We're all welcome here: inviting ideas to help teachers draw all families into the school community

Instructor, Oct, 2004 by Judy Molland

As a veteran second-grade teacher in Simi Valley, California, Christine Brown prided herself on making personal contact with every one of her students' parents. But when it came to Li, whose family had emigrated from China six years earlier, she drew a blank. Brown worried that although Li was doing well academically, he barely spoke to anyone in the classroom. At recess he sat under an old table in the corner of the schoolyard. As the little boy became increasingly withdrawn, Brown knew that she had to talk to his parents, but letters home, phone calls, and e-mails inviting them to come to school to meet with her brought no response.

Brown's dilemma is often all too familiar. On back-to-school night, a group of eager, involved parents and caregivers arrive, anxious to meet the new teacher and find out how best to help their child succeed. But while some parents become classroom regulars, others are conspicuously absent. In fact, they may never make contact at all--leaving teachers at a loss as to why.

There are numerous reasons behind parents' reluctance to come to school. In Li's case, Brown learned that many Chinese parents consider it inappropriate, even rude, to interfere with the running of the school. Recent immigrants may be insecure about their language skills and feel unable to negotiate the system. In other cases, parents work two or more jobs and don't have the time. Less-educated parents can be intimidated by the school environment. Single-parent families, adoptive parents, and gay parents may feel socially out of place. Just how can teachers make contact with these harder-to-reach families?

The good news is that all over the country, teachers have been finding innovative ways to make all families feel welcome. Some schools have created support groups, where parents and children with similar experiences can come together for sharing, strategizing, or just hanging out. Some teachers have found persistence, flexibility, and plain insistence can pay off with face-to-face parent meetings. Other schools have realized that their parents will never feel comfortable with the parent-teacher conference, and have created alternative venues. All of these strategies spring from teachers' common desire to become partners with parents and to honor their knowledge and wisdom.

Be Proactive

Martha Hakmaat, a health teacher at Packer Collegiate Institute, a middle school in Brooklyn, New York, feels strongly that it is up to each one of us to make our schools places where everyone feels welcome. "With parents who may not own the community, I find if I put myself out there as someone who wants to talk about the issues, parents find me, even parents of kids whom I don't teach," she says. "I ask how their children are doing in school. I'm active on the diversity committee, and I invite people to the meetings. I take risks."

Taking risks may be difficult for teachers in a less diverse school, but individual teachers can make a difference. For example, some teachers create bulletin boards that celebrate all the diverse families within the community. Curriculum, too, can reflect this diversity, with a discussion of family in a social studies unit including the many different experiences of family students may have. In this way, acceptance becomes an explicit part of students' experience.

Create Support Groups

While working with PreK children in Minneapolis, Eva Zygmunt-Fillwalk, assistant professor of elementary education at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, became interested in a growing, yet often-ignored, group--grandparents raising grandchildren. She decided to offer a space and time where these grandparents could meet and share their stories. "Many lamented the difficult work they faced at a time they thought they would be phasing into retirement," she says. "They benefited tremendously from one another's support."

Zeny Muslin, diversity coordinator at Bank Street School for Children in New York, used support groups to broaden the concept of diversity within the school. "It doesn't refer only to racial differences," she explains, "but to everything that makes us different from other people around us: ethnicity, gender, religion, class, family structure, sexual orientation, physical ability, and learning styles."

Bank Street has created several parent groups: an Adopted Families Group, the Gay and Lesbian Families Group, the Parents of Children of Color, and the Learning Styles Group. These groups meet regularly to share their experiences and their concerns for their children. "When an issue comes up," says Muslin, "sometimes the next step is teacher training." As a member of Parents of Kids of Color, Dan Schultz explains: "One of the parents was worried that academic expectations for his son were not as high as for the white students. The group enabled him to voice this issue, which was then brought to the attention of the dean."

Richard Lee, a fifth-grade teacher at Bank Street, is excited about how this has helped him professionally. "It's a two-way process, and provides a great benefit to teachers," he says. "We hear the parents' concerns, and also inform ourselves as a staff by seeing what the research says about any of these issues. Then we work at integrating our findings into the curriculum." Parents who might otherwise feel excluded instead find peer support and begin to take ownership in the school.