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.