Turning High-Poverty Schools Into High-Performing Schools

At the start of spring semester, a colleague in my doctoral program showed me a book that was just published by a couple of professors at our university, William Parrett and Kathleen Budge. While I have not been able to take a class with either of the professors, I have heard many positive comments about both as researchers, leaders, and mentors throughout my program. When I saw the title of the book, Turning High-Poverty Schools into High-Performing Schools, as well as heard what it was about, I could not wait to read it.

In the book Parrett and Budge synthesize research related to poverty and provide a framework for action in order to prompt high-poverty, high-performance (HP/HP) schools. Their framework is not a one-size fits all approach, but rather a foundation for building capacity and reflective practice in order to carefully meet the needs of students living in poverty. Various components of their book supported their vision, providing frequent self-assessments and questions to prompt a high level of reflection. Many of their figures provided continuums with descriptors to support careful analysis.

In order to consider the effectiveness of the framework, the authors conducted research of seven HP/HP schools in various regions of the United States. After providing a context for each of the schools in an early chapter, the authors continued to highlight specific examples of these (and other schools) while explaining ideas. Showing multiple possibilities of practice aligned to needs of the specific schools, communities, and students, strengthened the overall presentation of concepts in the text.

One of my favorite features in the book were illustrative examples of "Uncommon sense," framed by an explanation in the introduction, "Leaders in the schools we studied consistently considered the research base in the context of their own schools. They also used strategies that were uncommon but made sense in the school context. We call this out-of-the-box thinking 'uncommon sense,'" (p. 4). While reading I made frequent notes of ideas that I want to continue to consider and reflect upon as my colleagues and I continue to collaborate and think outside of the box for the benefit of the students in our school.

Bicultural Parent Engagement: Advocacy and Empowerment

With Bicultural Parent Engagement: Advocacy and Empowerment, editors Edward M. Olivos, Oscar Jiménez-Castellanos, and Alberto M. Ochoa compiled current voices considering parent involvement and engagement, through the lenses of additive multicultural perspectives, critical perspectives, and operationalizing transformative parent engagement to express concerns that frequently cited models of parent involvement do not meet the needs of bicultural parents. The contributors’ discussions prompt readers to carefully examine how we define parent involvement and who is in control when determining potential roles, and as a result, the messages that we send with the way that we encourage avenues for parent involvement. As the editors state, “One of the goals of this book is to raise critical questions that will problematize how the current conceptualizations about parent involvement in public schools serve to replicate the status quo,” (Olivos, Ochoa, & Jiménez-Castellanos, p. 4).   

While discussing terminology, the editors describe the intentional word choice of engagement, rather than involvement, in the title as they see a need for more than mere involvement when considering needs of bicultural families and students. They explain, “The generic term parent involvement therefore conjures up a passive, one-way connection that benefits the school and places the accountability of student success and failure exclusively on the parent/family. In contrast, parent engagement, in our view, is a school-community process designed to bring or construct an open relationship between school personnel and the parent community in support of the students’s social and academic development,” (p. 11). After framing the book with this distinction, as well as stating, “Our ultimate goal is the transformation of schools into authentic institutions of learning and tools for social growth,” (p. 13) various chapters present research of a range of communities and interactions between families and schools. 

The text provides an excellent resource for school communities to consider their own conceptions, considering whether structures are in place to support parent involvement or parent engagement and then determine whether avenues in place are sending unintentional messages based on the inherent values of those systems. As contributors explore underlying issues in depth, educators may be considering some aspects mentioned for the first time. For example, those who have frequently heard Epstein’s Model mentioned with high regard, might be surprised to hear about its shortcomings with relation to bicultural parents. 

However, the text does not just point out limitations of popular models, it explores and provides solutions. One team of contributors, Moreno, Lewis-Menchaca, and Rodriguez (2011) propose, “In addition to emphasizing parents’ role as teachers, we propose adopting a parallel model of ‘teachers as compadres,’ or teachers as co-parent. If schools embrace the notion of teachers as compadres, then the caregiving role of the teachers become explicit. Just as the notion of ‘parents as teachers’ implies a particular teaching role for parents, ‘teachers as compadres’ implies a specific investment in the well-being of the child,” (p. 34). They emphasize that parents and teachers work as a team to focus on the well-being of children. I appreciated this role, and in particular, I instantly pictured one of my colleagues, who is already living the role of "teacher as compadre". In addition to the overarching theme of democratic schooling ideals, contributors provided suggestions focusing on specific aspects, such as cultural proficiency (Lindsey & Lindsey, 2011) and parents as action researchers (Montero-Sieburth, 2011). 

At times, contributors portray a sense of schools vs. parents, a distrust that schools are not working in the best interest for all of their students, but rather seeking to maintain certain aspects to the benefit of White cultural groups. For example, Johnson (2011) states, “The empowerment of working-class parents of color often makes school authorities, including classroom teachers, uncomfortable, as is the case in our work,” (p. 149). Referring to one program that UCLA offered to educate and support parents in being able to advocate for their children, Johnson (2011) explained that one principal expressed that she would not have supported a program had she realized the content of the trainings. Johnson (2001) stated, “These are the attitudes parents of color often face when they try to become advocates for their children. As long as we are humble in our demeanor, meek in our requests, and obedient in our relationships with school ‘experts,’ we are accepted in the schools. When we ask hard questions, demonstrate frustration, and make demands for basic educational rights, we are often rebuffed, repressed, and resisted by school personnel,” (p. 150). As a result, at times there is a sense of fostering collaborative relationships among educators and parents, while at other times contributors describe a sense of organizations outside of the school empowering parents in order to hold schools accountable.

When carefully analyzing existing systems in place based on ideas presented in the text, it is vital to consider which layers of support are feasible for both educators and parents, specifically with balancing other responsibilities and roles. However, it would be unfortunate to use time constraints as an excuse to disregard the concepts. Instead, educators and parents can carefully examine parent models, aims of the models, and alignment to the needs of parents represented in the school community in order to work toward continual growth. 

Anytime educators are called to consider a paradigm shift, much discussion and debate is necessary to truly engage in reflective practice and thoughtful decision-making. This text provides teachers with multiple lenses and angles from which to consider the way that we conceptualize the roles of parents in contemporary education in the United States. Each school will need to determine where they fall in relation to the contexts mentioned in the text; however, educators will have plenty to ponder in relation to the various perspectives that the contributors present. By expanding our own understandings, we can then consider the specific context of our schools and the needs of our students, in order to think of means to work as a team with parents to foster collaborative efforts to work toward the overall well-being of children (not just academic success) as the text suggests. By critically analyzing our school communities, both teachers and parents can expand current capacity together.

Chapters Specifically Mentioned:

Johnson, M. (2011). A parent advocate’s vision of a 21st-century model for bicultural parent engagement. In E. M. Olivos, O. Jiménez-Castellanos, & A. M. Ochoa (Eds.), Bicultural parent engagement: Advocacy and empowerment (pp. 145-158). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Lindsey, D. B. & Lindsey, R. B. (2011). Culturally proficient school communities: Connecting Bicultural parents to schools. In E. M. Olivos, O. Jiménez-Castellanos, & A. M. Ochoa (Eds.), Bicultural parent engagement: Advocacy and empowerment (pp. 39-57). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Montero-Sieburth, M. (2011). Bicultural parents as transformative change agents through action research in schools and in the community. In E. M. Olivos, O. Jiménez-Castellanos, & A. M. Ochoa (Eds.), Bicultural parent engagement: Advocacy and empowerment (pp. 159-185). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Moreno, R. P., Lewis-Menchaca, K, & Rodriguez, J. (2011). Parental involvement in the home: A critical view through a multicultural lens. In E. M. Olivos, O. Jiménez-Castellanos, & A. M. Ochoa (Eds.), Bicultural parent engagement: Advocacy and empowerment (pp. 21-38). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Olivos, E. M., Ochoa, A. M., & Jiménez-Castellanos, O. (2011). Critical voices in bicultural parent engagement: A framework for transformation. In E. M. Olivos, O. Jiménez-Castellanos, & A. M. Ochoa (Eds.), Bicultural parent engagement: Advocacy and empowerment (pp. 1-17). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. 

Write Like This

Kelly Gallagher's Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing Through Modeling & Mentor Texts made me even more excited to be going back to my 6-8 language arts classroom next fall. As with his other books I loved his voice and convictions related to teaching. This is a nice complementary text to Penny Kittle's Write Beside Them, one of my favorites. Both of the books heavily focus on the value of teachers writing with their students.

Gallagher organized Write Like This by starting with a rationale chapter highlighting the importance of writing instruction, followed by six chapters explaining how to scaffold specific writing purposes, a chapter about revision and editing, and a concluding chapter. Each of the writing purpose chapters provided multiple layers of support in order to familiarize students with writing related to the purpose that students would be able to connect to in their everyday lives (as well as in their future lives as productive citizens). I loved that the ideas will provide me with a lot of different ways to explore in my own writer's notebook over the summer.

The final chapter highlighted Gallagher's ten core values that have emerged over time throughout his teaching career. Gallagher stated, "If I sit and think about how daunting it is to walk into a classroom with the intention of teaching wave after wave of adolescents how to become better writers, it can be overwhelming. One way I avoid becoming overwhelmed is by consciously returning to my core beliefs--the philosophical underpinnings, if you will, of my approach to teaching writing," (p. 223). I agree with Gallagher, it is energizing as a teacher to return to core beliefs, to think about our convictions and our students and focus on what really matters in education. I continue to be inspired by Kelly Gallagher and am excited that I still have another one of his books, Teaching Adolescent Writers, on my TBR shelf.

Research Thoughts

Yesterday I posted about Living the Questions and about shifting a focus to view myself as a teacher-researcher. I have some ideas in mind about what I will research next year, and I look forward to mapping out my ideas into a more formal (yet tentative) plan during the summer. However, I know one thing for sure. One of my goals next year will be to capture and document more of the everyday life of my classroom.

In Living the Questions Shagoury and Power stated, "[...] much teacher research is rich in classroom anecdotes and personal stories," (p. 2). On my blog I often reflect about my students and my teaching, which I will continue to do, but I want to also focus on slice of life story style writing. I want to better capture book club conversations, casual conversations with students about books, read aloud discussions, conferences... Regardless of the research question, I agree with Shagoury and Powers, stories about teaching and my students will add so much.

I already participate in Two Writing Teachers' Slice of Life Story Tuesdays and the month long challenge on another blog, but I often focus more on my family. At times when I slice about school, I do not get as detailed with posts about individual students since it is so public. Instead, I will start a writer's notebook dedicated to classroom slices where I can candidly capture those moments and then later I can decide about sharing with student consent. I am excited to see what I will notice and discover in the years to come.

Another avenue that I am excited to mention to my colleagues is considering a staff research group. We already have a book club where we meet once a month at a local coffee shop. Some of my colleagues are approaching the point in their Master's programs where they will be conducting thesis research. If they are interested, I would love to grow together as researchers. Living the Questions would be a great resource to support us as we navigate the process together.

Living the Questions

"Asking questions of our classrooms is as natural as breathing. Teachers who conduct classroom-based research turn those wonderings into research questions they can systematically pursue," (p. 30). -JoAnn Portalupi in Living the Questions

This year has been a big year for me. I am in the last year of my doctoral program, finishing up my last classes and working on my dissertation (which I hope to defend in the summer or early fall). Another big shift was that I took a one-year-leave of absence from my 6th-8th grade dual immersion classroom where I taught reading and writing workshop. I have been thinking a lot about what I still want to do as an educator and what my dreams are after completing my doctoral program. Recently I decided that I will return to my classroom in the fall. This year I have discovered that I would have been happy in higher ed as well, but Kassia Wedekind summed it up well in her recent post reflecting on her own career related decision, "But the classroom is where I belong. For now."

It is often hard to pinpoint change over time, but I know for sure that one aspect that will be different is that I now view myself as a teacher-researcher and am excited to have a more intentional and focused research process throughout the year, in addition to observing and reflecting about various aspects as I have in other years. However, in my doctoral coursework, it seems that I hear more often about outside researchers. So much so that I almost sought a route to focus my dissertation on someone else's classroom. Thankfully, my committee guided me back to focusing on my teaching journey and my students, realizing that passions related to my topic were grounded in my experiences.

Knowing that I will be back in my classroom next year, it would only make sense that my research would center on self-study and practitioner research. As such, I was so excited to read Ruth Shagoury and Brenda Miller Power's Living the Questions: A Guide for Teacher-Researchers, second edition. I recognized Brenda Power's name from the Choice Literacy e-newsletter, so it was nice to learn more about teacher research from a voice I recognized, along with another colleague.

The book is organized into eight chapters, beginning with a rationale for teacher research, and then walking through various stages of the research process, including how to sustain research. I loved that the epilogue was titled "Why Not Teacher Research?", an invitation to get started. Each chapter had a balance of narrative from the authors mixed with features from other teacher-researchers, providing glimpses into many different ways to go about research within our classrooms. The appendix also had another set of sample research plans. I loved that I could connect to different plans in different ways, and thought of colleagues for others. It seems that the authors intentionally tried to have a nice balance of topics and methods.

Living the Questions will be a good resource to have and revisit throughout the research process. Tomorrow I will be posting about some of my thoughts on research for next year.

Becoming a Literacy Leader

When I read A Sense of Belonging back in 2009, I instantly loved Jennifer Allen's voice and learned so much from her book. I knew that eventually I would want to read her other Stenhouse book, Becoming a Literacy Teacher, and I finally did so. Just as with the first book of hers that I read, I found myself reading through multiple lenses.

I would love to have a position such as Allen's where my full time job was to support teachers and the culture of learning within the school. However, it is more likely that my career will continue to be 6-8 language arts and courses in higher education. Nonetheless, so much of what Allen talks about is relevant to my day-to-day life as an educator because Allen focuses on teachers as professionals and supportive communities in which colleagues collaborate and support each other.

I started to think about how I could make changes within my regular 6-8 position in order to strengthen the discussions between colleagues about practitioner research in our classrooms, as well as implications for practice in our K-8 dual immersion school. Along the same lines, I am excited to be reading the second edition of Living the Questions right now.

This year I took a leave of absence from my language arts classroom and have been teaching in a teacher preparation program, so I was also thinking about implications for that role as well. Of course, there is always so much to learn from Allen about mentoring and supporting teachers, so that was one automatic link to the relevance of her text. Then there were more subtle connections, such as a narrative describing how she worked alongside a teacher to regain control of the class that I will be reading aloud to my students in a course related to classroom management.

I think it is safe to say that wherever my journey as an educator leads me, Allen's thoughts and ideas will be relevant. I would love to see another book from her!

A New Blog & A New Genre

This winter I set up a new blog, Read, Discover, Grow to serve as a "mentor text" for my undergraduates who are taking a children's literature course in which they are required to blog about 30 children's books targeted at primary grades. Later in the spring they will blog about additional books for upper elementary students. Last spring I showed my personal book blog as an example, but this year I decided to complete the same requirements as the students and have been enjoying the process.

One of the requirements for this term is that at least one of the books must be a wordless book. This week I have been writing a series of posts about wordless books, a new genre for me. On my latest post about Bill Thomson's Chalk, I was reflecting on my experience reading the book with my girls earlier in the week. I especially loved considering the potential for wordless books to support reading and writing workshop (the last two paragraphs of the Chalk post).

I would love to hear how others have used wordless books or thoughts on potential uses, as well as any recommendations of other wordless books.