Location

Fairbanks North Star Borough School District
520 5th Avenue
Fairbanks, Alaska 99701

Contact

Riki Sipe, Director of Federal Programs
E-mail: rsipe@northstar.k12.ak.us
Shannon Sinclair, Title III Staff Development Coordinator
Phone: 907-452-2000
E-mail: ssinclair@northstar.k12.ak.us

Parent Mentors Create Bridge Between Schools and Bilingual Families

Fairbanks North Star Borough School District has a diverse student body—60 languages are spoken in 33 schools. Almost 10 percent of the borough's population is Alaska Native; 8 percent of students are English language learners.

The Parent Mentor Program provides new parents with a parent mentor who speaks their language and orients them to the school building and staff. One of the main functions of the parent mentor is to check in with new families on a weekly basis and see how things are going. When families cannot be reached by phone, the mentors visit their homes. If there is an attendance problem, for example, parent mentors tell families that they miss the child and ask if there is anything they can do to help. Parent mentors provide positive, welcoming outreach services in many other ways, as well: they are on hand to welcome families as they drop off and pick up their children from school; they meet children as they get off the bus; they send out greeting cards, invitations to meetings, and other communications to bilingual families; they call absentee children; and they participate in meetings and conferences as interpreters. The duties and function of mentors vary depending on the school and the structure the principal creates. One principal has created a structure for the mentor and specific tasks like keeping a journal and keeping track of parent contacts. A parent resource specialist coordinates the program and helps the mentors with any concerns and questions.

Nancy Castillo, a parent resource specialist at James B. Ryan Middle School, emphasizes to mentors the importance of taking the time to build trust. "When I oriented the parent mentors to the role, I told them that the most important thing they can do is to treat families like I treat you—with respect." A simple thing Castillo and all the mentors do is make communications personal—either by handwriting notes on printed flyers, making phone calls, or paying home visits. "The children love to see us in their own communities," Castillo says.

Carmen Fernandez, a Spanish-speaking parent mentor, discusses one of the breakthroughs she had with a parent on one of her home visits. "The first two times we visited her home, we talked through the door, because the mother was ashamed that she didn't have furniture. A third time, she invited us in for coffee and we talked about how important it is for her son to be in school. From that day on, she has come to school every day to make sure her son is there. She also makes sure his homework is in on time."

Fernandez said this incident really made her realize the impact that talking directly with a family can have. Yelena Linse, a parent mentor who speaks Russian, talks about how thankful a Russian parent was when Linse contacted her and started speaking her native language. She had many questions and Linse was able to provide her with a list of helpful agencies. Linse even offered to go with the parent to help.

Family communication always begins as positive and welcoming, so that if there is a problem down the road that needs to be communicated, a positive relationship between the mentor and family has already been established. Parents are encouraged to contact mentors if they have questions or concerns throughout the year. Mentors also encourage other parents to volunteer at the school. Sometimes mentors watch other parents' children in the parent resource room while those parents volunteer.

Lucy Glora, who was a Spanish-speaking parent mentor, was recently hired to be the bilingual secretary for the district's Title III office. She explains that she was motivated to become a parent mentor because she remembers how it felt to be new to the district and to be frustrated that the teachers could not speak her language. "Now I want to help other families who don't speak English—I understand how they feel."

Mary Mathis, another Spanish-speaking parent mentor, explains that her most important role is to put families at ease and orient them to the school. One of the first things she does for new families is to introduce them to the teachers and principal. "I say to the families, I am here to help you, interpret for you, and if I can't help you, I will find another staff person who can." Mathis also makes phone calls home to families on teachers' behalf, to invite them to a school function, for example. "This works better that just sending a flier home, which could get lost." Mathis also encourages families to help their children as much as they can with learning. She offers some suggestions to school staff members on how they can be more welcoming to families who don't speak English:

• Make sure that families can visit the school at times that are convenient for them.
• Be aware that your body language and facial expressions are important to parents' first impressions of the school.
• Your smile as they come through the door will put them more at ease in a potentially intimidating environment.
• Introduce new families to the principal.

Although the program was at first funded by Title I money, now it is funded primarily from Title III (limited English proficient) dollars and a Development and Implementation Grant, so parent mentors work at both Title I and non-Title I schools. Because of budget cuts, parent mentors this year work fewer than 20 hours a week. Although the parent mentors provide orientations to all new families in the district, there are only some schools that have mentors, so they are very busy. In previous years, parent mentors were trained to be certified translators and regularly translated enrollment forms and family communications into several languages. Because No Child Left Behind stipulates that districts implement an effective means of outreach to parents of limited English proficient children and provide information such as individual achievement on state assessments in an "understandable format," these parent mentors serve a very important purpose. Now, the state is attempting to have uniform statewide forms translated into at least 15 languages, so mentors can spend their time doing more outreach activities.

"One challenge to this program," says Sipe, "has been finding parents who are bilingual, willing to work less than 15 hours a week, and feel comfortable with the school environment themselves, and who are able to take a leadership role to be able to help others who feel less comfortable and intimidated."

Family Workshops

In addition to the parent mentor program, the grant also funds workshops for families to assist in providing educational enrichment at home. The workshops are open to all parents, but families that have children in the ELL program are specifically invited.

The district has offered many workshops for parents: family math, math games, Raising Your Child Bilingual, and Make and Take workshops. The Make and Take workshops have been especially successful in engaging parents. Teachers from around the district demonstrate an activity they can use at home. After the demonstrations, teachers go around to centers and help families create a learning tool. Some examples of activities last year were:

• Bean bag toss math game in which the families sewed their own bean bags and put numbers 0–9 on 10 plastic cups that are held together with popsicle sticks
• Tactile phonics board for preschool and kindergarten children created with colored hair gel, zippered plastic bags, and squarecut cardboard
• Electroboards that can be used for almost any content with tag board, electrical wire, brass fasteners, and continuity testers that light up when the correct connection is made
• Laminated graphic organizers that are blank on one side and have examples on the other side, so that kids can fill them in with dry erase markers and wipe them off when they are finished
• Portfolios for children to collect and organize their best school work with stickers and colored papers to decorate them
• Flip chute made with a milk carton that kids decorated to use when they are working with flash cards

Shannon Sinclair, the Title III Staff Development Coordinator says that mailing out flyers, the usual avenue to get families involved in workshops, wasn't working. "We tried a couple different things, such as having workshops at a school rather than the district office, and providing workshops for the whole family, rather than just parents." Sending translated invitations to families, posting flyers at schools, and having parent mentors and ELL tutor instructors give flyers to families are other strategies that have worked to increase attendance.

As families began to attend the workshops more frequently, they were asked to fill out a needs assessment to find out how workshops could be made more useful and how to encourage more families to attend. From these results, the days of the workshops were adjusted, and continued to offer activities for children while parents were learning, or activities that families could do together. Another important finding of the survey, says Sinclair, was to be sure to include food at the workshops!