Teacher trips help students learn / Joe Nathan’s Column
By Joe Nathan on November 26, 2013 at 3:40 pm
Originally posted at http://hometownsource.com/2013/11/26/joe-nathan-column-teacher-trips-help-students-learn/
Local field trips for students are common, but not so much for teachers. But a Minnesota school recently took its teachers around neighborhoods they serve to help them understand more about their students and families. The ultimate goal is more student success.
“We want to expose the staff to the community so they can understand where their students come from,” explained ACC founder and Executive Director Ramona de Rosales. Principal Hernan Moncada told me, “If the staff is going to work with the community, they have to know the community.”Many of the students at Academia Cesar Chavez, or their parents, come from Mexico. So Academia Cesar Chavez, a St. Paul charter public school, took the school’s faculty to visit Neighborhood House, CLUES (Cumunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio) and the Mexican consulate – all located within 10 minutes of the school.
There’s a lot of research to support the value of faculty knowing about, and using community information as they work with, students and faculty.
For example, Gloria Ladson-Billings, a University of Wisconsin professor, studied outstanding teachers who appeared simultaneously on two lists: Principals created the first list, and parents developed the second. Billings observed faculty members who principals and parents agreed were excellent.
In her award-winning book, “The Dreamkeepers,” Ladson-Billings described several things that most of the teachers did. One of the several strategies that most of these teachers used was to include references to local events, activities and community groups in their teaching. Then, as Ladson-Billings explains, these teachers “help students make connections between their community, national and global identities.”
Other research by Joyce Epstein, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, examined characteristics of schools that had a lot of parent and family involvement. She learned, among other things, that the best predictor of family involvement was not the income, race or marital status of parents. The best predictor of family involvement was what the school did to promote it.
Understanding and respecting the community can help a school and classroom be more welcoming, encouraging and successful. So, for example, Academia Cesar Chavez educators learned about the close, ongoing relationships between families it served and their extended family members who still live in Mexico. Part of what ACC educators learned was that many of the families are simultaneously working to support their families and to attend classes so they can learn or improve their English. Thus, it’s important to schedule conferences at times that will work for parents.
Educators won’t always live in the community or communities that their school serves. But by touring, or by inviting in community leaders, educators can learn more about “where students are coming from.” That allows them to help students make connections between their own lives, their families’ experiences and school lessons.
Educators who know more about their students and families have additional tools they can use to help students succeed.
Joe Nathan, formerly a Minnesota public school teacher, administrator and PTA president, directs the Center for School Change. Reactions welcome, please comment below.
December 13, 2013 @ 10:35 am
While this has good intentions, there are some negatives. Many, if not most teachers already understand the backgrounds of their students. These field trips are most often organized by district personnel, who themselves are out of touch, so he message to teachers can be “we know things you need to do better.”
A far better thing might start with visits to neighborhoods, but the real focus should be getting the community to the schools. Parents in the schools beat teachers in the neighborhood.
December 13, 2013 @ 10:41 am
Great article. I think this would be great “staff development” for all schools.
I disagree with the comment that most teachers already know about their students’ backgrounds. What teachers “know” is often rife with generalizations or misconceptions, unless they make a concerted effort to become familiar with the community context in which students and their families live. To suggest that getting parents into the schools beats getting teachers into the community overlooks the importance of engagement between school and families being two-way channels. Teachers need not only to tell parents things, but also to listen to parents. Parents need not only to become familiar with the school context, but to have confidence that their children’s teachers are familiar with their community context.
December 13, 2013 @ 10:42 am
Much appreciated, Joe. I forwarded to our home/school liaisons, as it is timely to conversations and work we are doing.
The sentence that stood out to me was Epstein’s:
…the best predictor of family involvement was not the income, race or marital status of parents. The best predictor of family involvement was what the school did to promote it.
Have a good day.
Cara
December 13, 2013 @ 10:43 am
Joe, good article. Implementing a set of related activities, especially at the elementary school level, allows children to have the same experience. Too often student visits to the community revolve solely around visits to the bakery or other community related studies. However, adding Service activities as a goal opens up opportunities for students to have a greater understanding of their neighborhoods: students having an ongoing organized activity of picking up trash in the neighborhood, visiting nursing homes to sing and visit with residents, setting up regular calls to elderly shut-ins, making cards when colleagues have a new baby born into the family, visiting and donating to food shelves, calling colleagues who are sick at home for an extended period of time, writing to community people related to an unusual activity or situation reported in the newspaper, etc. These are not just frivolous acrtivities under the heading of “do goodness.” They have specific outcomes related to the skills program in the classroom. Often students and their families continue these contacts out of school long after the projects are over. The combination of these two programs, teachers and students knowing the community from all points of view, should add a greater sense of students’ and teachers’ knowledge of and pride in their community.
December 13, 2013 @ 10:44 am
To increase school community involvement and students being able to see community members as “facilitators of learning” on the faculty, I suggest that a school staff include teacher aides and community experts from the local community. This might mean some reduction of “professional” staff to provide the budget for greater variety of adults in the school.
December 13, 2013 @ 10:45 am
Hi Joe. Appreciated your last note re: families and communities. ASCD just send out the following brief article on a home visit initiative in WA State that may be of interest. Truth in advertising – I’ve had a hand in it, however it is being led by a remarkable educator. Best, Margery
http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol9/905-zigarelli.aspx