Strategy 4: Liaisons between homes and schools
For the Latino parents served by the programs in our study, not having a reliable conduit into their children’s schools poses a significant barrier to meaningful involvement. Embarrassed or uncertain about how to approach school personnel, parents often rely on their children to keep them abreast of their academic progress. This strategy for staying connected to the school has clear limitations, as it puts the child in the untenable position of having to decide what the parent should or should not know. Programs did a number of things to open communication channels between homes and schools, including assigning a staff member the specific responsibility of providing this connection. These individuals often provided a critical link between school and family life.
A Team Approach
The University of North Texas’ GEAR UP program employs two full-time staff to serve as community liaisons at the participating middle and high schools. According to program director Aurelio Hurtado de Mendoza, the one-on-one attention that the liaisons provide parents “makes all the difference in the world.” Also key to the programs’ efforts is the liaisons’ ability to speak both Spanish and English and to understand the world in which parents live. Liaisons work especially hard, Hurtado de Mendoza says, to overcome parents’ distrust of the school, which they initially see as an arm of the federal government. The fruits of the liaison’s labors are evident as parents often call or drop by the liaison’s school-based office to discuss concerns pertaining to their children.
When it becomes clear to the liaison that, despite the program’s efforts, parents and children are not communicating openly about school-related issues, she has the discretion to call a meeting between a parent and a student. During one of these meetings, a mother was shocked to learn that her daughter had been cutting class to spend time with friends. After the truth came out, the liaison helped develop a plan to get the student back on track academically. It’s not uncommon for liaisons to conduct up to five of these meetings per day. Though time consuming, the meetings reinforce the connections between home and school in important ways. “The kids know that the parents and the liaison are a team, so they stop messing up,” explains Hurtado de Mendoza. “And the parents can see that the liaisons are there for the well-being of the child.”
The Personal Touch
The parent outreach coordinator employed by the ENLACE y Avance program of Santa Barbara, California boasts a unique—and desirable—set of qualifications. In addition to being bilingual, she is a credentialed guidance counselor who has also served as a middle school registrar. According to program director Claudia Martinez, the coordinator’s deep knowledge of the school system has endeared her to both the families and the personnel at the school that serves a cohort of 35 ENLACE students. As an adjunct member of the counseling staff, the coordinator is on site once a week, offering individual advising as well as facilitating group counseling sessions for students who are struggling. During her days off site, her work focuses on connecting families to the support system offered by ENLACE and alerting them to important happenings at the school.
When the 35 ENLACE students entered ninth grade, the program focused on helping them select rigorous courses that would provide the widest array of postsecondary education options upon graduation. The coordinator worked closely with the other counselors to oversee this process. In one instance, her knowledge of a student’s history alerted her to a problem that was about to be caused by a clerical error: the young woman was scheduled to repeat a course that she had already passed with an A in middle school. This individual attention to each student has fostered a trust among ENLACE families that results in greater school involvement. Remarking on the coordinator’s influence, Martinez notes “If she calls them to say there’s an important meeting at the school, they believe her, and they participate.”
Coordinating Connections
Similar to the ENLACE y Avance program, the I Have a Dream Foundation (IHAD) of Boulder County, Colorado works with cohorts of approximately 50 students, or Dreamers, beginning in elementary school and continuing through high school graduation. Each cohort is assigned a full-time project coordinator, whose job is to establish long-term, personalized relationships with the Dreamers and their families. The coordinators also build a strong relationship with the personnel at the Dreamers’ schools, and serve as a resource for both students and teachers. Knowing that many Latino families feel reluctant to approach teachers by themselves, coordinators try to scaffold the contact between parents and schools. For example, to encourage attendance at parent-teacher conferences, the coordinators accompany parents during the meeting and provide translation assistance for both parents and teachers.
To encourage greater parent involvement at a particular school site, a coordinator scheduled one of the monthly IHAD parent meetings to take place on the same night that the school was holding a “Family Literacy Night.” A typical parent meeting consists of a meal and a presentation on a topic of interest, and childcare is also provided. Once the meeting adjourned that evening, the coordinator invited parents to stay and participate in the school’s literacy event. Many parents chose to stay for the meeting and received valuable information about things they could do to support their children’s literacy development. “The principal was thrilled to see so many of our parents in attendance,” recalls Lori Canova, the program’s executive director, “because many of them had never attended a school-wide function before.”
The program staff mentioned above serve as important bridges across homes and schools. Critical to their success is an ability to establish a strong presence at the schools the students attend. These individuals almost always have offices on site, allowing them opportunities to interact with teachers and counselors on a regular basis. They also make extraordinary efforts to build rapport with families, often serving as the first school-affiliated employee that families contact for help. Because the parent-home liaisons are well integrated into the life of the school, they can provide parents with information and services that would otherwise be inaccessible. For parents who feel like outsiders when approaching their children’s school building, these individuals provide a compelling reason to walk through the front doors.
