Roosevelt Elementary School: Putting the FAMILY in Family Engagement
Ginger Glass is always moving. In a single hour, she might call multiple organizations and convince them to donate prizes and food for her parent workshops, lead a parent meeting, cheer up a crying child, secretly plan an elaborate celebration for the graduates of her parent workshop program, talk on the phone to the principal about safety protocols, and joke with parents about her famous chili—and this is just a typical hour in a typical day.
Ms. Glass works at Roosevelt Elementary School as a School Improvement Support Liaison, or SISL (commonly pronounced “sizzle”). SISLs are required positions in all Turnaround Network schools, and they often focus on family and community engagement. The SISL title hardly begins to describe what Ms. Glass does, however.
In February, Ms. Glass held one of her regular parent workshop sessions, which she hosts in Roosevelt’s Parent Resource Room every Tuesday and Thursday. Because this particular day was Valentine’s Day, Ms. Glass had a slew of special activities lined up for parents and students alike.
The day started off with a presentation and workshop by Methodist Services on “parenting the strong-willed child.” Methodist Services conducts support classes and runs a 12-week parenting course at the school. During the February 14 class, parents created vision boards, cutting up catalogue and magazine images to build a collage representing their hopes and dreams.
As they selected beautiful images and inspiring words from the likes of Cooking Light and O the Oprah Magazine, the parents and grandparents in attendance casually joked about and caught up on the day-to-day moments of their lives, like the latest corner store drama and their children’s classes.
“One of the things I love about this group is that everyone cares for each other,” Ms. Glass said. The group takes care of each other and one another’s children.
Authentic Family Engagement
Many of the parents and grandparents present at the day’s workshop echoed Ms. Glass’s sentiment. Delena Wallace is a parent new to the school this year. Her two sons used to attend Catholic school, where she often felt left out of decision-making and did not notice any genuine efforts to engage families.
Since switching to public school at Roosevelt Elementary last fall, Ms. Wallace has noticed a stark difference in the way the school interacts with parents. At Roosevelt, she has always felt valued and well-informed about the goings-on of the school.
“I want to know where my kids are,” she said. “It’s a mom thing.” The staff at Roosevelt constantly communicates with Ms. Wallace about her children’s progress, and she feels that they sincerely care about the students.
“Principal Hayes is never in his office,” she added. Instead, the principal—who is in his first year at Roosevelt—spends his days out in the hallways and classrooms, getting to know students. “He’s very hands-on with the kids,” Ms. Wallace noted.
Stephanie Milburn, a mother of a first and third grader at Roosevelt, shares the same pride in the quality of teaching at the school. “My opinion: I like this school,” she asserted. “If there’s something that my kids are struggling with, they let me know.”
Beyond having positive interactions with the staff at the school, Roosevelt families feel that their voices are genuinely being heard and taken into consideration. Ms. Wallace noted that at many schools, staff simply “write things down and nothing happens.”
Roosevelt, however, is different. “I like that I can put my ideas in the school,” she said. This school year, Ms. Glass and Principal Matthew Hayes started a School Advisory Council so that families can share their thoughts and ideas for school improvement in an organized way.
“When people see what you’re doing and see that you care, they’ll want to help out too,” Ms. Glass explained.
A Parent Group that Doubles as a “Family”
A large part of Ms. Wallace’s positive family engagement experience at Roosevelt has been Ms. Glass’s parent workshops. “There’s a lot of love here, and understanding,” Ms. Wallace remarked. “This room here—this is like my third family. My real family, my church family, and this.”
As Ms. Wallace spoke about her appreciation of the school and the parent workshops, the parents around her erupted into a playful argument about the virtues of different types of cake mixes. “I’m an only child. So stuff like this,” she gestured, laughing, at her bickering friends, “I never had this! I love this!”
Ms. Milburn echoed Ms. Wallace’s view of the group: “They’re like my family,” she said, to which a parent sitting next to her responded firmly, “Yes.”
Patricia Milburn—Stephanie Milburn’s mother—attends the parent workshops at Roosevelt and also considers the group to be like a second family. She originally joined the group to meet new people and get out of the house, but she never imagined that she would grow this close with the other parents.
“When I first came here they couldn’t get a word out of me,” Ms. Patricia Milburn stated. “Now they can’t get me to be quiet.”
Ms. Glass has created a warm and friendly environment in the parent resource room, and her extremely welcoming attitude has rubbed off on her parent workshop attendees too. When a new parent wandered into the room during the February 14 workshop, everyone greeted her with a resounding “Hey!” and invitation to sit down and make herself at home.
“If the parent does not feel comfortable in the school, their child isn’t going to,” Ms. Glass pointed out. “If you feel comfortable in an environment, you can help your child feel comfortable.”
Making families feel comfortable and welcome in the school is the first, crucial step to strengthening family engagement. At Roosevelt, the parents themselves have adopted this welcoming attitude, which has helped the school’s family engagement programs continue to grow.
More than just “Information Sharing”
Parents keep coming back to Ms. Glass’s workshops because they’re able to participate in a two-way conversation. Not only do parents learn new information through presentations—Eat Right Now presented to the group on nutritional guidelines during the February 14 workshop—but parents are able to share their personal stories and learn from others through discussion.
While parents attend the workshops to learn parenting skills, they keep coming back because of the relationships built during those workshops. Macca Sinclair, for instance, does not yet have children in the school—her daughter is just two years old—but she attends the workshops because she finds value in hearing from other parents about their experiences, educational or otherwise.
“It’s necessary for me to be here,” she said. “I’m surrounding myself with some interesting, intelligent women.” The parents share their thoughts and feelings with one another, whether it’s about day-to-day struggles or current events going on in the world. The formal information gained from the workshops is just a plus.
“It’s informative. It’s a healthy environment,” Ms. Sinclair added, explaining that there is never any negativity in the parent resource room. “When Tuesdays and Thursdays come around, you’ve got something to look forward to.”
Even the simple activity of creating vision boards brought out substantive, meaningful conversations among workshop attendees. As Ms. Sinclair and her friend flipped through a magazine to find images for their boards, they found an interesting photo depicting a woman caught between her own wants and her husband and child. “There’s a lot in this one picture,” Ms. Sinclair said.
Ms. Wallace also treasures the workshops for the safe space they provide and the opportunity to empathize with others. “I’m not the only one who’s going through stuff as a single mom,” she said.
“My story can help other people,” she added, and telling her story helps herself.
Empowering Families to Take Ownership over their Children’s Education
Once families feel welcome and comfortable in a school, they can begin to affect change—both for their own child and for the school as a whole. This is the difference between family “involvement” and family “engagement:” families who are involved in their child’s school can learn new information that in turn helps their child succeed, but families who are engaged can then turn around that information and help improve the entire school.
“I believe it starts with us,” said Deirdre Loyd, a mother of a third grader at Roosevelt, explaining that parents need to be engaged if they want things to change at the school.
“I like to see children do better,” Ms. Loyd continued, “especially because a lot of the time, we don’t know what’s going on in their home.”
Ms. Loyd has also taken a lead role on the SAC. At one point during the workshop, she addressed the group about the SAC’s priorities for the rest of the school year. The school has to decide how to spend the remainder of its Title I Parent Involvement funds, and Ms. Loyd called on the parents present, who demonstrate their engagement in the school by attending Ms. Glass’s parent workshops twice a week, to give their input.
“We need to get together. We need to have a voice,” Ms. Loyd said. “We need to think out of the box.”
Recognizing and Celebrating Families as Partners
Part of the success of Roosevelt’s family engagement programs is due to its focus on celebrating families as partners in their children’s educational experience. At the February 14 workshop, for instance, Ms. Glass not only invited Eat Right Now to do a presentation and cooking demonstration, but she also lined up Tabor Community Partners to host a Parent Café and the ACES Museum to hand out Valentine’s Day candy with the parents to children at the school—an opportunity to show the children “how to celebrate love,” as Ms. Glass put it.
Earlier this winter, Ms. Glass organized a “Winter Cook-off” where parents brought in their own versions of “winter comfort foods,” such as chili, soups, and sauces, to share with the group. Ms. Glass’s chili was such a hit that school staff challenged her to a chili cook-off, which will happen later this spring.
On March 2, Ms. Glass went all-out—as she always does—to hype up students and parents for Dr. Seuss Day. Roosevelt’s hallways were decorated, students played games and participated in “taste tests,” and families and community partners came in to read to students in Kindergarten, first, and second grade.
“To me, it’s positive,” Ms. Glass said. “If you give everyone something positive, they take something positive home.”
At the end of April, graduates of the parent workshop series will be treated to an extra-special—and top secret!—celebration to recognize their participation in the school.
“They’re so excited,” Ms. Glass whispered. “But they don’t even know what to be excited for!”
While details cannot be disclosed at this time, suffice it to say that this event is sure to be incredible: Ms. Glass has been working every day to ensure that it’s an event that makes her parents feel as special as they are.
Through building genuine relationships with the parents and family members of students at her school, Ms. Glass has built a robust family engagement program that seems to just keep growing. Family engagement is truly a two-way street at Roosevelt: parents help out in the school by volunteering and attending workshops, but the school is also there for parents when they need it.
“People feel comfortable enough to come in here and ask for help,” Ms. Glass said. She tells her parents constantly: “This is your blanket. Fall. Let us cover you.”
