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(reprinted with permission of Library Media Connection, where it originally appeared in Aug/Sept. 2009 edition)
Family
Literacy, English Language Learners, and Parent Engagement
by
Larry Ferlazzo
There
are at least 5.1 million U.S. students in kindergarten through twelfth grade who
are English Language Learners today
-- 10.5 percent of the entire student population. That amount is expected to grow to
25% by the year 2025.
(http://www.diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_10516.shtml)
Numbers on the educational levels of these students’ parents varies,
though it appears that at least one-third of the heads-of-households lack a high
school education and that number may be as large as fifty percent. And according to the 2000 Census,
over twenty-one million adults report that they do not speak English well or at
all.
(http://www.migration-boell.de/web/integration/47_283.asp and
http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-551.pdf)
These numbers, and the challenges they represent, are not
“problems.” Rather, they can be
opportunities for schools to assist students, engage their parents, and
strengthen communities. Luther
Burbank High School, Sacramento’s largest inner-city high school, chose that
perspective and developed a strategy which resulted in higher student
achievement and increased family literacy, and their efforts were named the
Grand Prize Winner of the International Reading Association Presidential Award
For Reading and Technology
LUTHER
BURBANK FAMILY LITERACY PROJECT
Four years ago, over 2,000 Hmong refugees came to Sacramento after the
last refugee camp was closed in Thailand.
The Hmong had been part of a CIA-created army during the Vietnamese War,
and had fled Laos after United States pull-out. Most of these pre-literate immigrants
had never attended a school before.
A majority of the high school age youth came to Luther Burbank High
School.
One of the school’s main literacy strategies with all students is to
encourage the reading of high-interest books of their own
choosing. Since it did not have the
ability to provide one-on-one tutoring, the question was how to incorporate this
type of instructional effort with students who had no experience with the
printed word prior to their arrival at the school.
The school’s first response
was to create a website with links to hundreds of thousands of free online
“talking stories” and other audio/visual language-development activities
(http://larryferlazzo.com/english.html). School computer labs were made
available to these ESL students both before-and-after-school (as well as during
selected times during the regular school day).
Students’ parents were intrigued by the computer experience, and, in the
course of home visits made by school staff, shared that they, too, wanted to
develop English skills. However,
since they did not have a drivers license (knowing English was required to pass
the test) and Sacramento’s public transit system was less-than-stellar, it was
difficult for them to attend adult school.
“Was there any way the school could help them get computers and Internet
access at their homes?” they asked.
Parents
and staff worked to obtain School District funds and forty-five computers were
loaned to immigrant families. Internet access was also provided (content was
filtered through the school). In
addition, parents and staff worked together to develop the program’s procedures
– at least eighty percent of each household had to commit to spending at least
one-hour each day on the school’s website (they could use the computer together
as a family and all complete their one-hour at the same time), a written log was
turned-in each Friday and also families needed to log-in on certain sites where
their progress could be monitored.
Just as research has shown that people are more likely to exercise their
body if they make commitments to “exercise buddies”
(http://www.healthywomen.org/wellness/fitness/findanexercisebuddy), the school
thought the same concept might hold true with English-language study. Over seventy Burbank students were in
the program, along with over 140 other Sacramento City Unified School District
students who lived in the households, plus over 100 parents and other
adults.
Providing
books to both the families who have home computers and to those in a “control
group” was also part of the effort.
The Davis Friends Of The
Library has donated thousands of high-interest books for Burbank’s immigrant
families to deal with the documented disparity between the numbers of books in
low-income households contrasted with those in middle-class families. Students and parents say that the
“talking stories” they read on the computer get them interested in reading more
about the different topics. They
then can obtain books for their home library, or from the school or public
library, that build on that initial knowledge base. The reverse is also true – family
members find a book that looks interesting to them and then want to read a
“talking story” about the same topic.
The school librarian also regularly orders large quantities of accessible
books after talking with the students about their
interests.
Assessments
at six month intervals over the past three years have consistently shown that
students with these home computers have two-to-three times the rate of
improvement in English literacy than control groups of students without the home
computers. Parents also increase
their English proficiency, but the school does not have a parent control
group. In addition, participants
say that they like using the computer together, and that their listening and
speaking skills have also increased.
PARENT
ENGAGEMENT
The success of this project illustrates how effective parent engagement strategies can be – as
contrasted with what is often referred to as parent involvement. Here are just a few elements (there are
several more) of what could be called a parent engagement effort:
Whose energy drives it? Who initiates it? In parent involvement, often the
ideas (which may very well be great ones) and well-intentioned energy comes from
the school. In parent engagement,
ideas are often elicited from parents by school staff in the context of
developing trusting relationships – for example, through home visits. More parent energy drives the
effort.
The idea for Burbank’s Family Literacy Project originated from a parent
with a language and transportation problem who was then encouraged by school
staff to talk with other parents about the proposal. These parents then worked with school
staff to develop the guidelines and procedures that would guide the
effort.
This does not mean staff can’t suggest ideas. However, they can be offered in the
context of learning parent self-interests, and with a willingness to adapt and
modify them so that parents can make these ideas their
own.
What is the invitation? In
parent involvement, parents might often be irritated – pushed to do things that staff might perceive as important. In parent engagement, parents are agitated – challenged to do something
about what they believe is important
to them.
The first Burbank parent who suggested the idea of providing home
computers was not told by school staff, “That’s a great idea. We’ll start a program.” Instead, he was told, “That’s a great
idea. We’d love to help if you can
find other parents who are also interested in helping to start
it.”
What is the purpose? In parent involvement, often the purpose
might be to support students by strengthening and assisting school programs and
priorities. In parent engagement,
the purpose is to support students by developing parent relationships,
strengthening families, and helping families develop more English skills and
self-confidence so they can feel more energized and capable of working to
improve their local communities.
The purpose of the Burbank project is not only to provide assistance to
the Burbank students who live in the households that have computers, and to the
scores of other younger siblings who will be Burbank students in the
future. The purpose is to also
assist parents become more engaged in the academic life of their children, which
is better for the long-term academic culture for everyone in that
household. In addition, the more
the parents learn English, the more likely they get better paying jobs. This better pay could allow parents to
spend more on the kinds of resources – books, trips, enrichment classes – that
are more prevalent in higher-income families. And the fact that parents are more
engaged with their children academically may very well make it more likely that
using those increased funds for academic resources will be a higher priority for
them.
The purpose of this article is not to suggest that there is something bad
with parent involvement. In fact, studies have shown that any
kind of parent action to participate in their child’s education is
beneficial.
What Burbank’s success suggests, however, is that parent engagement might be a superior
opportunity to maximize the benefits of increased parent participation for
families -- with lesser long-term
strain on already overburdened school staff. And that one of these superior
opportunities might be specifically related to increasing student and parent
English literacy.
Larry
Ferlazzo was a community organizer for nineteen years before becoming a teacher
at Luther Burbank High School five years ago. He is the co-author, with Lorie Hammond,
of Building Parent Engagement In Schools, recently published by Linworth. He can be reached at
mrferlazzo@aol.com
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