This is what Leadership and Collaboration Look Like

As this blog progresses on what I feel to be a logical track, I received an email the other day from one of my fellow teachers.  It was insightful, stirring, and about building a strong school community/PTSO.

It appears as follows:

"A Proposal to Increase Parent Involvement at THS

                The Culture and Climate Survey readily indicates our frustration with parental involvement in the life of our school and the education of our students. The undesirable consequences of a detached parent body manifest themselves every day in our school.

                The PTSO has been a body trying to engage more parents, but I can tell you we are constantly failing. PTSO remains a small group of essentially IBDP parents, some of whom are clearly disappointed by the failure to change things. The International Festival was a great event but, feel PTSO parents, poorly supported by all members of our community.

Following our Poverty Simulation, I think I became more aware of the stresses and strains placed upon a number of our parents, especially those parents whom we have the hardest time reaching. For me, at least, the simulation was a useful exercise in problem definition.

As I have thought about the issues raised by the activity, I have become more convinced that we as THS faculty need to take a more active and aggressive role in engaging our parents and providing for them services that will at once both improve the quality of their lives and draw them into the sphere of our school. By opening the doors more widely, addressing their very real needs, and providing educational, logistical, financial, social, and other programs, we can argue perhaps more effectively to those parents most alienated from or indifferent to what we are trying to achieve with their children that we are a welcoming, engaged, and willing community that has all their best interests at heart.

The community fair held at the school last week provides the sort of model I would speak of though I would argue such a program should be a regular, on-going part of the landscape. I would argue that we could devise a series of classes that would meet regularly at school. We could provide childcare and food to mitigate the difficulties many parents might have attending such events. The adults would be attracted to our school because what we offer at these times provides for their own needs. We might wonder why the success of their students is not enough, but we know for a fact it is too often not.

So what might we do?

I am not going to argue that each of us should be teaching evening classes on top of what we already do. What I might argue is that we might bring our collective energy and experience to organizing services and instruction other would provide.

For example:

·         English classes. These things are offered in various places, but our school is an obvious location for such an activity. We could of course provide some of this on a rotating basis, but I believe there are resources out there who would do this.

·         IC classes. Clearly, parents do not access the information we know is readily available on our web sites.

·         Social networking information sessions. All of us are aware that parents often do not know of the dangers of this media age.

·         Financial information sessions. How does one bank, avoid pay-day lending, make a standing order, get a paycheck deposited from work? We experienced these problems in the simulation.

·         Immigration issues. What are your rights and responsibilities? What risks do you run given your status? How can you feel more secure here?

·         Parenting classes. What are the issues in raising a teenager? What do our parents need to know about this difficult age, and how do they cope and make things better?

·         Social services education. What resources out there does the state provide to smooth the problems of daily living?

·         Health education. How do struggling families best access health services for their families? 

·         College readiness education. One cannot but imagine most of our parents have no clue about the nature and cost of further and higher education.

·         Mental health education. How does one recognize problems and access the necessary services to address those sorts of issues?

·         Housing issues. What are my rights as a renter? How does one buy in this market? How does one deal with or avoid foreclosure?

This is my late-night list. I imagine some might think we do some of this already. I imagine others might want to redefine or add to this list.

However, what I propose is a comprehensive, coordinated pattern of instruction that directly addresses the issues in our community.

Can we do this?

I suspect that many of us might recognize the potential usefulness of such a program, and perhaps some of us have relationships with people in professions that might out of either self-interest or community spirit volunteer to help parents address their very personal needs. I see our role as reaching out into the community to encourage people we know or to encourage known professionals to get involved. I do believe some faculty might be interested in being involved directly. I see no reason why that has to be a given though the benefits to our school of more faculty involvement might be useful.

Will our parents do this?

Attendance at the community fair, as best as I can tell, was decent. If we did indeed make such a programmatic approach to outreach an integral part of the THS landscape, I believe we have a good chance at succeeding. If we provide the right ancillary incentives (childcare, food), we can mitigate the difficulty, augment the benefits, and provide real incentive to get to know our school. A regular program of help could be relied upon by our families, and they could trust our schedule to adjust theirs.

Can we guarantee positive benefits?

Obviously (it seems to me) no. Self-interest only goes so far, and it is possible there might be no carry-over into other spheres of our important work. It also seems to me, however, an avenue we have not explored. It seems to me that we might well encourage a more positive view of the school, its mission, and its value if parents themselves feel significantly impacted by educational programs that are geared to their needs. It seems a good bet to me that if parents feel there is a significant educational experience that improves their lives they will be more open to the argument that MYP can do exactly the same thing for their student. They will get it more than many apparently do now.

Can we afford it?

I am assuming most of the teaching will be done for free. We might need to raise money for food. Childcare can be done through CAS or NHS

Will it take too long?

Maybe. We will have to monitor how it goes, but I would think at least a two-year commitment would be a requirement to fully gauge the effectiveness of this proposal.

 Has anyone done this before so we can learn from others?

I don’t know outside of the community fair, but someone might take on that research to save us reinventing the wheel, to save us from pitfalls.

In conclusion, I would say that my document might at least spur a conversation over what steps we can take to change the culture of our school at least as it pertains to our relationships with our parents. Perhaps this is too far-reaching, too idealistic, too impractical

I offer this discussion only in the spirit of opening a conversation. "


This proposal is well thought out, non-confrontational, and something that teachers can follow and be inspired by.  Because this so closely aligns with the conclusions I was coming to thanks to writing this blog, I am pleased to know that I am not alone.  I look forward to contacting this teacher and helping him to move our school forward into becoming everything it can be.

Budgets will always be too little, but especially if parents and the community do not have faith in the strength of our institutions.