ACTIONN VOICES

Super Star for Home Visits

Regina Valencia, Site Coordinator and Teacher, Sparks High School

    Unlike a lot of her peers, Regina Valencia didn’t need to do Parent Teacher Home Visits to understand Latino culture. She has lived in Spanish speaking countries and speaks Spanish. But those factors have benefited her greatly as she began to build relationships with her students’ families in a school with a mostly Latino student population.

During the 2014- 2015 school year, Regina Valencia has done 70 Parent Teacher Home Visits!  She reports that Parent Teacher Home Visits have increased her awareness of the students’ family lives and home situations one by one.

    She sees the improvement in her communication both with the student and with the family. “It’s fun in class being able to talk to the student about Barbie the dog who jumped all over us on a visit and sat in our laps. I can talk to that particular student and say ‘hey how’s Barbie doing?’ Breaking down those barriers helps in the long run to improve the academics as well because students will come to me about more difficult things. I think that is the most important benefit of the Parent Teacher Home Visits.”

    “I had a Visit that impacted me. A Parent has three daughters that attends our school and she was going to have surgery the following week. It was close to Christmas time. I was impressed that the mother was so involved in her daughter’s education. Being a single mom getting ready to go into surgery in the next couple days, she was still willing to have the Parent Teacher Home Visit and welcomed us into her house. That was incredible.”

    Regina says that her openness to visiting families at their homes has also generated more parents’ interest in learning English as a second language as they feel more comfortable now that they have a personal relationship with me and want to be more involved in their children’s education.
   For more information about How Parent Teacher Home Visits Can Lead to School Transformaton, check out this short article from the National Education Association.