Use this space to reflect on the learning from the school’s perspective. What elements of the cycle of prejudice are you aware of? What actions can be taken to break the cycle?
Team Assignment:
- Meet with your entire team to reflect on new learning.
- Make one new post on the blog based on your team discussion. (click on “comment” for initial post)
- Respond to at least one post from another team. (click on “reply” for response)
- Complete the parent engagement audit with the team and others from the school.
- By June 15th, identify an area of focus, based on conversations around the two audits and add a comment to the post titled Focus Area.
- Begin considering ways to have these conversations with your entire faculty. Note resources available in SchoolSpace.
Tags: Session 2
As a team, we discussed the cycle of prejudice and determined that one generation can break that cycle. For some members, it was a grandparent and, for others, it was a parent. The south was certainly slower due to segregation. We all recalled pivotal experiences in our families and communities that shaped our lives.
Two of us grew up in an “all white” world. Our schools, churches and neighborhoods were not at all diverse. We were taught to be polite to everyone and were never allowed to utter a negative word regarding a person of a different race. We grew up in families that helped others through community service, donations, scholarships, etc., but we did not have close, personal relationships with people of different races/ethnicities until much later in life. Our perception was often that those of a different race were less fortunate.
The third member of our team grew up with a racial mix and was comfortable in this “world,” forming relationships through various sport-related activities and very diverse elementary, middle, and high school experiences.
It is our feeling that younger children are naturally not as aware of “color” or “ethnicity.” The environment in which we are raised has a huge impact on our developing perception of those of a different skin color or socio economic status. Even though we feel our experiences gave us different perspectives during our youth, we all grew and broadened our experiences during college, through part time jobs and as adult professionals. Our children are definitely growing up in a more diverse world and now see their parents interacting with friends of various ethnicities. They are also seeing diversity in the professionals that live and work in their community.
What school do you represent?
We enjoyed reading your response and agree that it can take only one generation to start breaking down the cycle of prejudice. However, on the same accord, we believe that it too can take just one generation to plant the seed of prejudice or continue to perpetuate the cycle. As staff members in an elementary school we believe our students see and mimic prejudices seen in their home, community, and media. These prejudices are brought into the classroom and shared with their peers creating divisions between parents, peers, and teachers. It is our job to promote a “sense of belonging” for our student yet we still depend on the community and parents to partner in this support.
The above reply was from Nuckols Farm Elementary School.
We also discussed as team members what our personal backgrounds were like growing up as far as prejudice was concerned. Our experiences were varied, from growing up in a military family,on farms ,in the city and so forth. We all agreed our backgrounds certainly affect how we look at life and work. All of us agreed that all it would take is a strong generation to be open to all ethnicities to craate a sense of belonging. We have a various generations present on our team.
Because we at HTC are in the unique position of getting students from 8 high schools we get to witness interactions with all groups. We feel that HTC is an open and positive enviroment inclusion of all students.
Our discussion at Maybeury Elementary centered around the conditioning and thoughts/expectations of the Cycle of Prejudice. Our parent volunteer audit indicated that the vast majority of our volunteers are caucasian mothers. Many of these mothers do not work or have. Therefore, they can be on campus for various events and functions. We talked about how this may have an impact on students’ and teachers’ thoughts. We do not believe that students notice any racial disparity, although teachers can tell excitement and disappointment with any child when a parent is able (or not able) to attend a field trip or other event. We are interested in having deeper discussions with our faculty regarding the thoughts and expectations of non-visible parents. Is there a tendency to assume poor academic support or concern at home if a parent is unable to volunteer? Are we assuming that our minority and ESL students have unconcerned parents? How can this cycle of thinking change? We plan to discuss whether or not we need to strive for more diverse participation and determine how this can be accomplished.
Finding parent volunteers has always been a challenge for Crestview, but we have found that offering activities that parents can assist with at a variety of times includes more parents. Many of our parents work several jobs and cannot attend all events, however we keep them informed with regular, ongoing communication in all languages. Parents feel very comfortable with our school and trust that we have their child’s best interest at heart. They see the results in that their children want to come to school and are invested in their learning.
At Deep Run, we have also noticed through our audit that most (if not all) of our volunteers are white non-working mothers. We discussed how sometimes if we reach out a personal touch or invitation to our minority families (male, African-Americans, Hispanics, ESL, or other parents) then maybe we would have a better turn out. In this day and age with so many people out of work, it is a great time to reach out to the families that might not always have the time or ability to be a part of their school community.
We have also found that specific invitations certainly increase participation of targeted subgroups. The PTA has been helpful in organizing opportunities such as International Night, Dads and Donuts, and Dads on Call. In discussions with some families, we’ve learned that some cultures have participated in different educational experiences that may cause them to feel uncomfortable offering to come into the school to volunteer. We plan to continue offering invitations to them so they understand that their assistance is wanted and needed.
At Short Pump MS, our PTA and volunteer population are typically white non-working mothers. We are certainly appreciative for their presence and support. However, we discussed the importance of creating a diverse school environment where all races are represented. We discussed how this may be a challenge for parents who are working during school hours. With this, we maintain open communication and keep them informed of events and ways that they can be involved.
At Highland Springs parents are often blue collar workers who have 2 or more jobs. Therefore volunteering at school is not a priority because they are working to provide for the basic needs of their families. At HSHS there are various opportunities for parental involvement. These opportunities are primarily award ceremonies, pageants, and sports activities; yet parents do not participate in large numbers.
We too have difficulty getting parents to come and volunteer but have seen a dramatic increase in their participation for school events (field day, have breakfast with your child, and pep assemblies), we will continue to invite and encourage parents to not only participate but also volunteer. Some classroom teachers have a high volunteer rate while others do not, we plan to look at what has been successful so that we can encourage all teachers to have more parental involvement. Most parents feel comfortable with our school but their work schedules often prevent them from coming on a regular basis into the school.
Baker also has strong participation at school events, such as PTO, Watch D.O.G.S, and skate nights. Our Watch D.O.G. volunteers usually come in and work with the lower grades. We would like to see more Watch D.O.G. volunteers working with the upper grades and being a positive male influence that many of them do not see at home.
We see our school’s diversity reflected in attendance at pep assemblies, movie nights, and events in which students may be performing. Unfortunately, we don’t see that same participation at PTA meetings, conferences, principal’s coffees, etc. For us, it is likely a cultural barrier. One idea we have is to have pre-made translated forms announcing conferences, spirit nights, and so forth to give out at the more well attended functions. For instance, as parents exit a pep/awards assembly 5th graders could be handing out flyers regarding an upcoming PTA meeting (one side English, one side Spanish). We really want to do all that we can to cover the communication piece. We want to extend our hand to our entire population.
We agree with the previous posts, which observed that there is definitely more participation in the “fun” and “family” events as opposed to the meetings to plan and organize said events. We also discussed that many of our volunteers are our middle class, Caucasian women. It is easy to assume that they are homemakers because of their consistent presence at our schools; however, we realized during our reflection time that many of them rush out at the end of some of the events to return to work. Representation at our PTA meetings is relatively equitable and diverse because we have planned these meetings to precede a grade level performance or concert.
We too plan on offering opportunities for parent involvement at various times to meet the needs of our families. Most want to volunteer and take part more than they might be able. It would be unfortunate to assume that these parents do not care to be active partners.
We agree that it is sometimes a challenge to keep ESL parents in the volunteer loop. Varied time opportunities is a great idea! We wonder about communication. If only one person in your school speaks a certain language, how much pressure do you put on them to be available for translation, writing newsletters, etc?
The assumption that these parents are indifferent does rear its ugly head sometimes. Is it also an assumption that they work 2-3 jobs? Maybe it is a socio-economic prejudice we are experiencing. We also have heard that “it’s a cultural thing” enough times to believe that people actually don’t come to schools because in their culture, it is just not proper. Like you, we believe that these parents believe in us and trust that we have their children’s best interest at heart. Regardless of the sub group, sometimes anything short of knocking on their front door and grabbing them by the hand will not do.
We have a difficult time having parents volunteer on a regular basis, but when we have special events such as field trips or school events, the parents are more willing. When we have field trips, we usually have a large number of our fathers who are willing to volunteer as chaperons. Our volunteers are almost totally African-American, which reflects our student population. We also discussed that we often have grandparents who volunteer or other family members who come to the school trips and events. Because many of our students come from a single-parent home, it is difficult to find volunteers during the school day. These parents usually work and would lose pay to volunteer during the day. As a school, we need to be sensitive to these constraints and welcome the parents when they are able to help out.
At Ward Elementary we have a similar situation. We see a large increase in volunteerism for field trips and field day specifically. We also have a harder time getting the same parents involved on a regular basis to do small tasks as they arise. We also noticed that the parents that tend to come for the “big” events may not actually interact with the students, instead they watch from the sidelines. Our spread of volunteers seems to be more based on SES than race. We have a good mix of African-American and Caucasian volunteers, but very few come from low SES, which we have a large population of. One of the reasons we feel this happens is because many of our parents don’t have transportation, can’t get off of work, and are intimidated by the school environment because of their lack of schooling. From these observations we have been discussing ways to get our parents involved from the poorer communities. One thing we plan to work on is finding ways to provide transportation to the school for special events. We definitely have to be sensitive to each families situation instead of assuming they don’t care enough to be involved.
We are very similar to Ward as far as volunteers being available for Field Day and field trips. When we offer evening workshops for families, it is very important that we offer something for the children- reading/snack. We feel Mehfoud is a true example of public education- parents who “have” and parent who “have not”- single family homes, multiple families in one home and single parents. The three people on this team are white, grew up in the typical “white middle class” and we work in a school that is approximately 69% African American. We feel Mehfoud is not divided by race, but we need to have a more diversified staff and we need to find better ways to help our parents become involved in school.
With half of our students coming from single family homes, many parents do not have time to volunteer. We have a few parents who seem to do everything from PTA to Room Mother. This year 2 teachers served as President and Vice President of the PTA because we had no one volunteer for the positions. Perhaps, parents’ perception of what it means to volunteer even if it’s one time a year could be better defined so parents can see that the more hands on deck, the easier the task. Some parents don’t know how to help their children academically and others did not have good experiences when they were in school impeding their willingness to get involved. We feel that parents sense when teachers look down upon them. That first experience with any parent is key.
When students come from a single parent household or when both parents work, it is difficult for that parent to be involved during the school day. We need to find ways to get them involved that are different then the traditional volunteering roles. No easy answer here, but it is important to reach out to all our parents. We are working on that as well.
Here at Crestview we feel children don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Students won’t remember the specific SOL number, but they will remember the relationships built with teachers, staff, and other students. All students are appreciated for their individual strengths and have a special place in our school community. We teach to the “whole” child (socially, emotionally, and academically). We like to celebrate what is happening in our students personal and academic lives in both verbal and non-verbal ways. Crestview is fortunate to have this intimate relationship with our students due to our small number of students.
We could not have said it better. Relationships are key to building trust. We believe that children will learn and cooperate in direct proportion to the amount they feel you care about them. Students pay close attention to your words and actions and can tell when you are being sincere. Likewise, parents and guardians need to know how much you care about their children before they will trust you. We also believe strongly in celebrating success and do so through quarterly events and assemblies that recognize accomplishments. As our numbers increase next year, due to redistricting, we hope to be able to maintain the intimate relationships you refer to in your post.
We also agree, and relate to Crestview’s and Holladay’s responses, here at Greenwood Elementary. Obviously, having a smaller number of students makes it a more intimate setting, but regardless of size, building meaningful relationships with students, parents, and teammates is necessary for the students to reach their potentials. We know that the cycle of prejudice can only be broken when students and adults focus on caring about the well being of all people. When a person feels that they are appreciated and important, it is more likely that they will respond positively to others regardless of differences in appearance, ability, language…This is the cycle we are building and maintaining at our school. One way we promote this cycle is by having many classes that “buddy” with each other during a set time each week. The younger students practice their reading skills, while the older students practice fluency and leadership skills. Both age groups benefit more socially and emotionally from this program. We have seen wonderful relationships grow year after year! Another way we do this is through many volunteer opportunities that teachers provide and/or PTA provides an agenda for the volunteers. We highlight our volunteers in our newsletters, on bulletin boards and at school events like PTA meetings. Students are proud and excited about their accomplishments and the accomplishments of their family members and friends. We strive year after year to create more and more opportunities for our students and their families to build relationships with each other. Strong relationships promote the positive while alleviating the prejudices.
At Deep Run, we have noticed an interesting occurence in our lunchroom. Both common areas at DR contain round tables and square long tables. Students sit everywhere, but those that sit at the longer square tables have to merge with students of other groups. This does not happen at the smaller, round tables. For example, if a group of basketball players sit at the end of a long table, they take up about six seats. Then, the student council president sits next to his friend, who is a part of the basketball team. His friends then sit down next to him. Then, a group of girls who are friends with the student council rep sit next to him. Next, a group of art students sit next to the group of girls because the groups have a “common” friend as well. This trend seems to happen at all the long tables, and it fosters mingling between all the groups of students eating lunch at the same time.
However, the round tables seem to be much more exclusive. Since only six students can physically sit at a round table, there is no room for a new member to join. Breaking into a circle can be intimidating as well. For example, a group of boys on the soccer team all sit at a round table. They all wear their soccer warm-ups, and from the outside, this is a close knit group. If someone tries to come over, that new person must stand on the outside. It is only a temporary visit.
This lunchroom behavior seems to reflect how the cycle of prejudice can continue and how it can be broken. Student groups and cliques can merge– but only if that’s the option they are given. Students want to stay in their cirlce because that’s what is comfortable and safe. The round table allow the students to feel safe, but at the same time, it allows them to alienate other students. The long tables, while initially overwhelming to some students, allow students to sit by others and meet new people, thus breaking out of the comfort zone that students inevitable seek.
We hope to look at this scenario more closely and brainstorm how we can bring more students together in order to create a more inclusive school community.
Seven Pines Elementary – Makes us consider how we set up our physical space to facilitate inclusion – cafeteria, classroom, recess; notice groupings of students on playground across grade levels; the younger they are the more comfortable they are with mixing between gender & race; How can we allow for camaraderie between groups but yet not segregate based on stereotypes?
Interesting observation…really made me start thinking about other spaces in the school where this same behavior can be seen. Obviously, in classrooms the teacher can assign students to groups at tables or teams…but what about in the library? At assemblies?
In a way it is natural to gravitate to those that you know the best and “speak the language” with. (Adults seek that comfort zone too!) At faculty meetings we generally sit with others that teach the same things simply because we have that connection. Could we sit with others? Sure! Could we work well with others? Yes. Would it benefit the teachers and the students to “force” some interaction? YES–in the long run. I think the time and energy to get people out of their comfort zone does pay off in the long run because you will end up with a faculty that has a whole new level of connections. So, how do we do this with the students?? Possibly start by doing this with the faculty!
I am excited to see the ideas that you guys come up with to try to make the round tableng table situation more inclusive!
We don’t see many areas of prejudice here at Trevvett. For the times we do it appears to be coming from outside media sources. Many times when the children use a term or gesture it is not something they truly even understand the meaning. The principal has sent home letters and dialogued with parents that it is important to monitor these outside sources and they are not acceptable here at school. To be proactive our school counselor is attending a class at the Holocaust museum this summer for training on prejudice and tolerance of others.
At Rivers Edge we see more incidents of insensitivity rather than that of prejudice. For example, we have occasionally needed to work on improving understanding of our students with special needs (we have three autism programs and one PEDD program). The entire staff has worked to increase all students’ sensitivity to the children in these programs. Likewise, we have occasionally seen some insensitivity to different cultural groups that have been addressed through classroom lessons or individually if necessary.
At Shady Grove, we are eagerly anticipating the arrival of a K-5 autism program in the fall. We see this as a great opportunity for our students to develop friendship with children whose needs are different than their own. We would be interested in hearing more about what successful approaches you have used to include special needs students.
We love having our K-2 Autism program. Our children are mainstreamed as much as possible and our children in general education are so kind and helpful. They ask very open and honest questions- we answer them very honestly and that is that! Young children are so forgiving and loving I hope you enjoy your classroom as much as we do,
At Pemberton, we have instituted a buddy system between gen ed students and our PEDD students. We have also formed a buddy system within the gen ed classrooms that have autistic students who are mainstreamed for the entire day. This has proven effective over the years as these children move through K-5 in educating and creating tolerance for differences among the gen ed students. The parents of the special needs students sincerely appreciate this, and everyone benefits.
Cycles of prejudices are portrayed through the media and are integral in establishing ideas and beliefs about how various subgroups behave and what they are able to do. As educators we need not follow these thoughts, but address student subgroups as individuals who can achieve, individuals who have different abilities, beliefs, and ethics.
Our biggest challenge is not a new one to our school or this county – we have a predominantly Caucasian faculty/staff working with a predominantly African American student population. It takes a lot of time to build relationships so that trust is earned. Parents make comments frequently that we don’t understand their situations/lives and that is why we plan so much community outreach. Teachers also have an issue with many perceived apathetic parents and willingly admit they get to a point where they stop calling, sending notes home about concerns due to lack of response. Therefore, school/community relationships and setting up an action plan for promoting positive school to home communication will be key next school year.
We have all been there. Don’t get discourage. We all have to continually do our part, even when we don’t have the parental support. Continue to put your effort and time in community outreach projects and eventually you will see the fruits of your labor. Our school has had the discussion of educating the African American male because of the number of retention, the number of F’s on report cards and conduct issues. It turned out to be very beneficial because we brainstormed ideas, shared our personal stories, and developed an action plan to move forward.
I am very happy to hear that your school has taken that step to go beyond just talking about ways to help a portion of your student population. I too would like to see more counseling services or school supported activities that promote family and/or a support group for these students who need the attention and support to be just as successful as those more advantaged.
We were encouraged by your candor sharing your very sensitive situation. Our hope is that while we all have different issues to tackle in our individual schools, this forum will help us all come to some real solutions and support.
Baker has a strong equitable representation of parents that volunteer for various activities within the school. Our school is primarily African American, which majority of our volunteers are. The volunteers that come into our school represent the subgroups of Disadvantaged, Special Ed, and the general population respectively. Our school would like to see more parent volunteers in the classrooms, but we understand that working multiple jobs and lack of transportation may affect this. We continue to seek ways of attracting more parents to come in and work with classes.
Like Baker, we would also like to see more parent volunteers at our school. Our population is also predominately African American, and we often see the same core group of parents participating/volunteering in our school. We communicate through newsletters, connect, flyers, and phone calls home when necessary. Our parental involvement continues to be low, however the parents that do come seem to always enjoy the activities that we hold at school. We have even offered food at our after-school activities to get parents here, and through Title 1 have offered transportation.
Seven Pines Elementary – Stereotypes may exist as a result of cognitive “shortcuts” in our thinking processes. Stereotypes may represent both negative and positive qualities. We feel the first step is self-awareness and that motivates us to consider how to “retrain” our thinking & thus our actions. Consider our background / upbringing & how that shapes our interactions with our specific community & families.
Agreed, and if taken a step further….After the self awareness come the realization that yes we are all a bit different but yet regardless of the difference we are all the same. It sounds cliche’ but its really applicable. Lets try to focus less on our differences!
Like many of you have already posted, we too have a predominately Caucasian, female staff working with a very diverse population. While it may be hard for our students and parents to see themselves in our staff, we do try very hard to build positive, caring, trusting relationships with our students and community. We are lucky that our volunteer base is very diverse, with the exception of our ESL parents. Many of our staff members participated in a PLC this year by reading Ruby Payne’s “Framework for Understanding Poverty.” Through our discussions, we have new insights on ways we can help students begin to work through the cycle of prejudice and poverty that they face. One thing we have come to realize is that our school has such cultural diversity in our population that we don’t have a lot of racial prejudice between our students. We do, however, have a large number of students who are economically disadvantaged. The Ruby Payne book gave us good information on how to better serve and understand this area in our building. We hope to offer new services to help our disadvantaged families in the coming year.
We have discussed that session 2 reiterated to us that we need to continue to strive to expose our students to as many different cultures and opportunities to afford them the opportunity to interact and experience different races and cultures. Our audit confirmed this as well. We don’t have a diverse population, but we do have the resources and we need to utilize them more in this area in conjunction with the academics instead of in isolation. We also need to put this same focus on parental involvement.
This year we initiated a school-wide Citizenship Campaign that has been aimed at promoting good manners and excellent behavior. The training helped us realize how important activities such as this are to promoting a sense of belonging for students. By recognizing students who are serving as models of good behavior for others, we have placed all of our students on an equal playing field in terms of qualifying for monthly awards. They cannot achieve the award without investing themselves in meeting the goals that have been set; however, there are no obstacles to prevent any child from accomplishing the goal. The training has increased our sense of commitment to the program and made us think about how we can enhance it for next year. It also offers an interesting starting point for conversation with our staff about creating a “sense of belonging” for all students.
We agree that cultivating character is an important part in the education of all students. To help teach good manners and respect for others, the guidance counselor started a program called Take 2. This program is a weekly manners skit that demonstrates good manners in a variety of settings. Each Tuesday, about 4-5 students are chosen to act out a skit during morning announcements. The skits are either “live” or have been taped. The topics are chosen by the school counselor or from ideas submitted by teachers, students, or safety committee recommendations. When the skit begins, the students first show the incorrect way to handle a situation. Then, the director claps the scene marker, and the students act out Take 2, the correct way to handle the situation. Some of the topics presented involve friendship issues, saving seats in the cafeteria, how to greet someone, manners, safety, study and test taking skills, playground rules, and lunch room expectations. The topics are endless. The “actors” are chosen randomly, although sometimes students who need an extra boost are asked to act or participate in the skit. These performances are well received by the children, especially the taped ones!
We really love this idea! We want to brainstorm a way to adapt this to the middle school environment. Our students tend to not pay so much attention to the announcements, but would love to take part in this in a different way. Hopefully we will be able to integrate this idea into our new mentoring program taking place on Mondays… possible name “Hawk Talk!” The responsibility of facilitating the presentation of the topics could rotate through mentoring groups.
What a great idea! We are still in the dark ages- our AM announcements are over the intercom- with our new building addition, we hope to be able to do the same.
At Longdale Elem, we have 50% Black students and 25% White students. The other 25% is made of Asians and Hispanics, etc. We find that the adults tend to be the only ones looking at race. Perhaps more so in the lower grades, the students tend not to notice if their classmates are mostly black or (if white), that they are the minority in the classroom.
In regard to the “Cycle of Predjudice” – It is the world we live in…again as adults, maybe we pay more attention to stereotypes. It doesn’t have to be that way, however.
My question is what if we don’t talk about it? Is the noticing of/subscribing to stereotypes taught? Can it be avoided?
Our school team talked about the various effects prejudice can have. Several teachers at our school each year specifically will not find anything out about their new students at the beginning of the year in an attempt to prevent building a prejudice against the student, the student’s past, their parents, etc. The teachers will meet their new students, build bonds and relationships and then, a couple of weeks into the year go back and read records, talk to previous teachers, etc. It is an interesting way to prevent the preconceived notions that often prevent a kid from starting a year with a clean slate.
In working through our data, we found that it was not a specific ethnic group so much as it is our students from disadvantaged homes that will need to be an area of focus for our team. We found that among our parents, ethnicity was also not the area of concern as disadvantaged homes. We are looking to engage these folks into our school community in a way that is more helpful to their student’s education and beneficial to the development of the school community as a whole.
We think you hit upon an important point – prejudice is not just about ethnicity or skin color, but also appears around issues of socioeconomic status. Economically disadvantaged students face challenges that others don’t, and we as a school are tasked with meeting those challenges and helping to close the gaps. Our area of focus this year will be alternative ways of involving parents in the school. For students and families who are economically disadvantaged, what does it mean to be involved in the school? What does parental involvement look like for these families?
Here at Adams we feel that the cycle of prejudice plays out in the following ways. First of all, we feel that building relationships is something we do extremely well. WE do not see many barriers, be they racial, or SES, to building these strong ties. One area however, where we feel prejudice plays a role is behavior. Once a student struggles with severe behavior, it is difficult for some of our teachers to see past that behavior. This is not to say that it i snot a goal at Adams to give each child a fresh start each day, because it is, it’s just that the daily struggle wears one down. The child becomes he behavior. We have committed to teacher empowerment training to help give our teachers the tools they need.
At Elko, our student population is split almost evenly between those representing the African American and Caucasian populations. We do not have a large representation of other cultures. Our faculty, for the most part, directly reflects our student population.
The socio-economic make-up of our students is more diverse. We are part of rural community that borders the city. From these areas we pull a mix of students ranging from the upper middle class to the economically disadvantaged. In fact, we have some of the largest numbers of economically disadvantaged students in comparison to the other middle schools around the county.
In many schools, such a stark contrast in cultures and economic status could cause issue among the students but we have a strong administration and faculty that promote equality and do not accept failure. We have implemented a school wide bullying committee (Olweus) and have included the entire student body in the process of adopting its principles of acceptance and combating problem behavior when it occurs.
We see our children working and socializing with students of other cultures and economic status frequently, without issue. We feel we are privileged to be a part of a school community that is working hard to insure success for our students and can see change being made. Some areas we could improve in are increasing parent involvement (parents working two jobs are hard to contact and get into the building), and providing counseling services or programs for those students who find their home life keeping them from succeeding in school.
Here at Freeman we have a problem with parent involvement. We often rely on technology to relay important information to parents which we feels excludes certain parents. We have many involved parents- at sporting events, booster events, and at the principal’s meetings. These parents however usually only represent a small portion of our parents. There are basically two schools at Freeman; there are parents who have been a part of the Freeman community for several generations. These parents feel like they can walk the halls of the school without a visitors pass. Then we have the parents that do not feel comfortable as a part of the school. They are not invited by the other parents to participate in activities and they feel excluded. We need to celebrate the newcomers instead of exclude them. We are so very much a diverse community and we fail to recognize this in a positive way.
Our team discussed the current lack of diversity in our school population and how it affects the few students that represent different sub groups. For example, most students in our school have excellent support in their home environment. However, a few do not have that same support, making them a target for insensitivity. If these students come to class without materials or homework, they often stand out amongst their peers.
Keeping in mind redistricting for next year, we would like to make sure all of our students feel welcome and happy to be at our school. To facilitate this, we discussed having a Hawk Day where families in the community can come and hang out with current Hawks (including faculty & staff). Hopefully this will be a community building and team building event to unite all Hawks, new and old.
At Skipwith, we discussed what we currently do to try to involve parents in our school: using ConnectEd to get information out, counselor planned parent workshops on various topics of interest, invitations to events that celebrate our diverse cultures or are simply fun to enjoy time with one another (i.e. Jumprope for Heart or SCA Basketball game). What we realized is, besides the home-school communication that takes place through agenda books, calendars, or phone calls/e-mail, all of what we consider to be parent involvement includes parents physically being at school. With our ever-changing population in which the large majority of our families are single parents working 1 or more jobs, parents simply don’t have the time to be at school on a regular basis. Of our 160 registered parent volunteers, most of these parents go on 1 field trip, come to the class winter party, or come to 1 event. Why does parent involvement have to mean the parent is physically at school? Our PTA of mostly White females is not representative of our population, but it requires time and energy that many parents are simply not able to give here.
In the 21st Century, the age of technology, we need to expand this definition for ourselves. Many schools have parent listserves or a yahoo group – what a great way to ask for help or get information out to parents, most of whom have a computer or access to one. We are interested and open to more ideas like this – how do we involve parents without asking that they physically be at school?
Your school as you describe it here is a mirror of ours. The ways that you communicate with parents, the events that you host, your parent population, the number of registered volunteers (we have 176), and the make up of your PTA Board are all very similar to what we have at Lakeside. Our team also discussed how to use technology to get our parents involved. We discussed communicating using e-mail more, using Facebook or something similar because so many of our parents have accounts, and taking our events out into the community rather than having them exclusively at the school. We also discussed having our parents commit to at least 2 school events at the beginning of the year that they will attend throughout the year.
Our group discussion about the cycle of prejudice at Godwin led us to the topic of minorities in advanced classes. We are not sure why the honors and ap classes here are nearly void of minority students, especially African American students while in lower level classes there are more minority students. Is this truly ability based, or is there a cultural factor involved that has nothing to do with schools, or is this a tracking issue? We think dissolving the lowest level (s) classes may help level the playing field giving students who would have been placed in a lower level class the chance to find success in a college prep class and perhaps move up to higher levels. We also identified with the idea that many students who struggle as minorities may feel they are representing a group larger then themselves. Those of us in the group who never had a problem asking questions in class as high schoolers had a fundamental sense of self allowing us to simply ask a question for the sake of the answer. For many minority students in advanced class, perhaps asking questions is a sign of inadequacy.
Tucker has a diverse population. Our team met to focus on parental involvement and the impact of prejudice on progress. We have a strong PTSA and we have numerous activities for parents to become involved in: boosters, Tucker Refresh, Principal’s Coffee, volunteering, the Many parents are concerned about the pending redistricting and the impact it might have on the children. While we have prided ourselves test scores and graduation rates, there is still room for improvement.
Tucker does have a very strong and active PTSA, and both faculty, staff and the PTSA work together in a very good partnership to provide for the students. Through our discussion and investigation of involvement, our team began to realize that “partnership” means different things to different families. While some parents are able to attend meetings or volunteer at the school in various capacities, other parents are working two jobs or have smaller children to care for and are unable to attend many events. With this in mind, the question for us changed from whether or not meetings were well represented by all races and ethnic groups to whether or not the PTSA represented the interests of all groups.
The meetings and events are not well attended by all racial groups. Currently Tucker does provide many resources for families (translation at meetings, a variety of events, varied times of events, etc.), but one focus area will be to have greater family outreach so that more parents are aware of the resources we do have.
Our administrative team agreed that we are somewhat “hyper-focused” on parent involvement and communication here at Tucker. Because dealing with diversity has been so imposed on them in dealing with Exceptional Education students, it has become a “habit” that benefits all students.
Inclusive classrooms, differentiated instruction, and creating a welcoming campus are part of everyone’s responsibility at Tucker. At this point, our team is still looking ahead at the pending changes in demographics for the 2010-2011 school year as boundary changes go into effect. Noting the differences in how much some parents can participate, we are going to focus on differentiating instruction, personalizing the school environment, increasing parental involvement, and family outreach. We know that how a student feels at school affects every aspect of learning and progressing. How a parent feels about the school is reflected to the child, also impacting learning. The duel focus of the school environment and the family outreach should have a positive impact on student progress.
At Greenwood, we diligently work to provide a wide range of opportunities for parent engagement. We are fortunate in that parent participation stretches from PTA to Watch DOGS to room parents to field trip chaperones to copy parent to events like Book Fair and Carvel nights to name a few. Feedback from our audit reflects that we currently have a lot in place to welcome many of Greenwood parents to volunteer. Reflecting on experiences past and present, many of our subgroups are involved as well. As we continue to move forward, we are motivated to involve a population that has recently come to light – our grandparents. We will potentially consider another area also – the student population that makes improvements during the nine week period. Teachers may encounter students who have made improvements academically but not to the level of honor roll. Those students may sometimes feel left out during periods of student recognition. If this is a chosen area, our challenges would be to establish criteria, give it a name and share it with teachers, students, and parents.
Our values and what we think is important may be totally different than our parents and students. The challenge for us over the years has been to find the right staff to fit our students. With mostly white female teachers teaching predominantly black students, we have found that staff development is crucial to begin to understand students’ background. We also recognize that the teachers that are most successful are the ones that show they care for each student. Once parents see the love we have for their children, race becomes less relevant. Until this relationship is formed, parents hold their own prejudice and are vocal about it when conflict occurs. For teachers, their is a struggle to be nonjudgmental since “we” would make sure our children did homework, was on time for school, and attended parent conferences.
At Lakeside, our community has changed quickly in the last several years and continues to. We have moved from a predominantly White student body to one that includes 36% Black students, 9% Hispanic, and 2% Asian along with other ethnic groups. However, our core classroom teachers are all Caucasian. We have been addressing the issues of cultural awareness and sensitivity through workshops, staff developments, school wide programs for students and parents and honest conversations with each other. As our team discussed the effects of the cycle of prejudice on our school culture, we realized that our parents play part in keeping the cycle going. What goes on between families in the community affects how our students perceive and treat each other. We wondered how much of what happens outside of the school we can influence. We try to provide a school atmosphere that is safe, welcoming, and accepting for our students and their families. We plan to further discuss how we can improve parent to parent relationships.
Sandston’s community issues also are a huge impact on our daily school instruction. We too find that many unresolved neighborhood/family/community concerns make a huge impact on the ability of students to focus for the school day. We continue to work towards the concept of “the 6 1/2 hours we have with our students daily, have to be maximized to support them”. Our WATCH DOGS program helped the fathers to have a better understanding of the daily school operations. This focus of volunteering needs to be increased to include representatives of all subgroups that hopefully would allow parents to understand how neighborhood issues impact the operation of the daily instructional day. This will be our parent involvement component based on data gathered for the “parent engagement” survey.
We are having the same kinds of discussions at Carver. We are sensitive to the many needs we have here, and we are trying to explore ways to help make everyone feel comfortable with the changing demographics.
As a team we discussed the importance of breaking down the cycle of prejudice. Although, there has been elevation from the division/separation over the generations, our society has a ways to go. Prejudice has existed ever since there was the distinction between races. Like any other social problem, racism and prejudices are most easily and effectively removed during its earliest and weakest stages. As educators, we have to ensure that each student has a strong sense of belonging. When you are educating or setting an example for others, we should keep in mind that racism and prejudice are often based on ignorance and misinformation rather than ill-will. This certainly doesn’t excuse it but at least means that it should be treated differently. People learn to be prejudice ideology and they can be taught differently, but depending on a number of factors it may be a lot more difficult for some than for others.
At Ashe can can definitely relate to your point of view: “As educators, we have to ensure that each student has a strong sense of belonging.” To piggy back on that, one of the blog themes in the hand-outs was “remember, having a student in your room doesn’t make them included.” At Ashe it is important to us to get to know our parents, family make-up, and cultures to understand which methods work best for communicating on a daily basis. This falls back to ensuring a child feels a sense of belonging in the classroom. How do we do this? Taking time to get to know our families, approaching them with positivity, using terminology that is clear and easy to understand. For example: discussing the PALs reading test with a parent is great way to explain the child’s reading ability and what needs to be improved, however as teachers we need to make sure we fully explain what this test is and why it is so highly valued in HCPS. Language barriers with the ESL community can also prevent parental involvement and it is important for us to make sure the students are not feeling disconnected in the classroom by providing translators, classes for ESL parents, and support which the county does provide.
We at Sandston are currently reviewing concepts that are inclusive in the topic of “cycles of prejudice” as we work through our discipline data over the last few years. We are reviewing the areas of ethnicity and gender to determine the percentages of disciplinary actions taken throughout the last three years. Staff and administration are working through these concepts as it relates to interactions and discipline. Continued discussion of the aspects presented at this last meeting on the cycles of prejudice were started at Sandston in November 2009.
When we really look at parent engagement, we see two trends at Dumbarton. One, we get very good parent turn out for student performances, dinners, and international nights, but we only have a small percentage actually join the PTA. Furthermore, we also see the same small group of parents doing the vast majority of the volunteer work. Our parents are hard working people and many of them work more than one job or are single parents. We need to think outside the box and try to engage them in more creative ways that can tap into their talents and resources. The second trend we see is that parent involvement dropped off as the student gets older. Parents seem to be more likely to be involved when their kids are at the younger grades. We need to reach these parents early and keep them involved as their children get older.
Johnson’s student population is currently 30.9% ESL students. We would like to see this population of parents become more involved in the education of their children. Our school offers similar activities to engage these parents in the life of the school (student performances, international nights, math nights, literacy nights). Like Dumbarton, many of our ESL parents work more than one job. A greater barrier is language. Many of our newer teachers do not feel comfortable calling the home of an ESL student. Communication is limited if it is only sent home in English. Our faculty needs to develop strategies and set goals to reach our ESL parents.
Byrd Middle School says:
We’ve noticed that your school (Dumbarton) and also River’s Edge commented about having an International Night to help make those from other cultures feel more comfortable with your school and to give other students and parents a taste of the different cultural backgrounds that are a part of your school(s). We would be interested in learning more about what was successful and what worked well in putting one of those on for our students and parents.
Our PTA is also planning an International Fair this year to celebrate the cultural diversity in our school. We are looking forward to learning more about the many different cultures and sharing that understanding with the whole school community. We’d like to encourage all of our students’ parents to be a part of the school and this Fair is just one way to do that. We think this and highlighting cultures on morning announcements brings a better understanding and acceptance of our diverse student body. We would also be interested in learning more about what was successful and what worked well with the International Fair.
At Colonial Trail, our PTA put together an International Night this past year. We have 19 countries represented with a Children’s Parade and various booths to showcase special items/foods from different countries. It was a wonderful evening!
I really like the idea of an “International Night” to help the school become more familiar with the variety of cultures in the school. I think this will eliminate any prejudices about cultures and educate the community about the diverse community. Great idea! I will share with my school for sure!
At Hermitage Technical Center our student body consists of students from all over the county and all communities throughout the county. So we have a pretty diverse population of students in our school and we do not think the cycle of prejudice has a large enough impact on our school to make a difference in a negative or positive way. As a school district we think that a socioeconomically prejudice cycle does have a large impact on our school district as a whole. Parents and students from the east end automatically assume that the parents and students on the west end have more. Also most parents and students on the west end of the county assume the opposite, which is the parents and students on the east end are less fortunate. Traditionally there is more low income housing on the east end of the county and less in the west end.
After discussing the “parent engagement audit part 2″ the Ashe team concluded that the overall parental involvement could be better but is average for the community we serve. We offer many opportunities at Ashe for parental involvement and numerous ways to communicate with our families. The cycle of prejudice can mistakenly be pointed to the parents that they don’t “want” to be involved in their child’s education, however we know many parents work night hours, have multiple jobs, lack transportation and child care resources that can prevent the parental involvement we would like to see happen. Our parent volunteers equitably represent the various groups in our school and again, we try really hard to communicate in a variety of ways: Monday folder, paper newsletter, website, email, and phone calls. We would like to continue to reach out to our parents and encourage them to stay involved in their child’s educational success at home and at school. At school we offer back to school night, holiday programs, recognition assemblies, Title I program, Parent Community Fair, Family Math Night, Family Reading Night, and parent workshops to help students (example: writing workshop). The activities we discussed that attract parents to our school are: children performing on stage, provided food, Field Day, and recognition.
What you do at Ashe mirrors what we do at Mehfoud except we are not Title I. We have a large # of volunteers, but getting there here is another story.
We (Byrd Middle School) discussed that the parent volunteer group contains many non-working mothers, mostly Caucasian. Other parents do become involved if their child is participating in an activity. Our music classes are diverse and when there is a performance, there is also a diverse group of parents present to watch their children. Our sports teams also have parents who come to watch the events. We have noticed, based on the data we collected about the various sports teams, that there are teams that draw a more diverse population than others. We are not sure if this is due to students being exposed to those sports before reaching middle school, or why this happens. We would like to gather more information and have talked about doing a student interest survey. As rezoning presents us with a new group of students who are not familiar with Byrd, that may become one part of the focus of our team. How can we help to make those new students feel included and comfortable in their new school and equal opportunity for success. We also have a Human Relations committee here at Byrd and may enlist their help in this goal.
Johnson Elementary in its discussion felt that our parent engagement struggles for two major reasons. First, parents and teachers struggle to communicate due to the language barrier. Limited resources to have written material translated or to have a translator available when teachers need to contact a parent creates situations where the teacher may not contact and involve parents as readily as families or parents of non-second language learners. Secondly, our committee felt that the level of comfort many of our parents feel in the educational environment is very low. We found that the fun activities such as movie night had higher attendance than literacy night or family math night. We also noted that low socio-economics often affects parents ability to become engaged. We have over 50% of our families in the low socio economic category. Parent engagement seems to be affected by the single parenting, working two jobs etc. It was acknowledged that even though these are challenges, having recognized them and being more aware of them will help us plan in a way to help reduce or break down the unconscious barriers to parent engagement.
At Carver Elementary, we will continue to focus on the achievement level for our subgroups and our approach to behavior and discipline. As our population has become more diverse, our scores show us that we need to raise the achievement level of our African American students as well as our disadvantaged students. We will continue to utilize the Intervention/Enrichment times in our schedule to focus on creating remedial groups in a strategic way. We will also continue our tutoring program as well as our focus on small group instruction for reading. We are using the theme,”Filling Buckets with Character at Carver” for the 10-11 school year. One of our PLC groups is exploring School-Wide Positive Supports for Carver. They will be meeting soon to determine our next steps.
It has been very interesting to read the blogs and to see that many of us deal with the similar issues no matter what side of the county we are on. As with Carver, we will continue to work on the achievement of our sub groups, but in partnership with Varina Elementary. We are also going to focus on community and family involvement.
Agreed! Across the county we face challenges everywhere and that is what makes us a great county because we are continually giving effort to improve each child’s educational success regardless of what circumstances we may face! It has been interesting to read the blogs and see the issues are represented across the board!
At CT, we deal with a lot of assumptions. It is assumed that all of the children in our school receive A’s on report cards. There are no “trouble children” and all the families are rich. In fact, we have had a homeless family enter our school this year. And it’s not just this one family who didn’t fit into the mold that others put on our school. We have so many different situations and family make-up within our school. We have children living with grandmothers and being taken care of by foster families. The Cycle of Prejudice is such a hard thing to break. Although we embrace diversity within our school, I think that the students themselves even assume that their classmates are just like them – until they find out that they are not. And then the teasing and harsh words emerge, purely out of ignorance of what it’s like to be different from the mold and Cycle of Prejudice the children have experienced all of their lives. We would like to focus on breaking this Cycle of Prejudice within our school by helping make our Bullying/Diversity program stronger this upcoming year.
Parent involvement is a focus area for us. Our parents are working very hard some with one or two jobs and the students spend a good deal of time in day-care; making it a long day for all. Parents and teachers contact each other by phone, email, and notes. We can often have a conference with a parent in the early morning after a work shift. Most parents make a real effort for conferences and to have lunch with their children often during the year. Getting parents to come in on a consistent basis is difficult. We have discussed working more with the WATCH DOG Program to get dads in and having some math night activities where we have food, learning and fun. We, too, would like to reach more parents for involvement. We know that having parents as part of the team in their children’s education is essential