NABE and No Parent Left Behind

My partner in teaching, Xochitl and I presented at the National Association for Bilingual Educators annual conference Thursday.  I miss teaching with her.  She is in pre-k now in a different school in the district.  IT is odd to have her “down the street” instead of “next door”.  I miss her and love these moments when we can collaborate and share what we have done together with others.

Conferences are magical. I have written before about conferences and how important they are for teachers and other people involved in education and after this one, I want to say it again.  Conferences are important.  If you are a teacher, go.  If you are a parent, go.  If you pay taxes and want to know which innovations those dollars are paying for, go.  They are unbelievably energizing.

I’ve presented before, and Xochitl and I have presented before, but this was the first national level conference for us.  It was amazing.  We presented to a “standing room only” crowd our parent ed piece for high stakes testing in Texas.  We had materials and suggestions and the tools for a teacher to go home and get started on Monday.  

The presentation focused on what teachers can do to involve parents as educators.  This is an idea that gets a lot of buzz.  Frankly, most parents don’t belong in the classroom anymore than I belong on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.  I could have a lot of fun shouting and waving my hands around, but I would probably lose someone a lot of money.  A parent in the classroom with little or no training is like me on the exchange floor: having a great time, but losing time and money for me and the students.

Don’t get me wrong, parents are necessary and important.  I am not advocating a system of boarding schools for the nation. Parents teach kids a myriad of things that I can not.  Parents teach kids religious values, how to bake a cake and how to get that hat trick on the ice in a hockey game. Parents screen tv shows and music based on their ethics.  So, the trick becomes using these strengths (which naturally reside in parents) to improve their child’s education (a skill which is not innate in parents).  If you move beyond the sound bit and the buzzwords, the reality is that involving parents is hard work. It is also a lot of work. This is not something that should be avoided, but neither should it be something that happens because Dyno the Clown has canceled on the PTA meeting.

The tools that we presented for parents are geared at parents doing what they always do with a slight twist. They were snippets of the reading test paired with specific everyday activities. For example, how to make listening to music in the car a literacy event.  Or, how to make complaining about the end of the soap opera a literacy event.

The presentation was well received.  People were asking relevant questions and they stayed all the way through to the end.  But, more important than the fact that we ran out of materials and more important than the fact that the audience applauded and more important than the fact that we had repeat listeners…more important than all of that was the feeling in that room when we were finished.  

We were talking to our peers from across the country about our experiences with immigrant parents and the high stakes tests and how we had been successful.  We talked with teachers who agreed with us that immigrant parents want success for their children.  We talked to teachers who were waiting and hoping to find the magic bullet.  We didn’t give them the magic bullet, but we did give them a process and possibly a magic monkey wrench.  

The rest of the conference was equally productive for me.  I met teachers who inspired me, who made me laugh and who gave me great ideas to use in my classroom.  The opening speaker had represented the Pueblo Cultures of the American Southwest.  At the end of his discussion, he returned the respect that we had given him by listening to him.  He returned the energy that we had given him by being present for him.  I hope that the energy our audience gave us was returned three fold.

And now, I return your energy and your respect for being here with me today.

Open house…Open school?

It’s winter here in North Texas, which means that the days are either 29 F or 68F and there is no rhyme or reason to it.  We miss recess at least twice a week due to the weather and the carpool lane is brutal in the wind.  It’s the third nine weeks, the time when the kids are really into the swing of things and the teachers are beginning to wonder when Spring Break is.  Spring is just around the corner. But before Spring Break, there is…Open House.

I think I remember Open House from when I was a kid and I think I remember the teachers complaining that no one came. I think we did one or two special activities for the day. Maybe.

I don’t remember open house from the first year I taught.  I’m sure we did have one, but I don’t remember it. Other things stick with me, which means Open House must have been “just another night”.

The second year I taught, my mentor teacher (God Bless Her) walked me through open house.  These were her firm rules: 

(1) Every parent gets a hand written (from their child) invitation to Open House.  It is sent two weeks before the date.  

(2) Parents are given  a Scavenger Hunt form during the Open House so that they didn’t focus on the teacher, but instead focused on their kid and the kid’s work.

(3) Anything that the kids did reflected new content, not a new skill. Open House was not to be a dog and pony show, it was a chance for the kids to show off what they could do.  For example, we had worked on making models of the human body from construction paper in the fall and so in the spring, we did construction paper models of ocean animals or farm animals.

(4) Everything fit into a theme and most of what they did went on the wall. It was arranged artistically.

8 years later, I still try to follow those rules. This year, though, is different.  Most things feel different this year.  I can’t put my finger on why, but Open House is an emotional issue for me and for most teachers. The other teachers on my team did not like what I did last year. I was informed of that today. When I asked why, I was told it is because my room and my kids’ work didn’t look anything like their rooms or their kids’ work.  Last year, I did offer to share what I was doing with them and was turned down. “We have our unit finished.  We don’t need anything. Of course, you can do that in your room if you’d like.” 

This year, my Team Lead keeps saying, I don’t want to do a dog and pony show, I want it to be really what we do.  She also keeps saying, it should all be the same. Parents are going to flip out if all the classrooms are not the same.

I am feeling torn, some moments, I want to be really angry that I am being told to hide who I am as a teacher.  Some moments, I don’t care what the other teachers or students do.  Right now  though, I feel confused.  Nothing that I have done all year looks like what they have done.  I have no idea how to look like them or teach like them.  Some of the things I have displayed in the hallway have inspired them to ask about what it is or how to do it, but not many.  This is true on the other side as well: some of their displays have been inspiring, but not many of them fit with my style.  Pretending that we are all the same would be a dog and pony show. From whom does my Team Lead not want a dog and pony show? The students or me?

It leads me to ask: Even if the work that the kids do “for open house” would be done anyway, does the way it is displayed make it a dog and pony show?And (as a related question) how much of this would I do without the pressure of Open House? 

What is Open House for anyway? Is it to bring parents into the school?  Is it to involve the parents in their children’s education? Or is it intended to be a museum style show?

I have had parents in and out of my room a few times already, and the parents have been ‘included’ in the curriculum of the classroom through a “Family Traditions” unit study and a “Who am I?  Who are we?” family unit study.  The families and parents have been asked to help their children by teaching them about family history or family traditions.  The students have shared these interviews and books with their classmates with and without their parents as audience members. Parents are welcome anytime, and often drop in before school to chat with me about what’s going on in the room.

The benefit of Open House is that it allows the students to focus on a theme for several weeks and show off what they have learned to do.  It also allows parents to come and peruse student work at their leisure without interrupting flow of the academic day. It allows the parents to compare their child’s best work against the best work of other students. And see what they can really do when they put their mind to it.

The down side is that it can feel contrived and it relegates the students and parents to exhibitor/patron status and doesn’t really involve parents in the learning process.  In Utopia, parents are involved, authentic contributors to the learning process.  These parents are able to tutor, work with small groups and do more than cut things out. I have yet to meet more than a handful of these parents.  

Is there a way to have Open House be more interactive?  To have it showcase the parents as true partners in their child’s education?  Would parents even want to do so? There always seem to be more questions than answers …