Yes you can

I had a really good talk with a very involved Unit 4 parent today and we spent a bit of time dancing around the topic of advocacy. One of the things we discovered during our conversation is that the only reason why we have this need for advocacy in the first place is because the system and society that we live in right now has power structures that are oppressive (and history tells us that this has been going on for a long long time); by “oppressive” I mean that the voice of dissent is consistently and systematically squashed. What confuses me is why the masses continue to abide by this twisted reality, why we accommodate it and thus permit it. I know, you are thinking that the nature of oppression in the first place is to basically make sure the status quo is maintained, enslaving the will of those oppressed and thereby to force accommodation. To rape one’s sense of being and worth.

 

But we don’t have to accommodate at all. We can speak out against it. And in fact, I think we have a moral obligation to do so.

 

You think I am being melodramatic – I can tell by the way you are itching to move on to the next thing. Bear with me a moment more. I heard a story of a child who was uncomfortable with the “inappropriate” play of another child. The first child told the attending teacher and nothing happened. The child then went to the next level (someone higher) and things started happening (good for the first child, not so good for the second). The child has learned an important lesson of advocating for self; a pretty rare trait in one so young, but a very crucial one to learn none-the-less. I heard another story of a young girl who witnessed a friend being bullied. Filled with indignation, she told the bullies to stop and walked her friend away from the situation. This was a powerful story of advocating for someone else; she saw something was wrong and could not abide by it, but was compelled to make the situation right.

 

Frequently I hear of parents who struggle to successfully and satisfactorily engage the system of our public schools. Please note, I do hear many success stories as well – the change in Unit 4 since the beginning of 2012 has been significant, even if subtle. Yet there are still those cases where parents, or even other stakeholders, attempt to assail the walls of bureaucracy only to be rebuffed and thrown back. In such cases I want to implore you not to give up. I want to shout “Yes you can!”. You say you are but one person. Yes, I know, so am I.

“We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.”

– attributed to Mother Teresa

 

If something is not right, if something is objectionable or just plain wrong, say something about it. And don’t stop until

one of my goals for next year: winning the PTA Family Engagement Award

I have an RSS feed for the Illinois and National PTA facebook pages, and in the past few weeks have seen announcements about this effort (with a nice incentive) to engage families:

http://www.pwrnewmedia.com/2012/national_pta/family_engagement/index.html

To be frank, for me it is not about the money; rather it is setting a goal and trying to achieve it. And I think, from what I have read so far, that this might be a worthy goal. So I put this out there for all you critics (and cynics *grin*) – please feel free to rip this apart, I only ask that you be honest and maybe even objective.

Another grant/award out there that is very similar is the “Take Your Family to School Week” (mentioned briefly a little whle back). Very similar, I think, although perhaps a little less permanent, or a little less deep.

One of the things I want to do is follow-up and see what happened afterwards; after the balloons deflated, after the confetti was all swept up, after all the chairs were put away. What kind of impact are the winners (and runner-ups) having throughout the year? What good examples and lessons can we extract?

A disturbing trend

Saw this on the PTA Facebook wall/page:

http://www.onlinedigitalpubs.com/article/Education+Means+Business/915569/0/article.html

 

I commented on the facebook page itself (how do you link to a specific Facebook post?); I am not a big fan of churning out students for the sake of increasing industry. In fact, I am very bothered by it. We suffer from so many problems, our national competitive edge is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

What boggles my mind is the two completely different angles the article takes. The first half is all “rah! rah! let’s pump kinds into tech-heavy jobs” while the second half is about community, about questioning “tradition” and engendering a “let’s work together on solving social issues” attitude. Perhaps I have my polarized glasses on and am reading with a bias?

systemstate dump (aka, flushing out my head)

Over the past week or so, I have been reading and searching (is that called researching?). I am a bit overwhelmed and so for the sake of my own sanity, I am going to dump it all right here in a post. I apologize up front if this is in a format that is hard to consume.

Warning: Clicking “read more” may give you a link-heavy wall-of-text.

Unit 4 releases the Fall 2011 Handbook

re: http://www.champaignschools.org/files/district_handbook.pdf

This thing weighs in at 73 pages. Going to take a while to read and digest the tome. Here are some observations gleaned simply by skimming:

• “Quality Two-Way Communication: Hundreds of volunteers work with Unit 4 students each year as mentors, tutors, and guest speakers, as well as providing classroom support. Ad hoc committees allow parents and community members to provide input into district-wide programs in areas like attendance and discipline. Each campus has a Building Council that includes parent representation, and strong PTA/PTSA groups offer support for students and staff. A Key Communicator Network (KCN) provides community members the opportunity for direct dialogue with the Superintendent about issues of interest.” (p 5)
• Listing of BOE members w/ contact information (pp 7-8)
• “Unit 4 is committed to transparency and responsiveness. News and information are posted and clearly labeled on our website for your convenience. We have over 10,000 pages of information for the community, parents, and staff members and strive each day to communicate effectively” (p 10)
• A mere two paragraphs for Schools of Choice (p 21)
• Educational goals – very ambitious (which is good) (pp 23-24)
• Almost 8 pages devoted to health information (pp 35-43)
• About 6 pages for discipline (pp 47-53)
• 3 paragraphs for the PTA, followed by 2 more paragraphs for other community engagement (pp 67-68)

 

I’ll have to come back to this later. A part of me is wondering what a “bottom-up” handbook would look like.

No Child Held Back

Victor Rivero recently wrote an EdTech article about moving away from NCLB. Interesting timing, eh?

 

So this is just a little strange for me. I feel like http://www.nochildheldback.com reflects a lot of the conversations that I have already been having. Except these guys take it to the next level and bring in people who know what they are talking about. The major downside is that I don’t see any conversations on the website. I see “Join the conversation”, but no conversation. It’s very much like walking into the Grand Opening of a store and all the shelves are bare. I see “Take action” but no actionable steps to be taken.

 

Here is another strange thing.

Wednesday Open Forums at Houlihans

Just another OPEN invitation to join us for some OPEN discussion concerning Unit 4. I have invited a few more folks (via personal invitations), but I have no idea if they are coming or not. I hope they do, but they are busy individuals. We have no set agenda for tomorrow (hence, OPEN), but I would like to talk about something other than WordPress, Facebook and PTA websites if possible.

Last week we talked about PTA websites a bit. And we had some really good discussions. We covered the pros and cons of Facebook (ease-of-use and ubiquity vs security and lack of certain features like tracking conversations and static content), as well as things we are looking for in a PTA website. Basically, we prioritize:

1. low maintenance and sustainable
2. central updates; the ability to update one thing and have it propagate to all appropriate outlets (ie, admin email to PTA website which automatically goes to Facebook)
3. Attractive look and feel
4. low cost

I realize this sounds rather Utopian. But

Today’s Wednesday Forum at Houlihans

I started the ball rolling on getting an official “Tech Committee” up by sending out an email to those identified in each PTA as a “tech person”. Today at least two PTA members, possibly four, will be joining us at Houlihans. NOTE: We are meeting at 12:30 today to accommodate schedules. This is a special time change, but may become more regular if folks want.

 

Again, the gathering is open to the public. We will most likely talk about PTAs and websites today, but don’t let that discourage you. I am still on the look out for more teachers to join us. And in the back of my head, I am still chewing on ideas of going to other locations to attract different folks.

Is your PTA online?

I gave myself a mission to contact PTA “webmasters”, and frankly I am disappointed that most schools have absolutely no information about their respective PTA, much less how to find them online. I am scratching my head trying to figure this out. I can understand that PTAs are simply volunteers, and it is entirely possible that most do not know how to generate a webpage (even though there are wide array of tools to help with this). The bigger issue, I think, is that Unit 4 does not make this easy at all. Unit 4 gives the “keys” of the PTA page to the school principal – if the principal has any free time whatsoever (a rare occurrence, I am sure *grin*), what are the chances they are also quite web-savvy and know how to get their PTA online? Of the few schools that have information on their PTA page, some have no links, email addresses and/or phone numbers. Makes it really hard to contact folks like that.

 

My self-appointed mission? To make it a ton easier to get PTA information in a webpage. Heck, I would even volunteer to pop up a very basic page for each school. The tricky part is ongoing sustainability, and teaching all the right people the steps they have to go through. Ideally, I would want to remove the PTA information out from under the principals domain; I am confused why that is set up that way. As part of that, I would encourage PTA folks to use a 3rd party site (not champaignschools.org). Unit 4 is joining up with IlliniCloud, and I have hopes (and designs) to get them to host more stuff for us. If that falls through, there is always the IMC, and I can donate some space as well.

 

Some schools have some nice stuff setup already. Some are using facebook, at least one is using tumblr, several are using Google Groups (and even Google Sites), a couple utilize u4friends.org (I have a mail to Mr. G David Fyre about that), and one seems to be run by a colleague at work (small world, eh?). I had a great meeting with Maeve Reilly last Friday; she is currently helping the Centennial PTA and has inherited a Google Sites/Groups setup. I also got her going on a Facebook Page. It is great that parent volunteers are stepping up to the plate. But why are each of us re-designing the wheel? Why is there so little apparent support from the schools? Keep in mind, I have a limited perspective on this – most assuredly, I am receiving a lot of support from our school. But system-wide, I see very little support.

 

More to follow.

Follow-up to Family Engagement

This started out as a comment, but it made more sense to promote it to a full-blown post.

re: http://champaignunit4.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/family-engagement/

Unfortunately, I did not find the documents I was looking for. But I did stumble upon a host of other research; in particular, a partnership between PTA and the Harvard Family Research Project. This site is actually quite amazing, if rather dry and dull to read. Here are two papers I have read recently:

• Seeing is Believing
• Data Systems transform Family Engagment (Chicago)

As I think about it, the argument is not whether or not Family Engagement is worthwhile or important, but rather “What can we do about it?” How do you engage families from very diverse backgrounds, whether they are a dual-income, ultra-professional, busy-all-the-time family or a single parent working two or more jobs just to put food on the table?

The only thing that comes to mind is community partnerships. Where those that have the time and resources can help engage children of parents that do not have the time and resources (or choose to spend them elsewhere). It’s not a blame game, but rather, how can we all work together to help us all be better.

Personally, I do not find it hard at all to blame the values of our society for our current economic and political morass. Which should be clear from the first post.

So what next?

We have to accept that the current system is broken. Yes, there are some good things about it, so let us identify and hang on to that which is favorable. For instance, we have some ties to the University in our backyard – they send over students to interact with our children for Fun Days, Carnivals, Tutoring and mentoring. We benefit from some of the research (Dr. Mark Aber comes to mind). We also have the Champaign Urbana Schools Foundation which organizes generous gifts and incentives to reward outstanding individuals. We have lots of amazing folks striving mightily to reach the needs of our children. But the brokenness is clearly demonstrated by such symptoms as poorly attended forums, board meetings and PTA.

After that, we have to be serious about reform. In some ways, I wonder if it would behoove us to obliterate the school district (the burdensome policies especially) and start from scratch. When thinking about reform, it is way too tempting to think about our limits, to be trapped inside the box of “that’s how we have always done it”. Want a practical step? Bring back “Great Schools, Together” with a passion. Breathe new life into it. It had a lot of potential at the beginning. Tie that in with Imani Bazzell’s work with “Great Campus”. Both efforts have shown that we have a tremendous amount of skilled and intelligent people who really want to see Unit 4 thrive. Why are we not tapping into them?

Empower school principals and teachers to be the face of the school district. Do not saddle them with rituals, policies and rules that create busywork. Hire somebody else to do that. Even in the context of online information – why are local schools burdened with coming up with their own PTA web resources? And to carry that further, why does the district not have a webmaster who is in touch with the latest technology? The public needs to know they can reach out and connect to school officials (email, website, phone, snail mail, face to face) and be confident that they are heard.

Finally, the idea of “Board Meetings” needs to be revamped. I understand that the district has business to do, and that there are many many many hours devoted to keeping the system running. But the BOE members and public-facing staff are overwhelmed with “business”, which saps their time, energy and strength from being public-facing. Streamline the business so it happens like clockwork, and devote more time to engaging the community. Lynn Peisker has done a good job putting a pretty face on Unit 4, and Sue Grey has started to put grit into the words of improving that image – in a way, they are working backwards and trying to draw the public in. This is a good approach, and I sincerely hope it works, but at some point their efforts are going to hit the brick wall of District Business.

Which is where a new Superintendent comes into play. We have to be clear about our priorities as a community. We have to want Family Engagement and Communication to near the top of the list. In fact, I personally would place those two values much higher than School Performance – in my mind, performance follows engagement like night following day. We have to make sure that we reject (actively, vehemently) any candidate that does not match our criteria and do whatever we can to grab hold of the one who does.

Ok now I am rambling. More to follow. Later.

Family Engagement

“Family Engagement” is hitting me from three separate but related angles today. Again, a little link heavy this time. And a sorta long read. Sorry.

One Voice/PTA

One Voice has a PTANewsRoom blog post; they reference a recent PTA article highlighting a new bill introduced that emphasizes Family Engagement (Family Engagement in Education Act of 2011 (S.941/H.R.1821)). A lot to read (and I need to go over it again), but these points stuck out to me:

• “The bill would provide incentives to districts and schools to implement best practices, such as parent leadership academies, place family engagement coordinators in schools, and provide professional development for educators on how to partner with families.”
• “The Family Engagement in Education Act would also strengthen the sole federal program dedicated to parent engagement, the Parental Information and Resource Centers (PIRCs), to scale-up research-based strategies for engaging families.”

I would want to read the Bill at some point (I hate reading long-winded treatises written in the Legalese language), but right off the bat I wonder how those incentives would play out. I mean, it certainly sounds like a great idea. Right? But let’s take a look at PIRCs – have those been successful in enticing and encouraging parent’s to “join hands” with the school districts? What about schools that already have strong parental support? Is there a way to focus on schools (especially communities) that would benefit from providing incentives?

I am a big huge proponent of family involvement, and I have already put my support in action in various ways. My whole family is involved at Carrie Busey, and we constantly try to reach out to other parents. Last month, we sent out an invitation to meet with families that were not able to attend PTA meetings in an effort to provide an opportunity for them to voice their thoughts and opinions in a safe place of their choosing, at a time more convenient to them. Only one person responded. You cannot force people to get more involved. However, despite my own experience, I think it is crucial and imperative to not give up.

News-Gazette

The online NG put out two Jodi Heckel articles articles today (1,2) talking about the superintendent search. The first one focuses more on the company the school district intends to hire (narrowing it down to two candidates), the second more about how the school district is seeking input from the community. In my opinion, Sue Grey is being much more vocal about seeking community input than the previous BOE president, and I dearly hope this translates into a BOE that is seen as being more receptive and responsive. In fact, Sue Grey comes right out in what will probably be one of the most quoted phrases for quite some time, “We really feel like we need to — for lack of better terms — shut up and listen.” I view this as a good thing. And I am glad she is the one who said it, because a number of folks (myself included) feel this way. And have a hard saying it in such a way that it does not automatically put the BOE on the defensive.

ChambanaMoms.org

Last, but definitely not least by any means, Laura Bleill posted a thoughtful article that encapsulates the unique opportunities open to us. The school chief search is but the tip of the iceberg, and what better time to set a high precedent? I’ll quote one of Laura’s statements:

Champaign Unit 4 has an image problem, pure and simple. And the school assignment process is not the only reason for that — but it is a big part of it.

But instead of quoting the whole thing left and right, you really ought to read it yourself.

http://www.chambanamoms.com/2011/05/13/superintendentsearch/

So let me add two more sections, my own reactions to these three stimuli. I will talk about the “Why?” and the “How?”

WHY?

Why is Family Engagement so important? Why is it popping up, why are members of the legislature introducing a Bill on it? It goes way beyond getting better grades (which inevitably helps everyone feel good, but that is besides the point). I believe, as touted by those quoted in the PTA articles, that when parent’s help plug in with their kids, the kids become better people. Better kids lead to better communities. Over the past several years, I have read several articles and seen research that supports this, so I am making a note to myself to collect these references and post them here. Because I hate it when people make broad statements and follow it up with “research shows” and yet they do not show research. A quick search on google will show an astounding number of papers and bibliographies, but I am not quickly finding the ones I have read. If I have not read them, I cannot exactly tell you what I think of them.

So anyway….  I firmly believe that when the community as a whole comes together (to work together), they implicitly and explicitly benefit the whole. When we all work towards improving our children, we also sow the seeds for long-term community health. This sounds Utopian, some sort of pipe dream – who wouldn’t want that? It is not so much that we do not want improved communities, but rather that our American culture has so permeated our livelihoods that we unconsciously seek the “American Dream” in all aspects of our lives. So much so that we have placed Independence (financial, emotional, etc) on a pedestal and “I want what is best for my child” is our mantra.

HOW?

I have to confess, I do not have an answer for this. In fact, I do not think there is an answer that would fit in a small book, let a lone a humble blog post. I have traded emails with Elizabeth Perrachione (one of the professionals who helped to give birth to Great Schools, Together) about engaging the community; we have a diverse community, and the challenge with reaching out to such a community is that one must be aware of how each wants to be reached out to. And they differ quite a bit. I am in touch with the blogging and online crowd. But there are lots of other groups, classes, cultures and interests out there.

Part of it, I think, is working against the negative aspects of the pervasive “American Dream”. To engage a community, I believe we have to acknowledge our brokenness, to be willing to show how we are weak and need help. Actually, this not merely counter to the American Dream, but human nature. Period. The other side of it is acknowledging the worth that each person has, and making sure that the message of worth is communicated by listening (really listening, not just the “uh huh” every 43 seconds). Which is why I am so thrilled that Sue Grey was so blunt in her quote. I look forward to the community being able to say that to each other as well.

In conclusion, I will say that I have met with a small team (VERY small), and we are hoping to fire up some community forums in the very near future. Real community forums, where you all get to talk. One of my goals is that we get to model what we have been hoping Unit 4 would do. Ironically, if what Sue Grey and Laura Bleill are saying comes to fruition in the very near future, perhaps the community forums will start to happen at the behest of the BOE. That would actually be a very good thing.

Your homework assignment tonight (??) is to list the various groups in our community (along whatever lines you like) and how to engage them.