Change for the Better

CJ Waddell Assistant Principle at Sparks High

CJWaddell says that since she has been doing Parent Teacher Home Visits that she has “changed for the better.” She has learned to not jump to form opinions about kids as quick as she might have in the past.

Since she has a role as an assistant principal who deals with discipline,  she finds it helpful to build a relationship with the youth by doing Parent Teacher Home Visits so that the  kids see her as a person and not just someone they see if they are in trouble. It makes a big difference in her relationships with the students and parents. If she has to call a student’s parents somewhere down the road it makes it a lot easier.

“My passion for working with students has always been really big. Parent Teacher Home Visits has made the kids easier to know and recognize. Knowing something about the kids makes it easier to talk to them. It gives us something to connect with each other to discuss.

My goals for each Parent Teacher Home Visit is for us to grow comfortable with each other, and for everyone to get to know each other.  As a result, I hope that the parents and students feel comfortable coming to the school if they need help.

Parent Teacher Home Visits have helped improve students’ behavior in the class room, attendance, academics, and helps to make the whole parent teacher family relationship stronger.

After the Parent Teacher Home Visits, I see the parents feeling that the school is there to help their child get to graduation and beyond to a successful life.”  

   For more information about Parent Teacher Home Visits, check out this report. from the National Teachers Association Federation.

Building Relationships Key to Success

Michelle Hammond, Teacher at Innovations High School

This year alone, Michelle has done over 40 Parent Teacher Home Visits. She has been doing them for 5 years now, even before she was paid to do them. She believes that the first step in effectively teaching a child is building a relationship with them. She says the better the relationship is with the child the more likely the child will graduate, and for the student to be fully engaged in learning.    

Going on Parent Teacher Home Visits have been a constant reminder to Michelle of how important it is to treat every student and family differently. Last Fall Michelle did a Parent Teacher Home Visit with a student who is a teen mother. The young lady was not living with her parents and moving around a lot. She was struggling with school attendance.  At the time of the Parent Teacher Home visit she was living with her older sister. There was tension and frustration between the student and her sister because of the student’s poor attendance and grades dropping.

Michelle helped the student tell her sister about her upcoming class presentation for the following week. The following week at the time of the presentation, in walked the student’s whole family to be there to show support.  The student burst out in tears of joy to see the support.  The student knew that the sister cared about her after that, and that she wasn’t just being hard on her.

Michelle says that she is continuing to work with the family and she is seeing the student make real progress as a result.  “I’ve always believed that you cannot teach a child anything, if you don’t first have a relationship with them.”

Stephanie Platner, Champion for Successful Students

Through Parent Teacher Home Visits

    Parent Teacher Home Visits have increased my cultural sensitivity. There are so many culturalnorms and expectations that you don’t think about until you enter a home and experience them.

     During one of the Parent Teacher Home Visits to a family of Mexican origin, we were greeted by the parents of the student with a large meal. They were excited to meet us. They told us about their food and where they get it during the meal.  When we went to eat the food with our forks and they laughed at us. They said we don’t use forks for that, we just pick them up with our hands and eat them.  I appreciated their humor and enjoyed learning more about the Mexican culture.

     Through Parent Teacher Home Visits I have increased my cultural sensitivity and awareness. Understanding that when our kids come to school, what we may be expecting them to know might be different in their culture,  especially for young children. Increasing my awareness of where the child comes from, what goes on in their home, and what’s going on with their family helps me to help the child in the better ways.

     How to use the strengths from a family’s culture to encourage learning and academic growth is an area where I am growing and see improvements.  Parent Teacher Home Visits has opened up new avenues for me to connect with parents and children that would have been much more difficult otherwise. 

Celeste Willis Teacher at Alice Maxwell Elementary

Seeing Results in the Classroom

      First grade teacher at Alice Maxwell Elementary, Celeste Willis, shares how the Parent Teacher Home Visits she is doing every week are changing her, as well as her relationships with the students and families.

     “I had the older sister in my class and now I have the younger one. They live with a single father and the two girls are the exact opposite of each other. When I saw them at home I realized that how the girls acted at school was the same as they do at school, but I could tell they felt freer.

     The family lives a distance from school in a low income area in an apartment complex. During the visit the girls wanted ice cream, so we walked down a side street and a trailer park separated them from the ice cream truck. I was wondering how we were going to get there because there was a fence blocking us from the ice-cream truck. The next thing I knew, the older sister goes up to a chain link fence that looks just fine, peels it open and crawls through it. 

     She was so bold, although it was dangerous, of course. It was one of those moments that showed how me how these kids know how to survive, how they have street smarts.

     I see that Parent Teacher Home Visits are bridging a gap and that my relationships with the families and students are so much deeper now.  I can see that this is creating a better learning environment in the classroom.  

Cheri Osborn, Special Education Teacher

 Giving Hope Through Parent Teacher Home Visits

 When a student is struggling it can be hard to figure out why or the best ways to help her or him to succeed. But I am finding that through the Parent Teacher Home Visits, it opens up lots of new insights for both me and the families.

 Let me tell you about Annie (name changed to protect privacy). She was not completing her homework and I naturally thought she wasn’t interested. Then I did the Parent Teacher Home Visit and was warmly greeted by the family with cookies and juice. We all sat down on the couch in the living room. The family was from Mexico and English is their second language.

We talked about the daughter having trouble completing her homework and turning it in. We discovered that she had questions about her homework but was not asking for help. One of the things that we did to help fix the problem was that I shared some books with the family that are written in both English and Spanish. Now the mother could read the same book as the daughter and discuss it together in Spanish.

This is helping the family to have a conversation about the books and the characters. It is making learning fun for the child and the family. The family is participating in the child’s learning and it now seems natural to them to read together.

The family engagement of the families I have visited has really improved tremendously since doing Parent Teacher Home Visits. There is a connection that I am making in the Parent Teacher Home Visit that helps the parents and me connect on a new level with trust and ease.       When the family sees how much I care about their child, and I see how much they care too, our bond builds.

We are all in this together for one common goal. We are giving hope to the child to succeed at whatever her or his dreams are. 

Getting on the Same Page

Alex Maxwell Elementary School, Father, Lum Coleman

   Once we had the Parent Teacher Home Visit, the teacher, my children and I all got on the same page. Home is where everything starts.

   During the visits we talked about what I can do as a father to help my girls do better in school. From the Parent Teacher Home Visit I feel like me and the teachers were able to connect on another level. Now, the teachers reach out to me whenever something is going on at school so we can fix it as a group. The support is great. It truly is.  

   They tell me how the girls are doing and how I can help to make sure that they can get the most from school.  The teacher told me that my daughter was getting the value of nickels and dimes confused. I understood because she saw that the nickels are bigger than the dimes. So I made my own little change collection at home and practice with both girls.

   Communication is really the key because if you don’t know what’s going on and if you don’t ask those questions then your kids can be messed up.

   Since the Parent Teacher Home Visits, my daughters have improved their grades. They are both now getting (S+) Satisfactory Plus in school. I think the Parent Teacher Home Visit really influenced that. Now they want to do better. They want to strive more. And they see that this matters to me too.

   From the Parent Teacher Home Visit, I learned firsthand that the teachers really cared. 

Amanda French at Alice Maxwell Elementary School

True Believer in Parent Teacher Home Visits

   Seeing the conditions that our children live in continues to be an eye opener for me. I went to visit a family where all the chairs were broken, so we stood for the visit. That was ok with me, but the child was really embarrassed at their living conditions.

      It is helpful for me to see students in their homes. Working with low income children is different from my reality. So when I visit the home and see the poverty first hand, it is an eye opener.  It’s one thing to think I understand the conditions the children live in and another thing to see it.

    I visited a family who live in a one bedroom apartment with five people who sleep in one bedroom and a few others who sleep in the living room.  Our school expectations for the student to have a quiet place to complete home work isn’t realistic.  I wonder how the student can have a full night’s sleep to have energy to learn in class.

    I know that  Parent Teacher Home Visits have changed me. The visits have made me more aware, more open, more competent because I have seen the families first hand.

   I recommend Parent Teacher Home Visits to build our relationships between parents and teachers. A lot of parents feel intimidated to come into the school and the visits remove that barrier.   I think the relationship is the key to everything – trust, motivation, achievement.