Location

Heritage Elementary School
440 Parr Road
Woodburn, Oregon 97071

Contact

Kathy Larson, Principal
Ricardo Marquez, Assistant Principal
Phone: 503-981-2850
E-mail: klarson@woodburn.k12.or.us and rmarquez@woodburn.k12.or.us

Using Language and Culture To Create Family Connections

Heritage is located in the small downtown area of Woodburn, Oregon, halfway between Portland and Salem. The town has been traditionally rural and agriculturally based, although the economy is diversifying to include small businesses such as an outlet store mall. Of the school's 686 K–5 students, 57 percent speak Spanish as their native language, 30 percent speak Russian, and 12 percent speak English. The Russian families are from two cultural backgrounds—recent immigrants and Old Believers, who have lived in Woodburn since the 1950s, and speak an older Russian dialect. This diversity has created wonderful opportunities for teachers to incorporate home culture and language into the school culture.

At Heritage Elementary families are involved in their children's learning activities inside and outside the classroom. Staff members are using research-based recommended strategies to engage families of all backgrounds. As the research mentioned earlier indicates, family involvement activities linked to specific knowledge and skill goals have a greater effect on student achievement than more general activities, and engaging families from diverse cultures requires a respect and attention to cultural differences. Heritage Elementary does both.

Schoolwide Family Involvement Plan

Heritage's School Council, which has several family members, developed the schoolwide plan in which each student performance expectation and academic goal area is tied to a family involvement component. For example, to meet the academic goal area—"Improve English proficiency of English Language learners"— a parent focus group is held to explain the school's English transition program. To ensure that families know how well their children are meeting these goals, they receive achievement data for each goal area.

The plan also focuses on the continuous improvement and evaluation of family involvement strategies. Principal Kathy Larson knows how important it is to continually reassess the level of parent involvement and to assess whether certain strategies are creating enough opportunities for families to get the information they want, and enough opportunities for them to participate in their children's learning. For the past several years, the faculty has hosted parent information nights, with the information presented in their home language. While this was effective in bringing many parents into the school, says Larson, over the years fewer and fewer families attended these meetings, and there was little feedback on whether the meetings were helpful, and how they could be better.

Family Focus Groups

To determine what information they needed, families were surveyed in the spring of 2002, and focus groups were created to answer families' questions. A schedule was created for the 2003–2004 year, in which focus groups on these specific topics are held. Four focus groups are planned for the year, along with a back-to-school night in September, and a family arts night in June. During the focus groups, the participants have the opportunity to ask questions, and break into language groups to work on the same learning activities that their children do in school. This is so families will be able to help their child with the activities at home.

Support of Native Language Development

One reason for families' high level of interest in participating in family focus groups and other activities is the school's support of native language development and retention. The English Transition Program places students who score low on English language assessments in classes where initial instruction is in their native language (Spanish or Russian). As students progress through each grade, they gradually receive decreased instruction in the native language and more instruction using sheltered English techniques. In first grade, 80 percent of instruction is in the native language and by fifth grade students are receiving 50 percent in their native language. The goal is for students who exit the program after fifth grade to be as proficient in English as their peers who are native English speakers. Students spend homeroom periods together so they have the opportunity to speak English with others and meet children outside their language group. Teachers and parents say this is effective for accelerating language development and gives "students a feeling of being more integrated in the entire school."

Class Projects Involving Families

Along with language, family and community culture is incorporated into the classroom in a variety of meaningful ways, and families are encouraged to be teaching partners on projects and standards-based activities.

Spanish language kindergarten teacher Evelyn Kiraly uses a project that bridges learning goals, language, culture, and families. The goal of her Value Your Language project is to connect activities that develop reading, writing, and oral language skills with the student's cultural background. Another goal is for children to conduct interviews, a component of the schoolwide inquiry study. Families receive a work plan about the project and are invited to participate by the teacher and children. Kiraly explains what the family's contribution will be in a letter that accompanies the project.

Each week students take home a cultural/fairy tale book from the library. At home they follow a chart that suggests an activity for each day to do with their family that would interact with the book. For example, for reading strategies they answer who, what, where, when, and why questions about the story. An adult must sign each activity after they are completed. Using a book called Classroom Interviews by Paula Rogovin (1998) as a guide, the children conducted interviews with their parents at the school to find out more information about their family origin. The children and teacher wrote the questions they wanted to ask and practiced techniques through role play.

Family members come to the classroom on different days and share stories, music, recipes, games, history of their native culture, and books that they create with their child at home. Says Kiraly, "The children recognize how parents can teach them like real teachers."

The project culminates with a celebration to which parents are invited. "Last year this was the most exciting part of the project for everyone. A few parents took a real interest in preparing for the final presentation," remarked Kiraly. One father taught students a poem about moms called "El so de Mayo," and a mother taught a dance called "la Raspa." The boys dressed up in white trousers and hats, and the girls dressed up in identical flowery skirts.

Kiraly believes that this project is successful because parents and the teacher work together to identify meaningful writing, reading, and oral learning experiences that were built on cultural and language values of Spanish-speaking families, with full family involvement. Principal Larson indicates that other classes will be using certain aspects of the project, such as using interviews as a fulcrum for inquiry-based learning and having parents be teachers in the home and in the classroom. Says Larson, "A great benefit for the kids is that they realized their parents are a wealth of information about their culture."

Conclusion

The focus on standards-based education that incorporates native language development, culture, and family partnerships has shown results. In 2001 Heritage Elementary was named one of the nation's exemplary bilingual education programs in a study by the Intercultural Development Research Association (Montecel & Cortez, 2001). IDRA rigorously and methodically studied Heritage and nine other exemplary bilingual programs across the nation as determined by limited English proficient students' academic achievement. The study identified 25 common characteristics that contributed to the high performance of these students. Parent involvement is one of the indicators of success for bilingual programs.

IDRA notes in its profile of Heritage Elementary School that the "integration of community culture and school lifestyle makes an enormous impression on the parents and stimulates them to contribute to their children's school and become involved in their children's success." A Russian parent who was interviewed for the study said that children are motivated to learn Russian so they can speak to their non-English speaking grandparents, and that they are not embarrassed to be speaking Russian because they use it at home. The report also concludes that the high level of family involvement is crucial to the school's success, even as many families have migrant lifestyles. Russian and Hispanic families have said that "volunteering is second only in importance to the teacher's involvement in assuring the success of the program" (Montecel & Cortez, 2001).

Tips for Success

Larson shared with us several tips for her success in involving families:

• Ask yourself when developing activities, "What is the purpose for this parent activity?" Tie your activities in with goals for student learning or another outcome.
• Use multiple ways of communication. Find out what medium parents prefer to use. Many in our community use cable-access television. We can videotape focus group meetings and put them on cable to provide information to a greater number of families. Also, don't assume that certain families will not have a computer (and find out who does).
• Provide all teachers with means to communicate with families including e-mail access and a phone.
• Be aware of time challenges and try to develop solutions to such problems as how teachers will be compensated for their time at parent focus groups, and how scheduling conflicts can be solved so more parents can attend the groups.
• Recognize that families can participate in projects in different ways, and involve families as much as they can be involved. For example, if a family member is hesitant about being interviewed, you might suggest a less intimidating location or have them bring along another family member.