's new site-based initiative to provide comprehensive youth services, was also interested in linking databases across agencies and we felt they were better positioned to pursue that goal even as we worked to lay groundwork for the effort by creating administrative and family-level views of school data alone.

As it turned out, Greg Nadeau, Somerville resident, had already made an Excel spreadsheet for the Healey Principal the year before we began work on the dashboard. It was an early Excel version of what later became our Administrator Dashboard View.

[[Image: greg nadeau view.jpg|greg nadeau view]]

So, the main need at the school was entering updated data into it -- by hand. So, Susan, who would later become the lead organizer for the eportfolio project, did some valiant handywork (assisted by colleague Al Willis) to clean up the current year’s spreadsheet and to add new data typically not kept in X2 that the principal also wanted to see, like afterschool enrollment. We also had some regular meetings via phone conference with Greg and the principal to consider the patterns the principal wanted to see and the new "fields" for data that he felt needed to be created permanently in the district student information system (e.g., attendance in the afterschool programs. Afterschool programs weren't keeping this data in Somerville's core data system, X2, and still don’t.)

Josh Wairi, a 5th grade teacher at the Healey, got interested in the dashboard design when we stopped by his classroom one day after school. Looking together at his computer and printouts, we realized he was already creating spreadsheets of student data from X2 by hand. He was interested in quickly displaying and sorting basic data, to supplement his face to face and phone conversations with students and parents. His work showed us the need for what would become the “Teacher View,” a class-size version of the school-wide Administrator View.

Stories of parents’ own needs to communicate with teachers about their children’s report cards prompted us to push forward on an “Individual View” that included the report card instead of just absences, grades, and test scores. (We had been inspired by the New Visions for New Schools project, which had a view that could give parents and students a quick, accurate understanding of how the student was performing on the latter kind of data). https://knowledgebase.newvisions.org/resource/loadresource.aspx?ArtifactId=3298

[[Image:new visions view.jpg|new visions]]

At the time we were designing the “Individual View,” the District was ceasing to assign its elementary students numerical grades, or their equivalents on the typical A, B, C... scale, and moving to a standards-based K-6 report card. So, we made Somerville's new K-6 report card (handed out on paper to families) online and color-coded.

[[Image:individual view grades.jpg|individual view grades]]

We added statistics about the student’s attendance and MCAS and MAP scores to the Individual View, which also includes the teacher’s quarterly summary comments.

[[Image: attendance.jpg|thumb|Individual student attendance: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image:test scores.jpg|thumb|individual student test scores: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image: teacher comments.jpg|thumb|Individual student teacher comments: Click to enlarge]]

As we work to import the district’s translations of the basic report card rubrics, we have considered encouraging immigrant parents to use Google Translate as a first step to translate teachers’ own comments and to write back to teachers about their reactions.

===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. This section captures our learning across the project. Learn the story at: [[Dashboard/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Please 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?
-------
The prototypes of the administrative, teacher, and individual views are nearly complete. In the fall, we plan to test and modify the admin view with new Healey Principal Purnima Vadhera (she wants to use the view in student support team meetings and to share data patterns with teachers) and to test and tweak the teacher and individual views with Josh and his students’ families. We’ll also support an email-based communication among a "team" of educators, family, and afterschool providers around each student in his class.

===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?)
-------

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Nobody in this day and age should be in the dark about basic progress info on the young people in their lives.

Communities able to invest in high-end communication infrastructure just buy expensive tools to help them view and sort their data. What about districts that can't afford this? They keep basic data in drawers; they send requests for data sorting to central administrators and wait. Or, young people fall "through the cracks" -- a gap in basic information and response. Student service should never be held back by struggles to view the most basic of data! Basic data is always a shallow view of the whole student, but it’s part of the “view” -- and these basic indicators tell us some important things about how youth are faring in the school’s terms.

And districts shouldn't pay big money for seeing and sorting this data, either.

Open source tools save districts money because they don’t have to buy the product itself; districts only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), a fraction of the cost. (Our technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services, but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to storebought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US Schools.”

If our tools prove helpful, our next task (or someone else’s) could be to make these adaptable anywhere in the country, and to create a model for supporting districts to use the free tools.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that parents, students, administrators, and local technologists can fundamentally help design tools for sharing and communicating about basic data in schools.

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?

As stated above, we’ll be piloting our three “views” this fall and will report out what we learn.

Ongoing Challenges: We face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. The same work schedules that make parent-teacher meetings hard also make it hard for some parents to coordinate their schedules with the computer labs at local libraries or in the housing projects where some families live. (Also, to look at an online data display together, educators too need internet access -- not always easy if people meet in a room without a computer, wireless, or a laptop to plug into an ethernet cable.)

We hope to work with the PTA this year to create a model of parent-parent, basic computer and email training for Healey parents who need this support. We’ll be reaching out to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet. Several years from now, the proliferation of smartphones and iphones will likely shrink this challenge dramatically, making it easier than ever for partners to join the conversation about student data.

We also will continue to consider bigger issues about “data” in schools: basic quant data on students is never the whole story, which makes linking a dashboard to an eportfolio even more important.

===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 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!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

-Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?

-If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?

- If so, how could low cost tech support such information-sharing?

-To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?

-What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?

-What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment where you live to test which works for what?

File:Aspen X2 3.jpg

2011-09-14T04:54:55Z

Jc: uploaded a new version of "Image:Aspen X2 3.jpg"

File:Aspen X2 3.jpg

2011-09-14T04:54:03Z

Jc:

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-09-14T04:53:12Z

Jc: /* Communication we hoped to improve */

Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, Josh Wairi, and Seth Woodworth for the dashboard project

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

''Who needs to communicate what info to whom, in order to support young people?

''Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome? Which media might help?

''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. What communication did we hope to improve, change, or create? Why?

''b. Main efforts, and concrete communication improvement(s). (Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have become more possible?)

''c. Main 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!)

-----------------
With teacher Josh Wairi, principals Jason DeFalco and then Purnima Vadhera, parents, and students at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, and young local technologists, we have worked to create an open source dashboard -- a data display that sits “on top of” the district’s student information system and displays data in ways that partners (parents, teachers, administrators, students) can quickly view and comment on. By "dashboard," we mean a single place to go to get a quick view -- like the front “dashboard” on your car. But our tools are also designed to support people to communicate about what they see.

We’ve designed three “dashboard” tools. We started in 2009 by tweaking a great color-coded Excel spreadsheet that Greg Nadeau, a Somerville parent, had made for the Healey principal (see [[Dashboard/ahas]] for specifics). We ended up codesigning an administrator's data view with Healey administrators, and a teacher’s view that presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view:

[[Image: admin view.jpg|admin view]]

We also designed an individual view, with additional data, for parents, students, afterschool providers and teachers to communicate in a team about each individual student:

[[Image: individual view.jpg|individual view]]

For that view, we built on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York, combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product!

Our goal in 2011-12 is to test and tweak these three tools with educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers, and to link these tools electronically so that in any given team meeting, educators have access to all the data at once. We also want to see how they should be designed to support face to face and email-based conversations about “the data.”

Why’d we do this? Well, in education these days, we talk a lot about “data-sharing.” Typically, we mean making sure that educators or afterschool providers can see information on students' demographics and progress as measured with basic numbers (e.g.,: test scores, days absent). These indicators never show "the whole child" ([[ePortfolio|eportfolios]] can help with that!), but they are still very important to know. They show how students are doing on measures that many educators treat as very important (e.g., grades on a report card) and that do tend to predict important events like “dropping out” (e.g., absences from school).

Gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting a young person remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation (was Jose absent, or not?).

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there’s no reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately!

But most tools for simple data display in schools cost districts a lot of money. And so, many districts don’t have them. To clarify: a typical district has a “student information system” (a database of student information), but many districts don’t have any easy tools for quickly displaying that information to multiple partners at once (or letting them sort the data to see patterns in it). In Somerville, administrators had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers have had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand.

When districts do have online data display tools, finally, they typically aren't designed by educators or parents. In fact, families are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card) and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://www.nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html)

Somerville educators were very interested in a “dashboard” and so, this was the main working group on the OneVille Project where we decided to try to make a tool from scratch. We spent Ford funding on supporting local technologists, Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard, and a 5th grade teacher, Josh Wairi -- all in their late twenties and early thirties -- to design and build a tool that Somerville might eventually be able to use for free, if it worked.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Putting info online can put student supporters “all on the same page,” as Josh put it one day: that’s because rather than passing paper folders around, everyone can see the same data at once.

Putting data online also means that more people can join the “team” analyzing the data. When schools and districts have data teams, they typically involve teachers and administrators, not parents; more rarely do afterschool providers, parents, or students themselves communicate about student data they are all seeing at once.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: A gap in data equals a gap in student services.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, along with various students we talked to in our other pilots, all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, faster, could support faster interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

While many communications have to happen in person so that people build trust and share details (a parent-teacher meeting; a student support team meeting), having everyone online can also mean that a group conversation can be sparked at any time. When people rely on paper folders, the person who leaves with the folder leaves with the record of care due the child!

At the same time, relying only on tech-based conversations would leave out people with less access to tech (or knowledge of it). And so, improving basic data sharing in education is still about ensuring that all necessary stakeholders are aware of students' most basic situation in a timely manner. That means supporting people to see data quickly instead of sorting through separate folders, and, it means making tech easy and common-denominator rather than complicated; it also means doing things like training parents on email or putting a computer in the PTA room (part of our [[Schoolwide communication toolkit|schoolwide communication]] efforts). And, just "getting data" on a student is never enough: people need to then converse (online, in person, or otherwise) about how the young person is doing and how they might be assisted. Just knowing how many days a child is absent is the first step, but then you need to have a conversation about why and what to do about it!

==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?
------------------------
Lots of people in Somerville talked about the need to improve data display at the parent/student level, the teacher level, the afterschool provider level, and the administrator level.

In Somerville, older students and parents can log into X2, the student information system, to see updates on their grades, absences, etc. But many don't have passwords or don't know they have them; students told us they often forgot them. More importantly, once they get to X2, some found the data there hard to understand. Information isn't translated for non-English speakers. And viewers can’t comment ON the data seen. X2 is set up only to house student data -- not to help people talk about it. In talking about dashboard prototypes with parents, the major feature everyone emphasized was the ability to immediately comment ON data, rather than simply “look at it.”

[[Image:Aspen X2 3|thumb|Aspen X2 3]]

When you get “into” X2 as a teacher or administrator, you also can’t easily see patterns in student data. Josh had to create spreadsheets for his own class by hand. At the administrator level, the Healey principal was also never able to easily sort any of his data within X2. Doing so requires queries to a busy central office, which runs data analyses and releases data reports once a week. Getting new data during a meeting, for immediate discussion, is not feasible.

While some afterschool providers had access to X2 directly, many didn’t, meaning they had trouble knowing basic information like whether students who were coming to afterschool were going to school. So, these providers typically kept their information in separate computer databases or even on paper. In our many discussions with people about basic data issues, they raised a key point:

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: It is crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

For example, afterschool attendance and MAP score changes, or student demographics and achievement data, shouldn’t be scattered in inaccessible places! Supporters need to able to see these basic “indicators” all in one place.

So, the goal became to create a simple data display that could help all these folks see some basic data kept in X2 in a single view. This included creating a translated display easily understandable by an immigrant parent. Over time, we also decided that we wanted to co-create tools designed explicitly to help teachers, administrators, parents, and tutors to communicate about the basic data and about students' progress toward standard benchmarks -- not just see it!

Our rationale: Many data displays in schools are a) on paper and b) one-way. Think a report card or a quarterly report on one’s “scores”: schools or districts just “display” to kids their scores or show parents their child’s absences. Since OneVille’s goal is to support diverse partners in running communication about pursuing the success of young people, we wanted to make sure that parents could communicate back ABOUT data, to teachers -- and that tutors, teachers, and parents could over time communicate with one another.

Finally, we wanted to work to create a free/open source tool so that other districts could adapt what we made. In an era when many districts are strapped for money, it just seems wrong to pay lots of cash just to see basic information!

So, we made three views, each designed to support a different conversation. Our administrator and teacher dashboard views present data such as attendance, grades, and MCAS and MAP test scores and growth. The principal wants to try using this view in student support team meetings when people have typically struggled to see patterns in data by hand. Josh wants to use his live, more-often-refreshed view instead of his Excel spreadsheet! In the individual dashboard view, parents and other supporters are encouraged to shape their conversation around Somerville's existing rubrics for student achievement, also making them more attuned to those rubrics. The principal, and Josh, want to try using this view in face to face conversations with parents. Online viewers can also message the teacher from home or work through the dashboard's comment/question boxes; messages show up in the teacher’s email. In our pilot, we will support members of a “team” of family, teachers, and afterschool staff to view the dashboards text boxes and to use text boxes/email to communicate as needed about goals for/progress on student achievement. We’ll also see how the dashboard views can be designed to support face to face communication!

==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 we began the OneVille Project, we proposed to create a “dashboard” displaying basic data linking many youth- and child-related databases in the city, because lots of people in the field say that the more data seen by more people, the better. The district was first interested in getting all of its own basic data viewable, quickly -- and that’s what we ended up working on in the end. We bit off a bit more than we could chew at first, especially with all of the other projects we had going: we proposed to link all of the databases in the community, before realizing that this was a) a huge data effort, b) politically very complicated, and c) not clearly necessary at the level of the individual, familiy, teacher, and school administrator (does a teacher actually need to know a student’s police record in order to serve him better?). So, to get started, we focused for the first 2 years on co-designing and producing a dashboard that could work to display school data at the level of the school and the family. SomerPromise, the Mayor's new site-based initiative to provide comprehensive youth services, was also interested in linking databases across agencies and we felt they were better positioned to pursue that goal even as we worked to lay groundwork for the effort by creating administrative and family-level views of school data alone.

As it turned out, Greg Nadeau, Somerville resident, had already made an Excel spreadsheet for the Healey Principal the year before we began work on the dashboard. It was an early Excel version of what later became our Administrator Dashboard View.

[[Image: greg nadeau view.jpg|greg nadeau view]]

So, the main need at the school was entering updated data into it -- by hand. So, Susan, who would later become the lead organizer for the eportfolio project, did some valiant handywork (assisted by colleague Al Willis) to clean up the current year’s spreadsheet and to add new data typically not kept in X2 that the principal also wanted to see, like afterschool enrollment. We also had some regular meetings via phone conference with Greg and the principal to consider the patterns the principal wanted to see and the new "fields" for data that he felt needed to be created permanently in the district student information system (e.g., attendance in the afterschool programs. Afterschool programs weren't keeping this data in Somerville's core data system, X2, and still don’t.)

Josh Wairi, a 5th grade teacher at the Healey, got interested in the dashboard design when we stopped by his classroom one day after school. Looking together at his computer and printouts, we realized he was already creating spreadsheets of student data from X2 by hand. He was interested in quickly displaying and sorting basic data, to supplement his face to face and phone conversations with students and parents. His work showed us the need for what would become the “Teacher View,” a class-size version of the school-wide Administrator View.

Stories of parents’ own needs to communicate with teachers about their children’s report cards prompted us to push forward on an “Individual View” that included the report card instead of just absences, grades, and test scores. (We had been inspired by the New Visions for New Schools project, which had a view that could give parents and students a quick, accurate understanding of how the student was performing on the latter kind of data). https://knowledgebase.newvisions.org/resource/loadresource.aspx?ArtifactId=3298

[[Image:new visions view.jpg|new visions]]

At the time we were designing the “Individual View,” the District was ceasing to assign its elementary students numerical grades, or their equivalents on the typical A, B, C... scale, and moving to a standards-based K-6 report card. So, we made Somerville's new K-6 report card (handed out on paper to families) online and color-coded.

[[Image:individual view grades.jpg|individual view grades]]

We added statistics about the student’s attendance and MCAS and MAP scores to the Individual View, which also includes the teacher’s quarterly summary comments.

[[Image: attendance.jpg|thumb|Individual student attendance: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image:test scores.jpg|thumb|individual student test scores: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image: teacher comments.jpg|thumb|Individual student teacher comments: Click to enlarge]]

As we work to import the district’s translations of the basic report card rubrics, we have considered encouraging immigrant parents to use Google Translate as a first step to translate teachers’ own comments and to write back to teachers about their reactions.

===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. This section captures our learning across the project. Learn the story at: [[Dashboard/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Please 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?
-------
The prototypes of the administrative, teacher, and individual views are nearly complete. In the fall, we plan to test and modify the admin view with new Healey Principal Purnima Vadhera (she wants to use the view in student support team meetings and to share data patterns with teachers) and to test and tweak the teacher and individual views with Josh and his students’ families. We’ll also support an email-based communication among a "team" of educators, family, and afterschool providers around each student in his class.

===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?)
-------

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Nobody in this day and age should be in the dark about basic progress info on the young people in their lives.

Communities able to invest in high-end communication infrastructure just buy expensive tools to help them view and sort their data. What about districts that can't afford this? They keep basic data in drawers; they send requests for data sorting to central administrators and wait. Or, young people fall "through the cracks" -- a gap in basic information and response. Student service should never be held back by struggles to view the most basic of data! Basic data is always a shallow view of the whole student, but it’s part of the “view” -- and these basic indicators tell us some important things about how youth are faring in the school’s terms.

And districts shouldn't pay big money for seeing and sorting this data, either.

Open source tools save districts money because they don’t have to buy the product itself; districts only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), a fraction of the cost. (Our technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services, but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to storebought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US Schools.”

If our tools prove helpful, our next task (or someone else’s) could be to make these adaptable anywhere in the country, and to create a model for supporting districts to use the free tools.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that parents, students, administrators, and local technologists can fundamentally help design tools for sharing and communicating about basic data in schools.

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?

As stated above, we’ll be piloting our three “views” this fall and will report out what we learn.

Ongoing Challenges: We face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. The same work schedules that make parent-teacher meetings hard also make it hard for some parents to coordinate their schedules with the computer labs at local libraries or in the housing projects where some families live. (Also, to look at an online data display together, educators too need internet access -- not always easy if people meet in a room without a computer, wireless, or a laptop to plug into an ethernet cable.)

We hope to work with the PTA this year to create a model of parent-parent, basic computer and email training for Healey parents who need this support. We’ll be reaching out to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet. Several years from now, the proliferation of smartphones and iphones will likely shrink this challenge dramatically, making it easier than ever for partners to join the conversation about student data.

We also will continue to consider bigger issues about “data” in schools: basic quant data on students is never the whole story, which makes linking a dashboard to an eportfolio even more important.

===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 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!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

-Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?

-If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?

- If so, how could low cost tech support such information-sharing?

-To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?

-What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?

-What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment where you live to test which works for what?

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-09-14T04:50:05Z

Jc: /* Communication we hoped to improve */

Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, Josh Wairi, and Seth Woodworth for the dashboard project

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

''Who needs to communicate what info to whom, in order to support young people?

''Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome? Which media might help?

''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. What communication did we hope to improve, change, or create? Why?

''b. Main efforts, and concrete communication improvement(s). (Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have become more possible?)

''c. Main 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!)

-----------------
With teacher Josh Wairi, principals Jason DeFalco and then Purnima Vadhera, parents, and students at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, and young local technologists, we have worked to create an open source dashboard -- a data display that sits “on top of” the district’s student information system and displays data in ways that partners (parents, teachers, administrators, students) can quickly view and comment on. By "dashboard," we mean a single place to go to get a quick view -- like the front “dashboard” on your car. But our tools are also designed to support people to communicate about what they see.

We’ve designed three “dashboard” tools. We started in 2009 by tweaking a great color-coded Excel spreadsheet that Greg Nadeau, a Somerville parent, had made for the Healey principal (see [[Dashboard/ahas]] for specifics). We ended up codesigning an administrator's data view with Healey administrators, and a teacher’s view that presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view:

[[Image: admin view.jpg|admin view]]

We also designed an individual view, with additional data, for parents, students, afterschool providers and teachers to communicate in a team about each individual student:

[[Image: individual view.jpg|individual view]]

For that view, we built on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York, combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product!

Our goal in 2011-12 is to test and tweak these three tools with educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers, and to link these tools electronically so that in any given team meeting, educators have access to all the data at once. We also want to see how they should be designed to support face to face and email-based conversations about “the data.”

Why’d we do this? Well, in education these days, we talk a lot about “data-sharing.” Typically, we mean making sure that educators or afterschool providers can see information on students' demographics and progress as measured with basic numbers (e.g.,: test scores, days absent). These indicators never show "the whole child" ([[ePortfolio|eportfolios]] can help with that!), but they are still very important to know. They show how students are doing on measures that many educators treat as very important (e.g., grades on a report card) and that do tend to predict important events like “dropping out” (e.g., absences from school).

Gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting a young person remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation (was Jose absent, or not?).

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there’s no reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately!

But most tools for simple data display in schools cost districts a lot of money. And so, many districts don’t have them. To clarify: a typical district has a “student information system” (a database of student information), but many districts don’t have any easy tools for quickly displaying that information to multiple partners at once (or letting them sort the data to see patterns in it). In Somerville, administrators had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers have had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand.

When districts do have online data display tools, finally, they typically aren't designed by educators or parents. In fact, families are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card) and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://www.nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html)

Somerville educators were very interested in a “dashboard” and so, this was the main working group on the OneVille Project where we decided to try to make a tool from scratch. We spent Ford funding on supporting local technologists, Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard, and a 5th grade teacher, Josh Wairi -- all in their late twenties and early thirties -- to design and build a tool that Somerville might eventually be able to use for free, if it worked.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Putting info online can put student supporters “all on the same page,” as Josh put it one day: that’s because rather than passing paper folders around, everyone can see the same data at once.

Putting data online also means that more people can join the “team” analyzing the data. When schools and districts have data teams, they typically involve teachers and administrators, not parents; more rarely do afterschool providers, parents, or students themselves communicate about student data they are all seeing at once.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: A gap in data equals a gap in student services.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, along with various students we talked to in our other pilots, all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, faster, could support faster interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

While many communications have to happen in person so that people build trust and share details (a parent-teacher meeting; a student support team meeting), having everyone online can also mean that a group conversation can be sparked at any time. When people rely on paper folders, the person who leaves with the folder leaves with the record of care due the child!

At the same time, relying only on tech-based conversations would leave out people with less access to tech (or knowledge of it). And so, improving basic data sharing in education is still about ensuring that all necessary stakeholders are aware of students' most basic situation in a timely manner. That means supporting people to see data quickly instead of sorting through separate folders, and, it means making tech easy and common-denominator rather than complicated; it also means doing things like training parents on email or putting a computer in the PTA room (part of our [[Schoolwide communication toolkit|schoolwide communication]] efforts). And, just "getting data" on a student is never enough: people need to then converse (online, in person, or otherwise) about how the young person is doing and how they might be assisted. Just knowing how many days a child is absent is the first step, but then you need to have a conversation about why and what to do about it!

==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?
------------------------
Lots of people in Somerville talked about the need to improve data display at the parent/student level, the teacher level, the afterschool provider level, and the administrator level.

In Somerville, older students and parents can log into X2, the student information system, to see updates on their grades, absences, etc. But many don't have passwords or don't know they have them; students told us they often forgot them. More importantly, once they get to X2, some found the data there hard to understand. Information isn't translated for non-English speakers. And viewers can’t comment ON the data seen. X2 is set up only to house student data -- not to help people talk about it. In talking about dashboard prototypes with parents, the major feature everyone emphasized was the ability to immediately comment ON data, rather than simply “look at it.”

[[Image:Aspen X2 3.0|thumb|Aspen X2 3.0]]

When you get “into” X2 as a teacher or administrator, you also can’t easily see patterns in student data. Josh had to create spreadsheets for his own class by hand. At the administrator level, the Healey principal was also never able to easily sort any of his data within X2. Doing so requires queries to a busy central office, which runs data analyses and releases data reports once a week. Getting new data during a meeting, for immediate discussion, is not feasible.

While some afterschool providers had access to X2 directly, many didn’t, meaning they had trouble knowing basic information like whether students who were coming to afterschool were going to school. So, these providers typically kept their information in separate computer databases or even on paper. In our many discussions with people about basic data issues, they raised a key point:

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: It is crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

For example, afterschool attendance and MAP score changes, or student demographics and achievement data, shouldn’t be scattered in inaccessible places! Supporters need to able to see these basic “indicators” all in one place.

So, the goal became to create a simple data display that could help all these folks see some basic data kept in X2 in a single view. This included creating a translated display easily understandable by an immigrant parent. Over time, we also decided that we wanted to co-create tools designed explicitly to help teachers, administrators, parents, and tutors to communicate about the basic data and about students' progress toward standard benchmarks -- not just see it!

Our rationale: Many data displays in schools are a) on paper and b) one-way. Think a report card or a quarterly report on one’s “scores”: schools or districts just “display” to kids their scores or show parents their child’s absences. Since OneVille’s goal is to support diverse partners in running communication about pursuing the success of young people, we wanted to make sure that parents could communicate back ABOUT data, to teachers -- and that tutors, teachers, and parents could over time communicate with one another.

Finally, we wanted to work to create a free/open source tool so that other districts could adapt what we made. In an era when many districts are strapped for money, it just seems wrong to pay lots of cash just to see basic information!

So, we made three views, each designed to support a different conversation. Our administrator and teacher dashboard views present data such as attendance, grades, and MCAS and MAP test scores and growth. The principal wants to try using this view in student support team meetings when people have typically struggled to see patterns in data by hand. Josh wants to use his live, more-often-refreshed view instead of his Excel spreadsheet! In the individual dashboard view, parents and other supporters are encouraged to shape their conversation around Somerville's existing rubrics for student achievement, also making them more attuned to those rubrics. The principal, and Josh, want to try using this view in face to face conversations with parents. Online viewers can also message the teacher from home or work through the dashboard's comment/question boxes; messages show up in the teacher’s email. In our pilot, we will support members of a “team” of family, teachers, and afterschool staff to view the dashboards text boxes and to use text boxes/email to communicate as needed about goals for/progress on student achievement. We’ll also see how the dashboard views can be designed to support face to face communication!

==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 we began the OneVille Project, we proposed to create a “dashboard” displaying basic data linking many youth- and child-related databases in the city, because lots of people in the field say that the more data seen by more people, the better. The district was first interested in getting all of its own basic data viewable, quickly -- and that’s what we ended up working on in the end. We bit off a bit more than we could chew at first, especially with all of the other projects we had going: we proposed to link all of the databases in the community, before realizing that this was a) a huge data effort, b) politically very complicated, and c) not clearly necessary at the level of the individual, familiy, teacher, and school administrator (does a teacher actually need to know a student’s police record in order to serve him better?). So, to get started, we focused for the first 2 years on co-designing and producing a dashboard that could work to display school data at the level of the school and the family. SomerPromise, the Mayor's new site-based initiative to provide comprehensive youth services, was also interested in linking databases across agencies and we felt they were better positioned to pursue that goal even as we worked to lay groundwork for the effort by creating administrative and family-level views of school data alone.

As it turned out, Greg Nadeau, Somerville resident, had already made an Excel spreadsheet for the Healey Principal the year before we began work on the dashboard. It was an early Excel version of what later became our Administrator Dashboard View.

[[Image: greg nadeau view.jpg|greg nadeau view]]

So, the main need at the school was entering updated data into it -- by hand. So, Susan, who would later become the lead organizer for the eportfolio project, did some valiant handywork (assisted by colleague Al Willis) to clean up the current year’s spreadsheet and to add new data typically not kept in X2 that the principal also wanted to see, like afterschool enrollment. We also had some regular meetings via phone conference with Greg and the principal to consider the patterns the principal wanted to see and the new "fields" for data that he felt needed to be created permanently in the district student information system (e.g., attendance in the afterschool programs. Afterschool programs weren't keeping this data in Somerville's core data system, X2, and still don’t.)

Josh Wairi, a 5th grade teacher at the Healey, got interested in the dashboard design when we stopped by his classroom one day after school. Looking together at his computer and printouts, we realized he was already creating spreadsheets of student data from X2 by hand. He was interested in quickly displaying and sorting basic data, to supplement his face to face and phone conversations with students and parents. His work showed us the need for what would become the “Teacher View,” a class-size version of the school-wide Administrator View.

Stories of parents’ own needs to communicate with teachers about their children’s report cards prompted us to push forward on an “Individual View” that included the report card instead of just absences, grades, and test scores. (We had been inspired by the New Visions for New Schools project, which had a view that could give parents and students a quick, accurate understanding of how the student was performing on the latter kind of data). https://knowledgebase.newvisions.org/resource/loadresource.aspx?ArtifactId=3298

[[Image:new visions view.jpg|new visions]]

At the time we were designing the “Individual View,” the District was ceasing to assign its elementary students numerical grades, or their equivalents on the typical A, B, C... scale, and moving to a standards-based K-6 report card. So, we made Somerville's new K-6 report card (handed out on paper to families) online and color-coded.

[[Image:individual view grades.jpg|individual view grades]]

We added statistics about the student’s attendance and MCAS and MAP scores to the Individual View, which also includes the teacher’s quarterly summary comments.

[[Image: attendance.jpg|thumb|Individual student attendance: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image:test scores.jpg|thumb|individual student test scores: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image: teacher comments.jpg|thumb|Individual student teacher comments: Click to enlarge]]

As we work to import the district’s translations of the basic report card rubrics, we have considered encouraging immigrant parents to use Google Translate as a first step to translate teachers’ own comments and to write back to teachers about their reactions.

===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. This section captures our learning across the project. Learn the story at: [[Dashboard/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Please 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?
-------
The prototypes of the administrative, teacher, and individual views are nearly complete. In the fall, we plan to test and modify the admin view with new Healey Principal Purnima Vadhera (she wants to use the view in student support team meetings and to share data patterns with teachers) and to test and tweak the teacher and individual views with Josh and his students’ families. We’ll also support an email-based communication among a "team" of educators, family, and afterschool providers around each student in his class.

===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?)
-------

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Nobody in this day and age should be in the dark about basic progress info on the young people in their lives.

Communities able to invest in high-end communication infrastructure just buy expensive tools to help them view and sort their data. What about districts that can't afford this? They keep basic data in drawers; they send requests for data sorting to central administrators and wait. Or, young people fall "through the cracks" -- a gap in basic information and response. Student service should never be held back by struggles to view the most basic of data! Basic data is always a shallow view of the whole student, but it’s part of the “view” -- and these basic indicators tell us some important things about how youth are faring in the school’s terms.

And districts shouldn't pay big money for seeing and sorting this data, either.

Open source tools save districts money because they don’t have to buy the product itself; districts only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), a fraction of the cost. (Our technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services, but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to storebought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US Schools.”

If our tools prove helpful, our next task (or someone else’s) could be to make these adaptable anywhere in the country, and to create a model for supporting districts to use the free tools.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that parents, students, administrators, and local technologists can fundamentally help design tools for sharing and communicating about basic data in schools.

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?

As stated above, we’ll be piloting our three “views” this fall and will report out what we learn.

Ongoing Challenges: We face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. The same work schedules that make parent-teacher meetings hard also make it hard for some parents to coordinate their schedules with the computer labs at local libraries or in the housing projects where some families live. (Also, to look at an online data display together, educators too need internet access -- not always easy if people meet in a room without a computer, wireless, or a laptop to plug into an ethernet cable.)

We hope to work with the PTA this year to create a model of parent-parent, basic computer and email training for Healey parents who need this support. We’ll be reaching out to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet. Several years from now, the proliferation of smartphones and iphones will likely shrink this challenge dramatically, making it easier than ever for partners to join the conversation about student data.

We also will continue to consider bigger issues about “data” in schools: basic quant data on students is never the whole story, which makes linking a dashboard to an eportfolio even more important.

===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 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!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

-Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?

-If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?

- If so, how could low cost tech support such information-sharing?

-To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?

-What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?

-What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment where you live to test which works for what?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-13T18:30:44Z

Jc:

''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, in order to support young people?

''Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome? Which media might help?

''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. What communication did we hope to improve, change, or create? Why?

''b. Main efforts, and concrete communication improvement(s). (Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have become more possible?)

''c. Main 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.

[[Image:(2)Slide2.jpg|(2)Slide2.jpg]]

Begun in Winter 2010, 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.) We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role for one staff Connector so that she can help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters.

[[Image:(2)Slide3-.jpg|(2)Slide3-.jpg]]

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 completely [[Full set of multilingual infrastructure diagrams|here]].

[[Image:(2)Slide7.jpg|Slide7.jpg]]

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. This section captures our learning across the project. Learn the story at: [[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?
-------
[[Image:(2)Slide4.jpg|(2)Slide4.jpg]]

[[Image:(2)Slide5.jpg|(2)Slide5.jpg]]

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, Gina, 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 [[here]].

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.

[[Image:(2)Slide7.jpg|Slide7.jpg]]

===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. http://translate.google.com/support/ [[(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!

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

Hotline setup was a task for Seth. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see 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.)

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-09-11T22:27:37Z

Jc: /* Basic History */

Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, Josh Wairi, and Seth Woodworth for the dashboard project

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

''Who needs to communicate what info to whom, in order to support young people?

''Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome? Which media might help?

''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. What communication did we hope to improve, change, or create? Why?

''b. Main efforts, and concrete communication improvement(s). (Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have become more possible?)

''c. Main 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!)

-----------------
With teacher Josh Wairi, principals Jason DeFalco and then Purnima Vadhera, parents, and students at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, and young local technologists, we have worked to create an open source dashboard -- a data display that sits “on top of” the district’s student information system and displays data in ways that partners (parents, teachers, administrators, students) can quickly view and comment on. By "dashboard," we mean a single place to go to get a quick view -- like the front “dashboard” on your car. But our tools are also designed to support people to communicate about what they see.

We’ve designed three “dashboard” tools. We started in 2009 by tweaking a great color-coded Excel spreadsheet that Greg Nadeau, a Somerville parent, had made for the Healey principal (see [[Dashboard/ahas]] for specifics). We ended up codesigning an administrator's data view with Healey administrators, and a teacher’s view that presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view:

[[Image: admin view.jpg|admin view]]

We also designed an individual view, with additional data, for parents, students, afterschool providers and teachers to communicate in a team about each individual student:

[[Image: individual view.jpg|individual view]]

For that view, we built on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York, combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product!

Our goal in 2011-12 is to test and tweak these three tools with educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers, and to link these tools electronically so that in any given team meeting, educators have access to all the data at once. We also want to see how they should be designed to support face to face and email-based conversations about “the data.”

Why’d we do this? Well, in education these days, we talk a lot about “data-sharing.” Typically, we mean making sure that educators or afterschool providers can see information on students' demographics and progress as measured with basic numbers (e.g.,: test scores, days absent). These indicators never show "the whole child" ([[ePortfolio|eportfolios]] can help with that!), but they are still very important to know. They show how students are doing on measures that many educators treat as very important (e.g., grades on a report card) and that do tend to predict important events like “dropping out” (e.g., absences from school).

Gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting a young person remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation (was Jose absent, or not?).

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there’s no reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately!

But most tools for simple data display in schools cost districts a lot of money. And so, many districts don’t have them. To clarify: a typical district has a “student information system” (a database of student information), but many districts don’t have any easy tools for quickly displaying that information to multiple partners at once (or letting them sort the data to see patterns in it). In Somerville, administrators had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers have had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand.

When districts do have online data display tools, finally, they typically aren't designed by educators or parents. In fact, families are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card) and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://www.nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html)

Somerville educators were very interested in a “dashboard” and so, this was the main working group on the OneVille Project where we decided to try to make a tool from scratch. We spent Ford funding on supporting local technologists, Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard, and a 5th grade teacher, Josh Wairi -- all in their late twenties and early thirties -- to design and build a tool that Somerville might eventually be able to use for free, if it worked.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Putting info online can put student supporters “all on the same page,” as Josh put it one day: that’s because rather than passing paper folders around, everyone can see the same data at once.

Putting data online also means that more people can join the “team” analyzing the data. When schools and districts have data teams, they typically involve teachers and administrators, not parents; more rarely do afterschool providers, parents, or students themselves communicate about student data they are all seeing at once.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: A gap in data equals a gap in student services.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, along with various students we talked to in our other pilots, all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, faster, could support faster interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

While many communications have to happen in person so that people build trust and share details (a parent-teacher meeting; a student support team meeting), having everyone online can also mean that a group conversation can be sparked at any time. When people rely on paper folders, the person who leaves with the folder leaves with the record of care due the child!

At the same time, relying only on tech-based conversations would leave out people with less access to tech (or knowledge of it). And so, improving basic data sharing in education is still about ensuring that all necessary stakeholders are aware of students' most basic situation in a timely manner. That means supporting people to see data quickly instead of sorting through separate folders, and, it means making tech easy and common-denominator rather than complicated; it also means doing things like training parents on email or putting a computer in the PTA room (part of our [[Schoolwide communication toolkit|schoolwide communication]] efforts). And, just "getting data" on a student is never enough: people need to then converse (online, in person, or otherwise) about how the young person is doing and how they might be assisted. Just knowing how many days a child is absent is the first step, but then you need to have a conversation about why and what to do about it!

==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?
------------------------
Lots of people in Somerville talked about the need to improve data display at the parent/student level, the teacher level, the afterschool provider level, and the administrator level.

In Somerville, older students and parents can log into X2, the student information system, to see updates on their grades, absences, etc. But many don't have passwords or don't know they have them; students told us they often forgot them. More importantly, once they get to X2, some found the data there hard to understand. Information isn't translated for non-English speakers. And viewers can’t comment ON the data seen. X2 is set up only to house student data -- not to help people talk about it. In talking about dashboard prototypes with parents, the major feature everyone emphasized was the ability to immediately comment ON data, rather than simply “look at it.”

X2 screenshot from district of X2 Aspen webiste (command-shift-4)

When you get “into” X2 as a teacher or administrator, you also can’t easily see patterns in student data. Josh had to create spreadsheets for his own class by hand. At the administrator level, the Healey principal was also never able to easily sort any of his data within X2. Doing so requires queries to a busy central office, which runs data analyses and releases data reports once a week. Getting new data during a meeting, for immediate discussion, is not feasible.

While some afterschool providers had access to X2 directly, many didn’t, meaning they had trouble knowing basic information like whether students who were coming to afterschool were going to school. So, these providers typically kept their information in separate computer databases or even on paper. In our many discussions with people about basic data issues, they raised a key point:

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: It is crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

For example, afterschool attendance and MAP score changes, or student demographics and achievement data, shouldn’t be scattered in inaccessible places! Supporters need to able to see these basic “indicators” all in one place.

So, the goal became to create a simple data display that could help all these folks see some basic data kept in X2 in a single view. This included creating a translated display easily understandable by an immigrant parent. Over time, we also decided that we wanted to co-create tools designed explicitly to help teachers, administrators, parents, and tutors to communicate about the basic data and about students' progress toward standard benchmarks -- not just see it!

Our rationale: Many data displays in schools are a) on paper and b) one-way. Think a report card or a quarterly report on one’s “scores”: schools or districts just “display” to kids their scores or show parents their child’s absences. Since OneVille’s goal is to support diverse partners in running communication about pursuing the success of young people, we wanted to make sure that parents could communicate back ABOUT data, to teachers -- and that tutors, teachers, and parents could over time communicate with one another.

Finally, we wanted to work to create a free/open source tool so that other districts could adapt what we made. In an era when many districts are strapped for money, it just seems wrong to pay lots of cash just to see basic information!

So, we made three views, each designed to support a different conversation. Our administrator and teacher dashboard views present data such as attendance, grades, and MCAS and MAP test scores and growth. The principal wants to try using this view in student support team meetings when people have typically struggled to see patterns in data by hand. Josh wants to use his live, more-often-refreshed view instead of his Excel spreadsheet! In the individual dashboard view, parents and other supporters are encouraged to shape their conversation around Somerville's existing rubrics for student achievement, also making them more attuned to those rubrics. The principal, and Josh, want to try using this view in face to face conversations with parents. Online viewers can also message the teacher from home or work through the dashboard's comment/question boxes; messages show up in the teacher’s email. In our pilot, we will support members of a “team” of family, teachers, and afterschool staff to view the dashboards text boxes and to use text boxes/email to communicate as needed about goals for/progress on student achievement. We’ll also see how the dashboard views can be designed to support face to face communication!

==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 we began the OneVille Project, we proposed to create a “dashboard” displaying basic data linking many youth- and child-related databases in the city, because lots of people in the field say that the more data seen by more people, the better. The district was first interested in getting all of its own basic data viewable, quickly -- and that’s what we ended up working on in the end. We bit off a bit more than we could chew at first, especially with all of the other projects we had going: we proposed to link all of the databases in the community, before realizing that this was a) a huge data effort, b) politically very complicated, and c) not clearly necessary at the level of the individual, familiy, teacher, and school administrator (does a teacher actually need to know a student’s police record in order to serve him better?). So, to get started, we focused for the first 2 years on co-designing and producing a dashboard that could work to display school data at the level of the school and the family. SomerPromise, the Mayor's new site-based initiative to provide comprehensive youth services, was also interested in linking databases across agencies and we felt they were better positioned to pursue that goal even as we worked to lay groundwork for the effort by creating administrative and family-level views of school data alone.

As it turned out, Greg Nadeau, Somerville resident, had already made an Excel spreadsheet for the Healey Principal the year before we began work on the dashboard. It was an early Excel version of what later became our Administrator Dashboard View.

[[Image: greg nadeau view.jpg|greg nadeau view]]

So, the main need at the school was entering updated data into it -- by hand. So, Susan, who would later become the lead organizer for the eportfolio project, did some valiant handywork (assisted by colleague Al Willis) to clean up the current year’s spreadsheet and to add new data typically not kept in X2 that the principal also wanted to see, like afterschool enrollment. We also had some regular meetings via phone conference with Greg and the principal to consider the patterns the principal wanted to see and the new "fields" for data that he felt needed to be created permanently in the district student information system (e.g., attendance in the afterschool programs. Afterschool programs weren't keeping this data in Somerville's core data system, X2, and still don’t.)

Josh Wairi, a 5th grade teacher at the Healey, got interested in the dashboard design when we stopped by his classroom one day after school. Looking together at his computer and printouts, we realized he was already creating spreadsheets of student data from X2 by hand. He was interested in quickly displaying and sorting basic data, to supplement his face to face and phone conversations with students and parents. His work showed us the need for what would become the “Teacher View,” a class-size version of the school-wide Administrator View.

Stories of parents’ own needs to communicate with teachers about their children’s report cards prompted us to push forward on an “Individual View” that included the report card instead of just absences, grades, and test scores. (We had been inspired by the New Visions for New Schools project, which had a view that could give parents and students a quick, accurate understanding of how the student was performing on the latter kind of data). https://knowledgebase.newvisions.org/resource/loadresource.aspx?ArtifactId=3298

[[Image:new visions view.jpg|new visions]]

At the time we were designing the “Individual View,” the District was ceasing to assign its elementary students numerical grades, or their equivalents on the typical A, B, C... scale, and moving to a standards-based K-6 report card. So, we made Somerville's new K-6 report card (handed out on paper to families) online and color-coded.

[[Image:individual view grades.jpg|individual view grades]]

We added statistics about the student’s attendance and MCAS and MAP scores to the Individual View, which also includes the teacher’s quarterly summary comments.

[[Image: attendance.jpg|thumb|Individual student attendance: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image:test scores.jpg|thumb|individual student test scores: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image: teacher comments.jpg|thumb|Individual student teacher comments: Click to enlarge]]

As we work to import the district’s translations of the basic report card rubrics, we have considered encouraging immigrant parents to use Google Translate as a first step to translate teachers’ own comments and to write back to teachers about their reactions.

===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. This section captures our learning across the project. Learn the story at: [[Dashboard/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Please 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?
-------
The prototypes of the administrative, teacher, and individual views are nearly complete. In the fall, we plan to test and modify the admin view with new Healey Principal Purnima Vadhera (she wants to use the view in student support team meetings and to share data patterns with teachers) and to test and tweak the teacher and individual views with Josh and his students’ families. We’ll also support an email-based communication among a "team" of educators, family, and afterschool providers around each student in his class.

===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?)
-------

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Nobody in this day and age should be in the dark about basic progress info on the young people in their lives.

Communities able to invest in high-end communication infrastructure just buy expensive tools to help them view and sort their data. What about districts that can't afford this? They keep basic data in drawers; they send requests for data sorting to central administrators and wait. Or, young people fall "through the cracks" -- a gap in basic information and response. Student service should never be held back by struggles to view the most basic of data! Basic data is always a shallow view of the whole student, but it’s part of the “view” -- and these basic indicators tell us some important things about how youth are faring in the school’s terms.

And districts shouldn't pay big money for seeing and sorting this data, either.

Open source tools save districts money because they don’t have to buy the product itself; districts only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), a fraction of the cost. (Our technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services, but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to storebought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US Schools.”

If our tools prove helpful, our next task (or someone else’s) could be to make these adaptable anywhere in the country, and to create a model for supporting districts to use the free tools.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that parents, students, administrators, and local technologists can fundamentally help design tools for sharing and communicating about basic data in schools.

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?

As stated above, we’ll be piloting our three “views” this fall and will report out what we learn.

Ongoing Challenges: We face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. The same work schedules that make parent-teacher meetings hard also make it hard for some parents to coordinate their schedules with the computer labs at local libraries or in the housing projects where some families live. (Also, to look at an online data display together, educators too need internet access -- not always easy if people meet in a room without a computer, wireless, or a laptop to plug into an ethernet cable.)

We hope to work with the PTA this year to create a model of parent-parent, basic computer and email training for Healey parents who need this support. We’ll be reaching out to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet. Several years from now, the proliferation of smartphones and iphones will likely shrink this challenge dramatically, making it easier than ever for partners to join the conversation about student data.

We also will continue to consider bigger issues about “data” in schools: basic quant data on students is never the whole story, which makes linking a dashboard to an eportfolio even more important.

===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 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!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

-Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?

-If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?

- If so, how could low cost tech support such information-sharing?

-To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?

-What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?

-What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment where you live to test which works for what?

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-09-11T21:24:22Z

Jc: /* Summary */

Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, Josh Wairi, and Seth Woodworth for the dashboard project

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

''Who needs to communicate what info to whom, in order to support young people?

''Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome? Which media might help?

''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. What communication did we hope to improve, change, or create? Why?

''b. Main efforts, and concrete communication improvement(s). (Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have become more possible?)

''c. Main 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!)

-----------------
With teacher Josh Wairi, principals Jason DeFalco and then Purnima Vadhera, parents, and students at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, and young local technologists, we have worked to create an open source dashboard -- a data display that sits “on top of” the district’s student information system and displays data in ways that partners (parents, teachers, administrators, students) can quickly view and comment on. By "dashboard," we mean a single place to go to get a quick view -- like the front “dashboard” on your car. But our tools are also designed to support people to communicate about what they see.

We’ve designed three “dashboard” tools. We started in 2009 by tweaking a great color-coded Excel spreadsheet that Greg Nadeau, a Somerville parent, had made for the Healey principal (see [[Dashboard/ahas]] for specifics). We ended up codesigning an administrator's data view with Healey administrators, and a teacher’s view that presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view:

[[Image: admin view.jpg|admin view]]

We also designed an individual view, with additional data, for parents, students, afterschool providers and teachers to communicate in a team about each individual student:

[[Image: individual view.jpg|individual view]]

For that view, we built on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York, combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product!

Our goal in 2011-12 is to test and tweak these three tools with educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers, and to link these tools electronically so that in any given team meeting, educators have access to all the data at once. We also want to see how they should be designed to support face to face and email-based conversations about “the data.”

Why’d we do this? Well, in education these days, we talk a lot about “data-sharing.” Typically, we mean making sure that educators or afterschool providers can see information on students' demographics and progress as measured with basic numbers (e.g.,: test scores, days absent). These indicators never show "the whole child" ([[ePortfolio|eportfolios]] can help with that!), but they are still very important to know. They show how students are doing on measures that many educators treat as very important (e.g., grades on a report card) and that do tend to predict important events like “dropping out” (e.g., absences from school).

Gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting a young person remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation (was Jose absent, or not?).

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there’s no reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately!

But most tools for simple data display in schools cost districts a lot of money. And so, many districts don’t have them. To clarify: a typical district has a “student information system” (a database of student information), but many districts don’t have any easy tools for quickly displaying that information to multiple partners at once (or letting them sort the data to see patterns in it). In Somerville, administrators had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers have had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand.

When districts do have online data display tools, finally, they typically aren't designed by educators or parents. In fact, families are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card) and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://www.nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html)

Somerville educators were very interested in a “dashboard” and so, this was the main working group on the OneVille Project where we decided to try to make a tool from scratch. We spent Ford funding on supporting local technologists, Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard, and a 5th grade teacher, Josh Wairi -- all in their late twenties and early thirties -- to design and build a tool that Somerville might eventually be able to use for free, if it worked.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Putting info online can put student supporters “all on the same page,” as Josh put it one day: that’s because rather than passing paper folders around, everyone can see the same data at once.

Putting data online also means that more people can join the “team” analyzing the data. When schools and districts have data teams, they typically involve teachers and administrators, not parents; more rarely do afterschool providers, parents, or students themselves communicate about student data they are all seeing at once.

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: A gap in data equals a gap in student services.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, along with various students we talked to in our other pilots, all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, faster, could support faster interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

While many communications have to happen in person so that people build trust and share details (a parent-teacher meeting; a student support team meeting), having everyone online can also mean that a group conversation can be sparked at any time. When people rely on paper folders, the person who leaves with the folder leaves with the record of care due the child!

At the same time, relying only on tech-based conversations would leave out people with less access to tech (or knowledge of it). And so, improving basic data sharing in education is still about ensuring that all necessary stakeholders are aware of students' most basic situation in a timely manner. That means supporting people to see data quickly instead of sorting through separate folders, and, it means making tech easy and common-denominator rather than complicated; it also means doing things like training parents on email or putting a computer in the PTA room (part of our [[Schoolwide communication toolkit|schoolwide communication]] efforts). And, just "getting data" on a student is never enough: people need to then converse (online, in person, or otherwise) about how the young person is doing and how they might be assisted. Just knowing how many days a child is absent is the first step, but then you need to have a conversation about why and what to do about it!

==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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Lots of people in Somerville talked about the need to improve data display at the parent/student level, the teacher level, the afterschool provider level, and the administrator level.

In Somerville, older students and parents can log into X2, the student information system, to see updates on their grades, absences, etc. But many don't have passwords or don't know they have them; students told us they often forgot them. More importantly, once they get to X2, some found the data there hard to understand. Information isn't translated for non-English speakers. And viewers can’t comment ON the data seen. X2 is set up only to house student data -- not to help people talk about it. In talking about dashboard prototypes with parents, the major feature everyone emphasized was the ability to immediately comment ON data, rather than simply “look at it.”

X2 screenshot from district of X2 Aspen webiste (command-shift-4)

When you get “into” X2 as a teacher or administrator, you also can’t easily see patterns in student data. Josh had to create spreadsheets for his own class by hand. At the administrator level, the Healey principal was also never able to easily sort any of his data within X2. Doing so requires queries to a busy central office, which runs data analyses and releases data reports once a week. Getting new data during a meeting, for immediate discussion, is not feasible.

While some afterschool providers had access to X2 directly, many didn’t, meaning they had trouble knowing basic information like whether students who were coming to afterschool were going to school. So, these providers typically kept their information in separate computer databases or even on paper. In our many discussions with people about basic data issues, they raised a key point:

'''COMMUNICATION AHA: It is crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

For example, afterschool attendance and MAP score changes, or student demographics and achievement data, shouldn’t be scattered in inaccessible places! Supporters need to able to see these basic “indicators” all in one place.

So, the goal became to create a simple data display that could help all these folks see some basic data kept in X2 in a single view. This included creating a translated display easily understandable by an immigrant parent. Over time, we also decided that we wanted to co-create tools designed explicitly to help teachers, administrators, parents, and tutors to communicate about the basic data and about students' progress toward standard benchmarks -- not just see it!

Our rationale: Many data displays in schools are a) on paper and b) one-way. Think a report card or a quarterly report on one’s “scores”: schools or districts just “display” to kids their scores or show parents their child’s absences. Since OneVille’s goal is to support diverse partners in running communication about pursuing the success of young people, we wanted to make sure that parents could communicate back ABOUT data, to teachers -- and that tutors, teachers, and parents could over time communicate with one another.

Finally, we wanted to work to create a free/open source tool so that other districts could adapt what we made. In an era when many districts are strapped for money, it just seems wrong to pay lots of cash just to see basic information!

So, we made three views, each designed to support a different conversation. Our administrator and teacher dashboard views present data such as attendance, grades, and MCAS and MAP test scores and growth. The principal wants to try using this view in student support team meetings when people have typically struggled to see patterns in data by hand. Josh wants to use his live, more-often-refreshed view instead of his Excel spreadsheet! In the individual dashboard view, parents and other supporters are encouraged to shape their conversation around Somerville's existing rubrics for student achievement, also making them more attuned to those rubrics. The principal, and Josh, want to try using this view in face to face conversations with parents. Online viewers can also message the teacher from home or work through the dashboard's comment/question boxes; messages show up in the teacher’s email. In our pilot, we will support members of a “team” of family, teachers, and afterschool staff to view the dashboards text boxes and to use text boxes/email to communicate as needed about goals for/progress on student achievement. We’ll also see how the dashboard views can be designed to support face to face communication!

==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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===Basic History===

''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
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As we began the OneVille Project, we proposed to create a “dashboard” displaying basic data linking many youth- and child-related databases in the city, because lots of people in the field say that the more data seen by more people, the better. The district was first interested in getting all of its own basic data viewable, quickly -- and that’s what we ended up working on in the end. We bit off a bit more than we could chew at first, especially with all of the other projects we had going: we proposed to link all of the databases in the community, before realizing that this was a) a huge data effort, b) politically very complicated, and c) not clearly necessary at the level of the individual, familiy, teacher, and school administrator (does a teacher actually need to know a student’s police record in order to serve him better?). So, to get started, we focused for the first 2 years on co-designing and producing a dashboard that could work to display school data at the level of the school and the family. SomerPromise, the Mayor's new site-based initiative to provide comprehensive youth services, was also interested in linking databases across agencies and we felt they were better positioned to pursue that goal even as we worked to lay groundwork for the effort by creating administrative and family-level views of school data alone.

As it turned out, Greg Nadeau, Somerville resident, had already made an Excel spreadsheet for the Healey Principal the year before we began work on the dashboard. It was an early Excel version of what became our admin dashboard, later.

[[Image: greg nadeau view.jpg|greg nadeau view]]

So, the main need at the school was entering updated data into it -- by hand. So, Susan, who would later become the lead organizer for the eportfolio project, did some valiant handywork (assisted by colleague Al Willis) to clean up the current year’s spreadsheet and to add new data typically not kept in X2 that the principal also wanted to see, like afterschool enrollment. We also had some regular meetings via phone conference with Greg and the principal to consider the patterns the principal wanted to see and the new "fields" for data that he felt needed to be created permanently in the district student information system (e.g., attendance in the afterschool programs. Afterschool programs weren't keeping this data in Somerville's core data system, X2, and still don’t.) This “spreadsheet view” was the basis for what would eventually become our “Administrator View” (See AHAs section.)

Josh Wairi, a 5th grade teacher at the Healey, got interested in the dashboard design when we stopped by his classroom one day after school. Looking together at his computer and printouts, we realized he was already creating spreadsheets of student data from X2 by hand. He was interested in quickly displaying and sorting basic data, to supplement his face to face and phone conversations with students and parents. His work showed us the need for what would become the “Teacher View,” a class-size version of the school-wide Admin View (see [[Summary]] section).

Stories of parents’ own needs to communicate with teachers about their children’s report cards prompted us to push forward on an “Individual View” that included the report card instead of just absences, grades, and test scores. (We had been inspired by the New Visions for New Schools project, which had a view that could give parents and students a quick, accurate understanding of how the student was performing on the latter kind of data). https://knowledgebase.newvisions.org/resource/loadresource.aspx?ArtifactId=3298

[[Image:new visions view.jpg|new visions]]

At the time we were designing the “Individual View,” the District was ceasing to assign its elementary students numerical grades, or their equivalents on the typical A, B, C... scale, and moving to a standards-based K-6 report card. So, we made Somerville's new K-6 report card (handed out on paper to families) online and color-coded.

[[Image:individual view grades.jpg|individual view grades]]

We added statistics about the student’s attendance and MCAS and MAP scores to the Individual View, which also includes the teacher’s quarterly summary comments.

[[Image: attendance.jpg|thumb|Individual student attendance: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image:test scores.jpg|thumb|individual student test scores: Click to enlarge]]

[[Image: teacher comments.jpg|thumb|Individual student teacher comments: Click to enlarge]]

As we work to import the district’s translations of the basic report card rubrics, we have considered encouraging immigrant parents to use Google Translate as a first step to translate teachers’ own comments and to write back to teachers about their reactions.

===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. This section captures our learning across the project. Learn the story at: [[Dashboard/ahas]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Please 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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The prototypes of the administrative, teacher, and individual views are nearly complete. In the fall, we plan to test and modify the admin view with new Healey Principal Purnima Vadhera (she wants to use the view in student support team meetings and to share data patterns with teachers) and to test and tweak the teacher and individual views with Josh and his students’ families. We’ll also support an email-based communication among a "team" of educators, family, and afterschool providers around each student in his class.

===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?)
-------

'''MAIN COMMUNICATION REALIZATION: Nobody in this day and age should be in the dark about basic progress info on the young people in their lives.

Communities able to invest in high-end communication infrastructure just buy expensive tools to help them view and sort their data. What about districts that can't afford this? They keep basic data in drawers; they send requests for data sorting to central administrators and wait. Or, young people fall "through the cracks" -- a gap in basic information and response. Student service should never be held back by struggles to view the most basic of data! Basic data is always a shallow view of the whole student, but it’s part of the “view” -- and these basic indicators tell us some important things about how youth are faring in the school’s terms.

And districts shouldn't pay big money for seeing and sorting this data, either.

Open source tools save districts money because they don’t have to buy the product itself; districts only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), a fraction of the cost. (Our technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services, but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to storebought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US Schools.”

If our tools prove helpful, our next task (or someone else’s) could be to make these adaptable anywhere in the country, and to create a model for supporting districts to use the free tools.

'''MAIN IMPLEMENTATION REALIZATION: Overall, we’ve learned that parents, students, administrators, and local technologists can fundamentally help design tools for sharing and communicating about basic data in schools.

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?

As stated above, we’ll be piloting our three “views” this fall and will report out what we learn.

Ongoing Challenges: We face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. The same work schedules that make parent-teacher meetings hard also make it hard for some parents to coordinate their schedules with the computer labs at local libraries or in the housing projects where some families live. (Also, to look at an online data display together, educators too need internet access -- not always easy if people meet in a room without a computer, wireless, or a laptop to plug into an ethernet cable.)

We hope to work with the PTA this year to create a model of parent-parent, basic computer and email training for Healey parents who need this support. We’ll be reaching out to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet. Several years from now, the proliferation of smartphones and iphones will likely shrink this challenge dramatically, making it easier than ever for partners to join the conversation about student data.

We also will continue to consider bigger issues about “data” in schools: basic quant data on students is never the whole story, which makes linking a dashboard to an eportfolio even more important.

===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 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!
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Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

-Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?

-If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?

-Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?

- If so, how could low cost tech support such information-sharing?

-To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?

-What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?

-What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment where you live to test which works for what?