Parental Involvement: Latino Parent Workshops/Seminars
Parental Involvement:
Latino Parent Meetings, Seminars, Workshops
CPSELs
1.4 Identify and address any barriers to accomplishing the vision.
3.5 Align fiscal, human, and material resources to support the learning of all subgroups of students.
4.1 Recognize and respect the goals and aspirations of diverse family and community groups.
4.2 Treat diverse community stakeholder groups with fairness and respect.
4.3 Incorporate information about family and community expectations into school decision-making and activities.
4.5 Communicate information about the school on a regular and predictable basis through a variety of media.
4.6 Support the equitable success of all students and all subgroups of students by mobilizing and leveraging community support services.
6.7 Open the school to the public and welcome and facilitate constructive conversations about how to improve student learning and achievement.
CPSEL 1 says, A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community. During the school year 2011-2012 I led a total of three Latino parent seminars/workshops. These workshops gave me the opportunity to bring Latino parents into the conversation about what they need to know to help their students pursue higher education.
In August 2011, I led the first Latino parent seminar for the school year 2011-2012 for incoming 9th grade Latino parents. The goal of this seminar was to welcome our Latino parents to Pali and to give them important information that will help them understand how to navigate the school. I began this seminar by asking Latino parents what their goals for their students were; the overwhelming response was that they want their kids to go to college. Based on their response I was able to explain to them the importance for them to get involved in the education of their children from day one. They received a packet created by me in Spanish that gave them e-mails and phone numbers of people at Pali who had made a commitment to help them navigate Pali's system. I shared with them important dates for the report cards and invited them to get involved in our school.
The second seminar took place on November 19, 2011 with the focus of educating our Latino parents about the A-G requirements. I worked with Elva Monreal and Adelina Aleman two of our counselors in creating and translating a power point that contained valuable information about the A-G requirements. Both counselors gave the information in Spanish and whenever they needed help translating Sandra Martin and I were there to help. Parents were very engaged and asked many questions about the difference between a community college, CSU, UC and private. They also wanted clear information about what classes are part of the A-G plan. One parent was very upset and said that he didn't understand why the school has two different graduation plans and pushed for the school to only offer the A-G plan for all students.
Below is the power point used for this seminar.
On February 25, 2012 I conducted with the help of Sandra Martin our third Latino parent seminar. To call the meeting, I wrote, made copies, folded, sealed and put labels to a total of 194 letters in Spanish, in addition to the letters we made a Robocall in Spanish to remind parents of the meeting. The topic for this seminar came from one of our Fuerza Unida meeting in which many Madrinas shared their concern about the number of students especially 9th graders who received one or more F's as their final grades for the Fall 2011 semester. I worked with our new Director of Counseling Kim Theard to give a seminar for all parents whose kids have failed one of more classes not only for the Latino parents. The meeting was divided in two sessions. The first meeting was for all parents of students who are in the 10th and 11th grade and failed one or classes last Fall. The second meeting (which started at 11:00 am) was for all parents of students who are in 9th grade and failed one or classes last Fall. A total of 73 Latino parents attend the meetings. In addition to the PPT's important information that Sandra and I shared with the parents, I prepared a packet in Spanish with information such as tutoring, names and e-mails of teachers administrators and counselors, 5 steps they must follow in order to help their child succeed in school, and a lot more information about what to do when their child is failing. Monica Iannessa our Assistant Principal was very generous to donate agendas to parents so they can use them to write important dates.
Parents were very engaged and thankful that Fuerza Unida is inviting them engaging them in these meetings. I was very pleased to see that even though most (if not all) of our Latino parents come from far away; and many come in the bus, they are consistently demonstrating how much they want to be involved in their child's education.
I was able to start promoting among my Latino parents the importance of using their social capital. Some parents were kids enough to donate pan dulce, champurrado, tamales y pupusas to raise funds for college visits. It was great to see that parents are mobilizing and leveraging their social capital to help their students.
Below is a picture of LSU students having a bake sale with the donations of parents.
Parent perspectives are very relevant indicators of how we as a school are performing and how students are doing in school. Listening to parents also helped us to identify and address any barriers to accomplishing our school's vision by giving us insight into responsibilities and challenges children and families face outside of school.
