When Suzanne Carson lost her job and had to move back into the house where she grew up in a crime-ridden area of Orlando, Florida, she worried for her two young children. Her son was already doing so poorly in 2nd grade that she feared he would have to repeat it.
Fear turned to relief when she found support to get back on her feet in a place she did not expect—her neighborhood public school. The school's teachers focused on filling in the academic gaps for Carson's son and daughter, immersing them in early literacy. "After about a semester," Carson said, "I saw my son start to come home with his head held high," and her preschool daughter began to read. Carson also met and bonded with adults at the school—teachers as well other parents—who were committed to giving all the neighborhood's children the best possible start in life.
The school that helped Carson connect to lifelines for her kids' future, Grand Avenue Primary Learning Center, is a K–2 school in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Orlando. Holden Heights is surrounded by multigenerational poverty, violence, and drugs. Few of the children live with both parents; many live with grandparents or other family members while their parents struggle with drug addiction or incarceration. One hundred percent of the school's 227 students receive free lunch.
For years, many children entered Grand Avenue—then a traditional preK–5 school—significantly behind their peers academically and struggled unsuccessfully to catch up. In 2006, school personnel met to discuss how they might change the school so more kids had a better chance of success.
Under Florida's accountability system, all elementary schools are graded A through F depending on the performance of their 3rd to 5th graders. Grand Avenue's teachers realized that accountability pressure was interfering with their ability to interact with vulnerable students in the way that was best for students' developmental stages. To give themselves more space to form warm, trusting relationships with the youngest students and establish a strong foundation for literacy, the school petitioned to serve only preschool through 2nd grade.
At this time, so many students moved in and out of the area multiple times throughout the year that the school's student turnover rate was more than 100 percent. Teachers realized they needed to develop stronger bonds with students' families. A core belief that now drives the school is to be "intentional and deliberate about involving families as true partners."
The focus on collaborating with parents appears to be working. Whereas previously parents came to the school only reluctantly, parents now regularly visit classrooms and take part in parent activities; during student performances, it's standing room only. Parent Sheree Anderson said,
Teachers feed the parents and children physically and mentally. You always come on campus and feel welcome. Any time you need to talk, someone is willing to listen. And even if you need a hug, someone is willing to give you that, too.
Engagement for Empowerment
Parent relationships were not always so congenial. Grand Avenue, like many schools in high-poverty areas, initially struggled to engage parents. Low-income parents often perceive themselves as outsiders in schools, excluded by differences in ethnicity, income, and culture. Yet parents who believe in their own efficacy are more likely to engage with their children's schooling, and parents who interact positively with teachers provide teachers valuable insight and can lend schools helpful energy. Grand Avenue teachers tapped into this source of energy by setting out to know parents as people and to understand their lives.
Parent and community engagement begins at the school's front door. Whether it's the superintendent of schools or a parent of a 1st grader, every visitor is greeted with warmth and enthusiasm. Even students as young as 1st grade often act as ambassadors, greeting visitors with a firm handshake and strong eye contact. Parents feel recognized; the principal knows every child and every family in the school by name, as well as something about them.
That sense of being known exists because of regular gatherings like Great Starts. On Thursday mornings, all parents are invited to a breakfast cooked and served by the faculty that's followed by presentations geared to the families. Organized by the school counselor, these sessions include guest speakers—Grand Avenue faculty or community experts—and time for parents to talk about their needs and experiences. Participants discuss a range of topics, chosen by the parents, such as how to interview for a job, how to manage money, and how to talk to your children about sexual abuse.
Typically, about 30 parents attend. Over breakfast and as they share about their experiences, parents and staff learn from one another and build bonds beyond the traditional parent-school relationship. Parents and guardians build friendships with one another as well, creating a social environment that brings people back week after week.
Parents who previously felt helpless about neighborhood problems have found their voices. After one breakfast meeting, a group of participants began working together to get a lower speed limit sign posted near the school for the kids' safety; they contacted the police, wrote petitions, and got the sign changed.
Empowerment carries over to their children's education. Ann, whose 3rd grade son has moved on from Grand Avenue, recently told other parents that she's been taking the bus to her son's school to observe him in class and meet with the principal about his progress. "If I hadn't been coming to Great Starts all those years, I probably wouldn't be as involved," she claimed. "Now I know I have to speak up for him."
Listening to parents interacting at Great Starts helps teachers honor the parents' interests and recognize the obstacles many neighborhood families face, rather than judging them. As school counselor Barbara Berry explained, "Some of our families are heroic for what they have endured, and we are pleased they are still here with us."
School staff members take meaningful, concrete steps in response to community needs. For example, when the school counselor realized some parents were at a loss as to how to get a job after being in prison, she organized group discussions on this topic. The school also offers a twice-weekly free general educational development (GED) class for parents. Parents have access to computers and software to prepare them for the exam.
Meeting Families Where They Are
Grand Avenue's families live in a highly stressful environment. In addition to being situated in the zip code with the highest crime rate in Orlando, the school has a mobility rate of 62 percent, and at least 3 percent of its students are homeless. So the school helps both parents and children learn to deal with conflict and stress.
The Peace Club teaches children how to solve relational problems, deal with bullying, and treat others with respect. One mother shared that she hopes the lessons her daughters learned through Peace Club would help them break a multigenerational cycle of women tolerating abuse in her family.
Grand Avenue partners with Orange County government to offer Success by Six, a program designed to prevent child abuse and neglect. The program takes place at the Family Service Center on the school campus. Through surveys and interviews, school counselors and teachers identify families that show risk factors for abuse. The program provides families support, training, and counseling before situations arise that would require intervention from social services. Caring relationships with school personnel make these interventions possible; families come to trust people at their child's school enough to join programs that give strangers insight into their family structure.
Helping families meet basic needs is part of nurturing those relationships. The Family Service Center at Grand Avenue, funded and staffed by the county, is open year-round. It provides free checkups, vaccinations, prescriptions, mental health counseling, and dental care for children in the community who lack medical insurance. The school partners with the service center to ensure that parents are aware of these services.
Because all Grand Avenue kids qualify for free lunch, the school knows they'll receive breakfast and lunch during the school week. Talking with families, however, made teachers aware that weekends and holidays could be challenging if money ran out in households. One parent shared candidly with a teacher that while she searched for a job, some weekends there was no food in her house.
A partnership with the privately funded Blessing in a Backpack program helps the school ease situations like this, which clearly can wreak havoc on a student's ability to learn. Blessing in a Backpack's founder, Stan Curtis, heard about Grand Avenue's community outreach and approached the school's principal. Now all students receive backpacks filled with healthy food to carry home on Friday afternoons to get the family through the weekend.
The school partners with a local church to create a loan program for families who face emergencies. For instance, one Grand Avenue family with five children was on the verge of eviction. The parents shared one car to get to their respective jobs, and when an unexpected major auto repair reared its head, they didn't have enough money to make the repair and pay their youngest's medical expenses. The extended family was unable to help, local charities denied them assistance, and the parents were too embarrassed to ask at the school. But a fellow parent who knew about the situation asked the school counselor to come to this family's aid with a loan. Through this loan, which was repaid within 9 months, the family avoided homelessness.
Drawing Parents into Learning
To help parents assist in their child's learning, Grand Avenue changed how it communicated with families. Not every parent or caregiver can come to school to participate in learning or social activities; many caregivers work multiple jobs to keep a roof over their heads. That doesn't mean these families aren't invested in their children's school success. Grand Avenue parents, for instance, had expressed interest in working with their children at home, but many didn't know how to go about it.
With the support of an early childhood specialist, Grand Avenue created Great Endings, a program that builds parents' confidence in their efficacy as teachers. Parents learn strategies for working with their children in reading and mathematics. They construct learning games out of inexpensive materials and take them home to have fun while boosting their children's skills. As Suzanne Carson explained, "They teach you how to talk to your kids. You learn to parent in a better way. It's given me an opportunity to learn how to play with my kids again."
Once a month, the school counselor sends home with students a Homeside Activity designed to help families talk and listen to one another and to connect the learning taking place at school with home life. Teachers prepare students to carry out each activity with an adult at home. They take care that activities don't require parents to buy any supplies. For example, one activity directs student and parent to measure any room in the home and figure out its area. Within a week, children present a written or oral report describing what they learned and how they felt doing the activity.
The staff gives students all-important access to books by awarding books and other reading materials as gifts and door prizes as often as possible. The school's media center is open for parents and children to visit and select books before each school day. Parents are welcomed there as volunteers, and they have access to computers, the Internet, and the telephone.
Understanding that the traditional middle-class means of communication do not often resonate with parents in urban areas, Grand Avenue's faculty and staff are expected to regularly call all students' homes and to make frequent home visits throughout the school year.
Parent involvement has grown exponentially at Grand Avenue as a result of this purposeful approach to building respectful relationships with families. Building this involvement was a process, and teachers had to stay the course; at first, two to three families would attend an activity, but now teachers regularly see 50 to 60 families.
As one Grand Avenue father notes, "Teachers go out of their way to communicate with you. They will come to your house to make sure you know what is going on. They want the whole family at the school."
