Voices From the Community
VOICES from the communityMoms, dads, teachers, principals, community volunteers, trainers, and local business leaders—many different people contribute to today’s successful school partnerships. We asked five individuals to add their voice to the ongoing dialogue about what works, what doesn’t, and where we can go from here.
PRINCIPAL
PERLA RODRIGUEZ
A father worried about immigration problems finds it easy to confide in Perla Rodriguez. She may have a doctorate in education and be the principal of Cornelius Elementary, but she’s also Latina—the daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in eastern Oregon in hopes of a better education for their children. The fact that Rodriguez and her staff care about their students and families is apparent the moment you step inside the doors of this rural Oregon school where three-fourths of the children are Hispanic. For Rodriguez, who serves as the parent representative on NWREL’s board of directors, making parents feel valued and involved is “about so much more than having them make copies for teachers.”
The first step in creating a welcoming environment is doing an inventory. We have to be in agreement as a school, as a building, about why we want parent involvement, about what it looks like, and about the benefits and challenges. I think there’s an assumption that everyone knows it’s good, so we should all just work hard to get parents there. But, if we don’t take time to really understand why it’s important for our parents to be involved, then we could be spinning our wheels.
I think we at Cornelius have worked really hard at valuing the involvement our parents do bring. Some of it is logistical: Everyone in our front office is bilingual, so if you come in, both of the secretaries will be able to help our families in Spanish or English. Everything is sent home bilingually in high-quality translation. The standards we have for our Spanish translations are just as high as our English materials. I wouldn’t insult parents by sending things home in poor English, so why have a different standard in Spanish?
We do a lot of personal contacts at home. Kindergarten begins a week and a half later here. We use that time to make a home visit to every single incoming kindergarten family—there were 85 this year! It gives us a chance to meet the parents in an environment that they’re comfortable in. We read with the kids, take pictures. Since implementing that we’ve noticed more parents come to our conferences because they already know the teachers—the relationship is set.
Some colleagues might say that kindergarten is only a half-day to begin with, and to think that we’d lose a week and a half of an already shortened experience for kindergarten kids isn’t necessarily favorable to a lot of people. But we understand that what happens in that week and a half actually accelerates learning.
The number one error I see in schools and districts that are having conversations about getting all parents at the table is this idea that we somehow have to fix parents: that we have to teach them to be good parents. There’s such a level of arrogance in that thought.
I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of parents in my life and I’ve never met anyone who I believed just plain didn’t care about their kids. I’ve never met that parent. I’m not going to go so far as to say they don’t exist, but I’ve always experienced parents who do what they believe is best based on a whole bunch of things: their own experiences, their beliefs, their resources.
It goes back to the first thing I want us to do at Cornelius. Take a look in the mirror and ask yourself what do you understand about your families? I would encourage people to take a hard look at your own belief systems about the families you work with and to applaud what assets these families do bring to your school. It’s real easy to point a finger at everything that parents aren’t doing right. But, what are they doing right and how do you build on that? How do you embed that in the system that you have?
And then, ask parents what they would be interested in doing at your school. Don’t assume that you know what parents need.
Good luck reaching your goal!
PARENT
MARCY HAYMAN
Marcy Hayman lives in Wallace, Idaho, a historic mining town in the Northern Idaho panhandle. Born and raised in Wallace, Hayman attended public school there and now has two children in the district. Four years ago she helped form a parent volunteer program, called Students in Transition, which mentors high school students on the transition to postsecondary life. In 2006 the program was recognized by the Idaho Department of Education as a statewide best practice. In the 2005–2006 school year the program helped Wallace High School seniors garner more than $900,000 in college scholarships and military appointments.
Four years ago our community built a new school. I was involved with the group that got the levy passed, and then I was part of the dedication committee that hosted the big party to unveil the new school to the community. Coming in with the new school was a new school counselor, Robert Benfit. At the dedication party he asked anyone interested in working with students as a mentor to please sign up. Four parents, including myself, originally signed up. We got together with Robert about the second or third week of school and he reached out to us. He said, “I’m new to this and I’m looking for some community involvement. What would you guys like to see? What do you think needs to be done?” So we talked with him about where we saw our students going and where we thought there was a need. The biggest need at that time, we felt, was to help educate students as to their options after high school.
Our first step was to go through the stacks and stacks of scholarship applications that had been collected throughout the years by the previous high school counselor. Each of us took a handful and called around to see if they were still active and what was currently out there. From that we developed the scholarship database, which includes current scholarship applications and information about what the students need in order to qualify. That information changes all the time, so we’re constantly updating the database.
After we built the database we started thinking: How do we get this information out to the students and also educate the parents about these opportunities at the same time? As a mining town, a lot of our parents didn’t go to college. Historically, when you graduated from high school in Wallace, if you couldn’t get a job in the mine, you got a job wherever you could. College wasn’t an option. We decided that the only way to inform both the parents and the students was to get them all together. That fall we organized a Senior Orientation Night. We contacted all the parents and sent out invitations and we had a really great response. At that point we realized there was a great need for this kind of guidance, both for students and for parents.
Everything we’ve done since then has been in direct response to a need that we saw or that was brought to our attention. For example, from the beginning we saw the need for direct, one-on-one mentoring, and so each of the volunteers took on a mentoring role for seven or eight senior students. We typically have a small graduating class that ranges from about 38 to 55, so it works out well. We are the primary contact for that student—if they have any questions they can ask us. With that in place, it’s really hard for any senior to fall through the cracks.
Slowly, through evolution, we’ve been able to get ahead of the students—mentoring them in the earlier grades so that they know what’s going to be required. We started a Junior Orientation Night so that we could start having this conversation with students and parents before the senior year. And then we started working with ninth- and tenth-graders to help them build their community service hours, for example, which are often criteria for college scholarships. We put together a list of volunteer opportunities for them, and we also put together a Power-Point® presentation about some of the things they should be working on.
In addition to these programs we also staff the counselor’s office a couple days a week and last year we started what we call our KRASH Night, which stands for Kids Reaching Academic Success Head-on. Every Monday night students can come in from 5 to 7 p.m. We have eight computers here for their use, our scholarship database, and a lot of scholarship applications. We help them go online, research the college they want to go to, find out if there are supplemental applications they need to fill out, help them do their financial aid paperwork, schedule their ACTs and SATs—whatever they need.
We also started what we call Focus Night, which is just for parents. The first Monday of every month they can come in and meet with a volunteer in a conference room separate from the students, and we bring them up to speed on where their student is—what they’ve accomplished and what the parents could be working on to help support them.
In the earlier grades, we don’t talk to students about if you go to college, we approach it from the standpoint of when you go to college. But at the same time, we talk to them about the options rather than preaching to them, and they appreciate that. We talk about career pathways and any other questions they have about life after high school. By the time they’re seniors and have been exposed to all the options, then we can ask, “OK, what’s your plan and how can we help?” Whether that’s going to college or into the military or into the workforce, we’re here to help them down any path they choose to take. We just want that to be a well-informed choice.
As a parent, you should never be afraid to ask the school: What can I do to help? All you can do is offer. You can’t be afraid to venture out of your comfort zone. Just because you don’t know the answers already, doesn’t mean you can’t find them. What you learn along the way can benefit your own children—let alone other students—and that’s a completely valid reason for getting involved.
RESEARCHER
STEFFEN SAIFER
Closing the cultural gap goes a long way toward closing the achievement gap. That’s one of the truisms Steffen Saifer has learned as head of the Child and Family Program at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. Saifer led a team of NWREL researchers in studying how educators can strengthen family and community partnerships by making instructional and curricular practices more culturally responsive. The three-year project, which drew on the experiences of almost two dozen schools and districts around the Northwest, was captured in the publication Classroom to Community and Back (www.nwrel.org/partnerships/c2cb/c2c.pdf).
It’s important for teachers and administrators to have an awareness of the cultural lens that we all use to view the world, because we’re largely unconscious of it. I like the metaphor of cultures being an iceberg: 10 percent is visible and 90 percent is invisible. If you’re aware of that, you can begin to see how other cultures are different and, armed with that information, you can try to bridge the cultural gap.
Some of the differences are profound, such as how cultures view the purpose of schooling. Then, there are the very specific, “micro” kinds of things like different meanings for body language and personal space. The whole range of cultural differences greatly impacts the relationship between school staff and families.
You’re not going to be effective in the broad task of helping kids be successful in school unless you accept the challenge and do the work of knowing about every cultural group in your school, no matter how many there are. I don’t think it’s as hard as it seems. You can always find allies in the community who are willing to help. Schools are reluctant to ask for help from the community, which is not so much a mistake as shortsightedness. There was a 2001 Public Agenda report on this topic titled Just Waiting to Be Asked (www.publicagenda.org/ specials/pubengage/pubengage.htm). I see that so often. There are people who are interested and want to help the school connect better with families and the community that they serve, but nobody is asking. Paul T. Hill described the relationship between schools and communities as having a “hermetic seal” between them; anything that pries open that hermetic seal is critical to do.
There’s a whole body of literature on the skills needed to be culturally competent. It includes things like listening and other open communication skills; questioning assumptions; asking questions as opposed to making statements; being aware of differences in etiquette; and trying to meet the person from another culture at least halfway.
Many companies—at least the better ones—provide cultural training on etiquette and customs before sending their staff to different countries. Perhaps principals could call on community members to do that same kind of training to inform the whole staff, because everyone from the bus driver to the cafeteria worker to the custodian and up to the principal really needs to know those things. What else can school leaders do? Support teachers and help them keep their curriculum goals while using more culturally responsive strategies to meet those goals.
One of the things that a lot of immigrant families have in common is that they’re poor and they lack resources. Things like creating a one-step service center in your school helps all these families and sends a very critical message that we’re here to help you, not make your life more complicated and difficult, which is often a feeling families get from schools.
Starting a resource center is a big thing, and requires finding the time to write grants. But even a small gesture can go a long way. If you drive by Atkinson School in S.E. Portland, there are signs on the outside wall of the school saying welcome in 10 different languages. That sends a very clear, powerful message to the families. It needs to be backed up with action, but it’s a good first step.
STUDENT
EMILY RYAN
Emily Ryan has served on the Multnomah County Youth Commission, a youth advocacy group based in Portland, Oregon, for the past four years. By her own admission, Ryan was far from the typical youth commissioner—or the typical student—when she first joined the organization. Not many students serve on their high school student leadership committee, run for class president, earn letterman’s awards, graduate with honors, join the youth commission, and start college, while “couch surfing,” living in youth shelters, or occasionally on the street. Ryan, now 21 and a student at Portland Community College, has always had ambition and a desire to make a difference through political involvement, no matter what her living situation. Her passion and ambition have carried her through hard times and into a bright future. Never shy of a challenge, Ryan hopes to run for the Portland City Council in 2008. If elected, she would be the youngest person to serve on the council. If that doesn’t work out, she plans to head for journalism school.
When I was 16 I had some trouble in my family and eventually became homeless. I “couch-surfed,” went to shelters, things like that. I went in and out of programs while I was trying to finish high school. I went from psychologist to counselor to psychiatrist to family counselor. Between ages 16 and 18, I probably saw at least 20 different counselors. I had a nervous breakdown at the age of 18. I had a really bad stealing problem.
Eventually I checked myself into a mental hospital. I stayed there for a couple weeks and really thought about things. But it still took me a while to get things worked out. When I left there I started sleeping on the street and doing really random things, ending up in strange situations. That’s when I finally decided that there was a homeless youth system for people my age and I should take advantage of it. So I started going through the system. I lived for a year in a shelter and that helped me realize that this was definitely not the direction I wanted to be going in my life. Honestly, I think it was my own ambition that got me through. I kept looking to my parents and others for help, but I didn’t really get it. I did get a lot of help from friends and various people at the shelters, but it was my own drive to do something meaningful with my life that kept me going.
While I was living at Outside In transitional housing, I saw a flyer for the Multnomah County Youth Commission on their bulletin board. I thought it was a job, but even after I found out it was a volunteer position I was still interested. That was in the summer of 2003, and I was accepted as a youth commissioner for the following school year.
At 19, I was kind of a late bloomer with the youth commission. A lot of the other commissioners start at the beginning of high school, and there have even been a few middle school students. I came into it just out of high school. At first I was a little iffy about what I should be doing and who these people were, but over the years it’s grown on me. I always wanted to get involved politically. That started in high school. I was involved in student leadership my junior and senior years, and in my senior year I ran for student body president. I lost, but it was a great learning experience. It gave me the fuel I needed to move forward and get involved and become an activist.
Another step in that direction also came when I was 18. While living at Outside In I got an internship with U.S. Senator Ron Wyden’s office. I stayed in that office for about six months and then took another internship in his campaign office for three months. That fueled my hunger for change and political activism even more. So, by the time I got involved in the youth commission it felt like the perfect vehicle to put all my drives and ambitions into focus and to really make things happen.
One of the things I was passionate about, because of my experience with being homeless, was getting homeless young people involved in the system that supplies their services. Not as a recipient of those services, but as an active voice in developing policies and making decisions. It turned out that other people on the commission were interested in doing that as well, so my idea became a committee, one of six we had that year.
Heading the committee on homeless students really helped me develop my leadership skills. Eventually the committee started holding meetings in which we invited homeless youth to come in and discuss county government–related issues. The majority of the funding for the homeless youth continuum comes from the county. On that committee we had a staff person from each of the major homeless youth agencies in the county—New Avenues for Youth, Outside In, and Janus Youth Programs, and we had a representative from the county. So there was myself, a couple other youth commissioners, 10 to 15 homeless youth, and a couple staff members from the various agencies at each meeting. It was really intimidating at first, but it was an amazing confidence builder. I learned so much from that experience. Having the support of other young people who were interested in homeless youth issues really helped make my own political activism seem like a reality, like something that could actually bring about change. Although I saw the other side of that reality as well—how hard it can be to actually get things done.
Another great experience I’ve had on the commission was working on the Children and Youth Bill of Rights, which is currently run through the city, but will hopefully be adopted by the county in the future. The Bill of Rights was an initiative put forward by Portland Mayor Tom Potter, and the youth commission was really key in eventually getting it realized. It’s not a legally binding document, but it’s meant to be educational and to guide policy at the city, county, and even state level.
One thing I’m proud of is how we’ve helped change the commission in the past four years. We’ve tried to shift the committee structure from one of projects to one of policy, and the Bill of Rights is an example of that. Instead of addressing the root causes through different programs or projects we’re starting to address them by actually trying to change policy at the city and county level. Most of us thought, when we joined, that the commission was going to be about impacting government, but that hasn’t really been the case in the past. In my time on the commission we’ve tried to make that more of a reality—to make it an entity with a real political voice.
This is my last year on the commission. You have to be between the ages of 13 and 21, and I’ll be 22 this summer. I’ll probably continue to volunteer, but I won’t be a voting member. It has been a really positive, empowering experience. It helped provide some structure and an outlet for my political activism at a time of transition for me. And it’s helped set my direction for the future. Serving on the commission gave me the confidence to interact with adults in a political context—that I could stand side by side with them and help establish policy and create meaningful change. I think that’s an invaluable experience for a young adult to have. I know it helped me take a direction of empowerment and activism instead of one of alienation and cynicism, which would have been easy to do.
COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER
STEVE LEVY
Salma, a shy Somalian teen swathed in a head veil, haltingly reads the nonsensical lines of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham. Three months ago she was sitting in a refugee camp in Kenya rather than a high school cafeteria in Portland, Oregon. Just across from Salma, community volunteer Steve Levy offers gentle prompts. Two hours a day, four days a week, Levy helps newly arrived immigrants tackle reading, simple math, and the not-so-simple ways of living in a strange land.
I work primarily with seven Somali kids and to a lesser degree with two Burmese students, all of whom came to this country within the last two years. They arrived completely illiterate in their own language, so they could neither read nor write and they couldn’t add or subtract. I was literally teaching some of them to count three plus one on their fingers because they couldn’t do it in their heads. They didn’t have the concept of addition and there was no program here to deal with kids at that level.
The ESL classes at Cleveland High generally don’t have preliterate students. The teachers are teaching to the average level in the class. They can’t dumb down the class because there are two or three preliterate students when they have 12 or 15 that are much higher. So, these kids would tend to get lost. For some of them, their first year here in school was almost a waste.
I retired about 11 years ago from Bonneville Power Administration as a fish and wildlife manager. I don’t have children of my own and I had this urge to work with kids. My partner Sue, who teaches art here, connected me with a math teacher and I started tutoring in his class. But I realized my time could be better spent working with some of the ESL students. Initially it wasn’t just with the Somali kids but it ended up that way because the teachers don’t have time to give them the attention they need. It’s not the fault of the teachers, but the kids need so much one-on-one.
Everyone I’ve dealt with here—from the principal to the office staff to ESL teachers to the counselors—has welcomed me with open arms. The support has been unbelievable. We’ve got our own shelf in the library that they assigned to me. There’s a small selection of books that is appropriate for [these kids’] reading level and I have a collection of books I’ve acquired myself.
Most of the kids have no memories of Somalia at all. They’re Bantu, which is the lowest of the classes. Their ancestors were slaves who originally came from Mozambique and Tanzania and were only freed from slavery in the mid-1920s to late 1940s. When the civil war broke out in 1991, things got even worse for the Bantu and they fled to Kenya.
They have nothing. To see what these kids have come through ... all of them have seen family members die ... their attitudes, their humor, the life that’s in them is really inspiring in so many ways. It puts things in perspective for me.
Volunteerism is not done out of altruism. That’s part of it, but it’s not enough to motivate people to do things. I enjoy doing it; it gives me great satisfaction. The rewards are watching these kids learn, figuring out that g-i-a-n-t is “giant,” seeing them grow. I took Ismail downtown last Thursday so he could practice riding the bus and finding his way to the Upward Bound program. He went on for about five minutes talking about a movie he had just seen: the plot, the characters, how he liked it. It was very entertaining. He couldn’t have done that just a couple of months ago.
During school vacations I’ll often work with them in their apartment complex. Sometimes I’ll take them to a movie. Last summer, I took them hiking several times. So, we do a few things outside of school. I try to do these things for them because they have so many things to learn—all the ways of living in America.
I’m Jewish and the Talmud says something like “to save one life is to save the world.” You can send checks to Oxfam or UNICEF, but it never has the same connection as working with kids one-on-one. I can’t save all the kids in the refugee camps, but I can help these kids. You do what you can.
Could anybody do this? You bet. If you know how to read, there are kids in any school who could use your help. You fall in love with these kids and you get your reward by seeing their successes. You fall asleep at night feeling good about yourself. 
