Sarah Russell Helps Students Achieve Their Dreams
For the last three years, before I became a teaching coach with the school district in Washoe County, I did Parent Teacher Home Visits. What was so amazing to see was that the home visits not only impacted the students whose homes were visited, but every student in the classroom.
The home visits demonstrated to the students and their parents that I was seriously invested in their life and their future. They all felt it. The level of respect the visit demonstrated to them was profound. There is no other way I have found to say how much I care outside of the home visit.
Jesse* was getting D's before the home visits began. After that he started trying and his grades went to B's. Paul* was getting F's before the visits. After, not only did he get straight A's, but he started helping others in the class succeed.
The Parent Teacher Home Visit is a very intense relationship building tool. I find it essential to be a successful teacher and for my students to be successful in their learning. It makes all the difference in the motivation the students bring to their work.
When I did a Parent Teacher Home Visit with a student who I will call Sarah, and the family served me a light meal, their perspective of me as the authority figure up high was changed to a caring part of their community.
So many of the kids I teach are living in poverty. Their parents feel totally disenfranchised from everyone seen as in power, including the school. But, when you honor them through the home visit, honor their homes, honor their reality, I have seen firsthand how the Parent Teacher Home Visits change that. The parents start trusting me enough to come to school, to find out about the homework expectations, and to insist that their children do what is expected in school.
Before I did home visits, I knew I was responsible for the academic success of my students, and that their lives depended on it. Now, I know that I can help them have dreams that are real and can be achieved. Home visits can change their lives forever. And all I have to do is go to the home, shake the dad's hand, and listen. I owe my students and their families this.
Home visits made me stronger in my identity as a teacher, more passionate because of the way I touch their lives through this. We have so many different cultures represented in our students. Home visits teach me almost everything I need to know about their culture without being an anthropologist.
Before I started doing home visits, I felt like I was taking my Filipino students only so far, that I wasn't able to have them step into their potential. Maybe if I had been doing home visits, then I could have reached them better. I look back on this as my biggest failure, and it could have been remedied if only I had known then about home visits.
*names changed to protect the privacy of students
For more info http://neapriorityschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Sacramento-California_Profiles.pdf
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