Equitable Family Engagement, Part 2: Engaging Immigrant Families

Alice Clark:

And we are live. Welcome, welcome, everybody who’s coming into the room. I’ll give everyone a few minutes to join. Welcome, you are here for part two in our Equitable Family Engagement series. This session, we are talking about engaging immigrant families. We’ve got a great presentation in store for everyone. Many of you are already doing this, but if you would please introduce yourself in the chat, tell us who you are, where you’re coming from, and please make sure that in the blue box next to two, that your message goes to panelists and attendees, so it goes to everyone. Welcome from Tampa, Florida, Rebecca, from… Oh man, moving fast. Stacy from San Diego, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Alaska, New Jersey, Texas. Welcome everyone. Again, another reminder to please have your chats go to panelists and attendees, so everyone can see them. I will chat that throughout the presentation, as well as a reminder.

Alice Clark:

A few things before I turn it over to our beautiful moderator, Sherri Wilson. One, we are live on Facebook right now, on NAFSCE’s page. Please feel free to share with your network, like, share. And then a few housekeeping things before we begin, you are already using the chat, again, make sure your messages go to panelists and attendees. The chat is a great place to connect with everyone in the presentation, share resources. We also have the Q and A feature. We ask that if you have questions during the presentation, you use the Q and A feature and not the chat feature. The chat can move really quickly, and Q and A is where we will pull questions from during the Q and A portion at the end of the session. And the last thing, I just want to remind everyone that this session will be recorded, and it will be sent out to everyone who registered in a few days in an email, along with the slides. So with that, I am going to turn it over to Sherri Wilson, NAFSCE’s Director of Engagement and State Services.

Sherri Wilson:

Hello, hello, hello. You guys are in for such a treat today. First up, we have a team from the Hawaii Statewide Family Engagement Center. Caryl Hitchcock, who is an associate professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a member of the Hawaii Family Engagement Center core team. And her research interests include evidence-based practices in literacy and learning, professional development for classroom teachers of culturally, linguistically diverse students, and the use of technology to enhance learning.

Sherri Wilson:

Also speaking today on their team, we have [Twan Chin 00:03:51] who is an associate specialist with the Center on Disability Studies at the university of Hawaii, Manoa. She’s the principal investigator on the Hawaii Statewide Family Engagement Center project. Her experience includes program implementation, mixed method evaluation, and quality assurance, as well as maintaining strong working relationships with state agencies, parent groups, and community-based organizations.

Sherri Wilson:

Another team member joining us today is Angela Matian. She’s an assistant specialist with the Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa. She’s the project lead on the Hawaii Statewide Family Engagement Center, and primarily responsible for the coordination of their statewide family engagement training. She’s actually currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Education Professional Practice Program, and her area of research is in adolescent social, emotional development.

Sherri Wilson:

And then last but not least on the Hawaii team, we have Katherine T. Ratliffe. Dr. Ratliffe is a professor and a chair of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She’s one of the authors of The Affect Modules, and has done extensive work with families from the South Pacific islands. She’s a member of the Hawaii team, and NAFSCE consortium, who are working to develop a pre-service teacher framework for culturally responsive family engagement, and higher education curricula.

Sherri Wilson:

So, they’re going to start us off today and they’re going to talk about culturally responsive family engagement, in the context of where they work in the islands. Then we’re going to have my friend Laura Gardner, who is the founder of Immigrant Connections. She’s going to talk about the top five strategies for engaging immigrant and refugee families for family engagement professionals. Finally, all of our panelists will come together at the end, and we’ll have a question and answer period, and then some final thoughts before we adjourn. This is the second in a three-part series on equitable family engagement. So, I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I have, and I hope that you can join us on the next one. Now, I’m going to turn it over to our friends from Hawaii, and let them get us started.

Angela Matian:

All right, morning folks, hafa adai. My name is Angela Matian, and I’m really excited to be here with you folks today. If you can go to the next slide. So, Sherri just gave us a really great introduction. Just to put a name with a face, these are the folks that she mentioned in her lovely introduction, next slide.

Angela Matian:

So, we are the Hawaii Statewide Family Engagement Center, and this grant is a great opportunity to be able to talk about family engagement. And so, our center focuses on building the capacity within the partners, and we’ve identified those partners to be the family, school and community. As you can see, these are some of the partners that we’ve worked with in Hawaii, around family engagement. Next slide.

Angela Matian:

I know most folks are familiar with Hawaii, but just to give you kind of a geographical idea of the Hawaiian Islands, most folks are familiar with Honolulu, Waikiki, which is the urban areas of the Hawaiian Islands, but we also have very many rural area areas as well. And some of our folks actually live on different parts of the Hawaiian Islands. Next side.

Angela Matian:

So, today we’re here to talk about culture, and how important it is to be able to identify the different cultures, that our families and our students come from. And so, really it’s important to understand that culture, it helps in terms of shaping a person’s identity, through their values and attitudes. Next slide.

Angela Matian:

So when we’re looking at culture, and in my background I’m a school counselor. Working with so many different families, it’s important to realize and understand that families have a collection of knowledge, these funds of knowledge, that is based on their own cultural practices. And that’s based on their race, ethnicity, age, their marital status, and all of these other different aspects of culture. Next slide.

Angela Matian:

Within our center, and I think a lot of folks are familiar with Dr. Map’s team, they’re working on the dual capacity building framework, but we use this framework as a guide when working with families. This framework can be used to develop goals towards effective family engagement, that is linked to student achievement. Next slide.

Angela Matian:

So, when we’re being culturally competent and culturally responsive, where does that fit? And so, within the framework and the essential conditions, it lays out the critical elements to building and sustaining partnerships. The process conditions will help you reflect on the practices around relationships. How are you linking the information to student learning? What are the different assets of the partnerships, primarily with families, that can bring to education? And then as you can see, that culturally responsive is here laid out, it’s important to be able to recognize and acknowledge the cultural practices, and funds of knowledge that our families bring to the table, and to respect that and to honor that. And then, how are you collaborating and making these experiences interactive? So, using this as a guide, you really get to re-imagine the way that you can engage and develop experiences, positive and healthy experiences for families. Next slide.

Angela Matian:

So, cultural competence is a process. It really is a process. And to begin, you really do have to reflect on your own core values. How do your own values and beliefs shape your actions towards the families you work with, the students you work with? And then, how do you begin to understand the families that you work with? Empathy is a capacity, and it is essential to building relationships. And then lastly, being receptive to new strategies. I always like to be what I call a sponge. I want to get information, and gather new ideas, new approaches in working with students and working with families.

Angela Matian:

And so, next slide. And so now, it’s really a pleasure to be able to introduce one of our partners in family engagement, Dr. Ratliffe, she works with the team as Sherri had mentioned before, that has developed a series of modules for educators here in Hawaii. And these modules focus on building relationships between educators and families in Hawaii. I’ll go ahead and turn it over to her. Thank you.

Katherine Ratliffe:

Good morning, everyone. And I guess good afternoon to everyone who is not in Hawaii. It’s nice to be here with you today. I’m really happy to share our affect modules with you. These are available to the public, so anyone can access them. We originally developed them for pre-service teachers, and they are used pretty extensively in our pre-service teacher education programs at the University of Hawaii. We are also using them for in-service teacher education, so teachers all throughout Hawaii are using them.

Katherine Ratliffe:

There are five modules. Module one is getting to know your students and families. And there’s many strategies in there for teachers. Module two is communicating with families. Module three is family engagement, or engaging families in the classroom. Module four was developed because we have very unique groups in Hawaii, and so this describes some of our unique groups, that is particularly useful for new teachers in Hawaii. And module six, finding appropriate strategies. When we were doing some in-services for teachers, they told us that it was just too hard to scroll through all the modules to find strategies, and they wanted them gathered in one place. So, module five is the place they can find their strategies. Next slide, please.

Katherine Ratliffe:

Hawaii has a very diverse population. As you can see, there is no majority in Hawaii, we are from so many different places. I want to focus in on the bottom here, on the Micronesian population. This is a group of folks from islands in the Western Pacific, who are migrating to Hawaii for a variety of reasons. Next slide, please.

Katherine Ratliffe:

There are three groups that have compacts of free association with the US. The Republic of the Marshall Islands in the middle of the slide here, the Federated States of Micronesia, that’s the largest circle in the middle there, and they have four states: Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Koshrae. And the Republic of Palau on the far left of this map. There are at least 12 languages and cultures throughout the region, and many dialects. These islands are very, many of them are atolls, which are very low islands, and they’re extremely vulnerable to climate change. And they have a long colonial history. They were taken over by the Spanish, the Germans, then the Japanese, and now they have relationships with the United States. Next slide, please.

Katherine Ratliffe:

Again, there are atolls, which are very low islands, you can see in the right-hand porthole here, and high volcanic islands, which you can see on the left porthole. Next slide.

Katherine Ratliffe:

I’ve spent a lot of time in these islands, teaching special education teachers to work with children with very severe disabilities, and their families. And I think it’s really important for service providers to know where families come from. These islands are not one place, there is not a Micronesian language, there are many languages. There is not one island, there is not even one type of island that people come from. And I think it’s really important that service providers get a sense of the islands, and ask people where they come from. I’ll just describe these pictures. Oops, not quite yet.

Katherine Ratliffe:

In the right upper corner, we are on our way to visit a family. In the lower middle, we were playing a game of volleyball on one of the outer islands of the atolls, where people go to play. The left lower corner is Sokehs Rock in Pohnpei, it’s like our Diamond Head in Hawaii. It’s a really beautiful, beautiful feature. And the other slides you can figure out for yourselves. Okay, next slide, please.

Katherine Ratliffe:

There was a series of nuclear tests conducted in the Pacific by the United States in the late 1950s and early 60s. In all, there were 67 nuclear tests that were done, some of them way larger than the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People were moved off of their islands, in order for their islands to be destroyed by these bombs. And there was nuclear fallout that blew across other islands, that many people were exposed to. Many people from the Marshall Islands have struggled with cancers, thyroid cancers, and other illnesses related to this nuclear fallout, even in subsequent generations. So, the United States actually has an obligation to the people of these islands. Next slide, please.

Katherine Ratliffe:

Also as I said, they’re extremely vulnerable to climate change. This is a village at high tide. It didn’t use to flood like this, I’ve actually been in some of these villages when the tide has come up, and a squall is on the way that gets very exciting. So, a quote from Tony de Brum, who’s from the Marshall Islands: “From drought to deluge, my people are suffering an escalating climate crisis. Thousands of my people in the North are thirsty and hungry. Thousands of us here in the South are now drenched in seawater. As I said to the US emergency team this morning, welcome to climate change. We are very grateful for the help we have received, but aid will not stop floods, droughts, and disease from becoming the new norm.” Next slide, please.

Katherine Ratliffe:

Kathy Jetnil-Kitchener is a woman, a young woman actually, who is a poet. She gave a presentation to the United Nations at their climate change meeting last year. A quote from her is: “We’ve seen waves crashing into our homes, and our breadfruit trees wither from salt and droughts,” she said. “We look at our children and wonder how they will know themselves or their culture, should they lose our islands.” Slide, please.

Katherine Ratliffe:

So many of the folks from these islands have migrated to Hawaii, and also to different states on the US continent. Arkansas has a particularly large population, because of jobs being offered there. So, this is a population on one of our outer islands, and this is they’re living on the lava, basically. This is a little girl cracking macadamia nuts on the lava rock. Many of the people are migrant workers, and pick macadamia nuts and coffee, and they spread carpets over the lava so that they can walk on it more easily, and build out of whatever materials they have. In this area, there is no infrastructure. They truck in water, and they use generators for electricity. Next slide, please.

Katherine Ratliffe:

There’s a group in Arkansas that has been recruited by Tyson Chicken. And actually, there are as many Marshalese in Springdale, Arkansas, as there are in Hawaii right now. People come here to access healthcare, education and employment. Tyson Chicken is one of the largest employers. Next slide, please.

Katherine Ratliffe:

Even though they come here because they need healthcare, employment and jobs, they are not eligible for all of the services that other immigrants, and people who are residents and citizens of the United States get. They still struggle to get healthcare, they were knocked off Medicaid in 1996, and still, we haven’t been able to get them back on yet. And this is really a problem for people. So, they come here for healthcare and end up in debt. Next slide, please.

Katherine Ratliffe:

I want to return back to the affect modules, to give you a little bit of sense of what these modules do, and apply it to our work with families from Micronesia. This is module four, which kind of outlines some of our diverse populations here in Hawaii, and Micronesian families is less than 4.5 there. Next slide.

Katherine Ratliffe:

We also can… Not quite yet. I think he lost the slides.

Alice Clark:

I’m so sorry. I’ll get it back up in one second.

Katherine Ratliffe:

That’s all right. So, the affect modules will help guide teachers and pre-service teachers, through different strategies on how to engage families from different cultural backgrounds. We not only have Micronesian families, but we have a lot of Filipino families and other immigrant families. We have a large population of Vietnamese families. And even in the Micronesian region, it’s not just one culture as I said before. There are Marshalese families, Pohnpeian families, Chuukese families, Yapese families, and understanding each of those cultures can be really important when you’re working with families. This is the time I think, I pass it back to Angela. Here we go. Yep, so strategies for getting to know your families can be very helpful, and teachers will be able to find lots of strategies in the affect modules. Next slide, please. This is when I turn it back to Angela.

Angela Matian:

Yes, thank you Kathy. So yeah, so we have a couple slides here we wanted to share with you. Our website, we do encourage folks to visit our website. We have a lot of different resources there. As you can see there, we have a welcome back package for families, and also one for educators. We’re currently-

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:23:04]

Angela Matian:

For families, and also one for educators. We’re currently in the process of getting some of this information translated actually for our families within the Micronesian populations that Dr. Ratliff had mentioned. When you visit our page, go to our HFEC downloadables for the resources and tool guides. Like I mentioned, we soon, hopefully within a couple of months, we’ll have many of these translated. Next slide please.

Angela Matian:

Then Dr. Ratliff was talking about the AFFECT modules. I do encourage you folks to go and take a look at that. Go through the different modules, share them with different professionals, educators. To access them, you’re going to want to go to the start here to start getting onto the modules themselves. Next slide please.

Angela Matian:

That really concludes our presentation. Here is our email for our center if you’d like to connect with us. Then here is the email for Dr. Ratliff if you’d like to connect with her about the AFFECT modules. Thank you.

Sherri Wilson:

Mahalo, Angela and [crosstalk 00:24:18] Thank you guys so much. That was so incredibly powerful and moving. I want to remind everyone, please put any questions you have for our friends from Hawaii into the Q&A box. We have one that’s queued up for later, but if you have other questions, go ahead and pop them in there. Next up, we have my very good friend, Laura Gardner. Laura has nearly 20 years of experience working in education, refugee resettlement and social work, which you would never know when you look at her. In education, she also worked as a district level manager for immigrant family and community engagement, as well as a school social worker. I think that might’ve been the first time I met her a long time ago.

Sherri Wilson:

She also worked for bridging refugee youth and children’s services, managing their national technical assistance initiative to federal refugee school impact grantees. She’s facilitated professional development on building the capacity of teachers and school systems to engage immigrant families and their children’s education about language access, cultural competency, equity, unaccompanied immigrant children, immigrant family reunification, and refugee resettlement. So many things. Laura has a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in education. In 2017, Laura actually founded her own company, immigrant connections. I’m really excited for you guys to find out more about that. Hi, Laura. Welcome to the show.

Laura Gardner:

Hi, thank you, Sherry. That was such kind words. You were supposed to pick out one sentence from there. You read my full bio from A to Z, but I thank you very much for the kind welcome. All right. If we could have the next slide, please.

Laura Gardner:

All right. Just a little bit about Immigrant Connections so that you have a little sense of who’s talking to you. In our organization, we do a lot of professional development. I guess we used to do a lot face to face. Now it’s of course, more virtual professional development, as well as online courses and consulting. You’ll see from our mission statement there, our goal is to improve the lives of immigrant children and families by helping educators, social workers and other professionals better serve this population through training, coaching, and consultative services. That’s a little bit about us and at the end of our presentation, I’ll tell you a little bit more about some of the online classes in case you’re interested. All right, next slide please.

Laura Gardner:

All right. Just the other day, some of you may have seen this blog post that I wrote. It was circulating around Twitter, and it’s what we’re going to focus on today. The blog posts and today’s presentation, it’s the Top Five Strategies for Engaging Immigrant and Refugee Families for Family Engagement Professionals. The reason why I really wanted to focus on family engagement professionals is because sometimes in our work, in our Immigrant Connections work, we do a fair amount of training for ESL teachers or others in that English learner space. We do a lot of training for them on family engagement. We do less of, I would say training and PD for family engagement professionals around including immigrant and refugee families in their work or these strategies. I really want to …

Laura Gardner:

Obviously everyone here today is more or less in the family engagement field, if you’re signing on to a [inaudible 00:28:04] webinar. We’re going to start with the assumption … Perhaps not the best idea, but I’m going to assume that we’re more or less all on the same page in terms of understanding the importance of building relationships with families, for family engagement, understanding some of those core values that we all share about how families all want the best for their children. I know my friends in Hawaii talked about funds of knowledge a bit. All of those kinds of foundational things that we think about in the family engagement field, I’m going to start today with … Again, I don’t really like the word assuming, but assuming that we’re all on the same page with that. We’re going to look at some specific strategies for the immigrant refugee piece. All right, next slide please.

Laura Gardner:

All right. I think this presentation goes perfectly hand in hand with my friend’s presentation, my colleagues there in Hawaii. Strategy number one is really understanding families’ backgrounds. Again, colleagues in Hawaii, I think did a great job of pointing this out. Yes, there is the cultural piece, of course. A lot of us, we talk about … There’s various buzzwords. If we’re talking about cultural proficiency or maybe cultural responsiveness. My new ish favorite is cultural humility. Yes. All of those cultural … The cultural understanding piece is huge, but we have to move beyond that. A couple areas where we want to move beyond that is we really want to understand when we’re working with immigrant families. In a lot of districts, either ones that I’ve worked in as an employee or ones that I have more of a training consulting relationship with … A lot of times they say, the ESOL families or the ESL families or the EL families. I know everyone has different acronyms wherever they work.

Laura Gardner:

That does not allow us to understand and see the families we’re working with holistically. That is only allowing us to see them through a language lens and specifically a deficit language lens. When we’re recognizing and seeing that we’re working with immigrant families, this allows us to think about much more of what’s going on in the dynamics of their lives. It helps us think about acculturation. Where are they at in this acculturation process and in balancing their home country and culture with the culture here. Everything that it takes to acclimate to a new country, that has to all be a part of our understanding when we’re working with families and helping them think through how they adjust and just working through all the systems that we have here.

Laura Gardner:

Which takes us into the next one, the systems. Obviously we are often in a position where we’re helping families navigate our schools and our school systems. Also if you want to really understand what families are going through, what immigrant families are going through, you need to understand a little bit about the basics of some of the systems that our families are involved with in the community. For example, do you have families that are attempting to navigate immigration court or ice check-ins on their own? Do you have families that are involved with the refugee resettlement system or perhaps families that did have a refugee agency that they were involved with, but unfortunately that refugee agency closed over the past few years because the US refugee program has mostly dismantled. Had they lost that source of support? There’s all sorts of systems that families are involved with that I think are really crucial for our understanding. That’s the first strategy, understanding those different layers. Next slide, please.

Laura Gardner:

All right. Strategy two. Anyone who has ever been to any of my trainings knows that I am a hardcore advocate when it comes to language access. Language access is essentially referring to interpretation and translation services. It’s providing information to parents in a language they understand. This is required by federal law. If anyone has not seen the 2015 memo that I’ve done a screenshot of here in the image … Sherry, if you wouldn’t mind posting that link in the chat box. This memo came out from the US Department of Justice and the US Department of Education. It was co-authored by them. As you can see there, it’s just called Information for Limited English Proficient Parents and Guardians, and for Schools and School Districts that Communicate With Them.

Laura Gardner:

It’s a really nice short two pager that goes over all of our responsibilities for what we need to be providing parents with in a language that they understand. The document itself is available on the US Department of Ed’s website in a number of different languages. You can give it to families too to help them know what they have the right to.

Laura Gardner:

Now I’ve worked in schools as an employee and of course now with my organization. I know that what is outlined in this document is far from the reality in most school districts. I know this, but I think it is very important that we at least know what we’re supposed to be doing so that we can bring ourselves eventually to that point and advocate to get to that point, especially for those of you who are district leaders that are on this call. I think that this is one of the major equity issues of the day, which I think COVID has made even more obvious.

Laura Gardner:

The bullet there that I say that apps that translate are not enough. We’re going to go through on the next slide, a little spectrum of options that we talk about, and you’ll see what I mean in a minute. It’s absolutely necessary for every district to have some sort of infrastructure for interpretation, which is oral services and translation, which are written services. Let’s go to the next slide and we’ll talk a little bit about some of the options.

Laura Gardner:

Also, Sherry, if you wouldn’t mind putting the link to this article that has the spectrum of options in the box. That’d be great. Thank you. Recently we came up with this, what we’re calling the spectrum of options because … I was doing a training in Baltimore and some teachers were asking me, “We have these various tools, but we don’t really understand which one is most meaningful or least meaningful or is best or worst case scenario.” I laid it out in a spectrum for them and then realized it was a useful tool for a lot of folks.

Laura Gardner:

Over on the left, we have the most meaningful. Then as you can see, it goes over to the right, to the least meaningful. When we’re talking about most meaningful communication practices, number one by far a trained interpreter, who’s face-to-face, or it could be remote in our world, but you see someone’s face on a screen. It’s personal, it’s going to be accurate because it’s a trained interpreter. The only cons and I’m sure many would agree with me on this is that unfortunately in most districts, it takes a lot of time to request somebody unless you have a district that has a really good infrastructure and mechanisms set up for requesting. Then of course, sometimes, always, the cost of this is the most.

Laura Gardner:

Moving over, your next best option would be to provide a trained interpreter by phone, sometimes called OPI, over the phone interpretation. This is also going to be accurate because you’re dealing with a trained interpreter, but it’s perhaps not as personal. If a family receives a phone call and they’re like, “I don’t recognize this number.” Then they’re talking through an interpreter that they don’t know, sometimes there’s a little bit of confusion or resistance. Then moving down, partnering with a bilingual colleague to deliver a message. This option is personal usually, especially if it’s somebody pulls the Spanish teacher out of class or secretary … I don’t know. Somebody helps them and they know Mrs. Rosario or whatever. Might be personal, but the cons are that unless that bilingual person has received training in how to interpret, it’s very likely not going to be an accurate interpretation. They’re probably going to be throwing in their two cents. You have to have some training on confidentiality, on how to actually do the job of interpretation. Just because you’re bilingual is not enough.

Laura Gardner:

Another con would be, you’re often pulling that person away from their job. Again, I’ll use the Spanish teacher as an example, those students in that Spanish teacher’s class, they’re likely missing instruction every time you pull that teacher out. Then lastly it’s using a translation app. We love them. They’re quick, they’re free, they’re easy, but in terms of actual language access and the reliability of that message … The reliability and the level of how meaningful it is, it’s not so much there. The jury is still out in terms of whether or not apps satisfy federal requirements. If you click to the blog post where we posted this, there’s a long caveat where I explain why it may not meet federal requirements, way more than I can get into today. All right. Next slide please.

Laura Gardner:

All right. Strategy three, short and simple, but we have to remember all immigrant communities, not just our Latino or Hispanic communities. This is a picture of me when I worked … I was working in a district in Maryland. I used to do a lot of outreach and visits to our local mosque, where we had a very large Pakistani community and some other immigrant communities there. There’s not a whole lot to say around this one. I know that everybody, probably most people, their largest immigrant population in their school district is usually Latino or Hispanic, but many of us also are in districts where we have 40, 50, 100 languages and different groups. You have to be thinking through what other strategies are you going to use? What other staffing are you going to have? You have to think that through about all the other populations. You can just throw your arms up in there and say, “We tried.” All right, next slide please.

Laura Gardner:

All right. Strategy four, partner, partner, partner with your local immigrant and refugee community-based organizations, as well as faith-based institutions that serve this population. Local community-based organizations, whether it’s the Latino, something, something, or the Somali community-based this or the Bhutanese that. These organizations are the organizations that the families you’re trying to connect with, know and trust in most cases. They often have the staff that’s from the countries and cultures of the families that you’re trying to connect to. They’ve got the language piece, they’ve got all of that. You’re missing out big time if you’re not partnering with those organizations. Let me give you an example if you go to the next slide. I’ll give you one example of this very successful partnership recently.

Laura Gardner:

In Nashville, Catholic charities, they have a very large refugee resettlement program. They partner with the school district there in Nashville. I don’t know if we have anyone from Nashville here on the call, but during COVID they started what they’re calling their super supporter program. All resettled refugee youth from the past two years, which I think is about 200 youth if I remember correctly, have been matched with, what they’re calling a super supporter. These are both staff and other volunteers and folks who are like mentors in a way. Those individuals make sure that that student and their family has access to technology. They make sure that they’re trained on all the digital tools, that they’re getting into all of their classes, their Zoom sessions, their Google classrooms, all of that. They’re making referrals to community organizations. They check in with them weekly.

Laura Gardner:

These are students again, who speak Arabic, Swahili, Burmese, and Somali, some of the main refugee languages, refugee populations that have come in the past couple of years. Wow, what a level of hand-holding essentially some really solid support. Individual student and family by individual student and family that school system I’m sure would not otherwise be able to do. All right. Next slide please.

Laura Gardner:

Some people ask me, Laura, how do I find these organizations that you’re speaking of? First thing, just ask the families directly. I know when I used to work in a district in Maryland, I started out … I was new to the area and I’m like asking, for example, the Nigerian community. I was having a really hard time making inroads with the Nigerian community. I managed to connect with one parent. They told me where all the churches were that they generally attended and I started going church by church by church and connecting with them. That was the way that they organized or had their main source of support. Ask families.

Laura Gardner:

The second one, if you are an area that has refugees specifically, check with your state refugee coordinator. I’ll have Sherry put the link for the … Federal government has a link where you can see all of the state refugee coordinators. if you’re like, “Yeah, we have some Burmese students and some from Somalia and this and that, but I don’t really know how they get here or who helped them or whatever,” find your state refugee coordinator, go ahead and email them. They will get you set up and help you understand the lay of the land in your state.

Laura Gardner:

Then the last one is just Google, whether it’s Google or sometimes I’ll search different Facebook groups and things. Just for myself, I played around with this. I just searched Somali community-based organization, Columbus, Ohio, and immediately popped up the Somali … I think it was Somali community association of Ohio or something like that. Play around, do creative Google searches, ask. You can find what you need. All right, next slide please.

Laura Gardner:

Then lastly, strategy number five. We have to create welcoming schools, whether it’s through policy staff training and just high expectations. This is really important because anti-immigrant sentiment is everywhere. There’s pieces and pockets of it everywhere, including our schools. We can’t pretend like it’s not there and only act if something bubbles up to the surface. We need to assume that it’s there and start from there. How are we going to be proactive?

Laura Gardner:

One example, in the blog article … Sherry can post a little, I think I included some links, Sherry, in the notes section. There’s an organization that I really like called Rise Colorado. I don’t know if we have anyone from Colorado here today. They are in Aurora, Colorado that has a very large refugee and immigrant population. They’re a group of parents. They do a lot of community organizing or parent organizing. They came together and drafted a policy that I believe was called … Let me get this right. It was basically a policy or a resolution, I should say, to ensure that all schools in rural Colorado are safe and welcoming. The video is fantastic. I’m sure Sherry will put it in the box if she hasn’t already. Where it shows how the parents came together and really advocated to get their school system to pass this resolution. It passed with flying colors. Sometimes we have to start with policies.

Laura Gardner:

Then the staff training piece. There are always so many misunderstandings, misconceptions, just a lot of a lack of understanding about why immigrant ref-

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:46:04]

Laura Gardner:

Just a lot of a lack of understanding about why immigrant refugee populations are moving to our country, to our specific area. And that is something that we cover a lot in our online trainings, which I’m going to tell you about in a minute. And then lastly, high expectations. If we have principals or administrators on this call, I just want to remind you how important you are in this work and in setting the tone in your buildings and in your districts. If there’s a principal that sets a very welcoming tone for their school, everyone is going to, for the most part follow suit. But if you don’t, those conversations are bubbling up usually right away in the front office. So high expectations are really, really crucial. All right, next slide please. So we went through our five tips or five strategies, and I just want to share a little bit about some of our online self paced courses that we do here at immigrant connections.

Laura Gardner:

We do them in partnership with a group called English Learner Portal, as well as Brandman University out of California. So our first one here on the top, it’s a 10 hour, one graduate credit course called immigrant family and community engagement in schools it’s open to individuals or cohorts at any time. There is a cost, unfortunately, we do not have one of the lovely grants that the other organizations have been speaking about. So you can check that out. And then we just developed three new mini courses. You’ll see on the bottom, they’re five hour courses. And so, we’ve got the engaging immigrant and English learner families in a virtual world. We’ve got understanding backgrounds of refugee students and families, and then supporting unaccompanied immigrant youth in U.S. schools.

Laura Gardner:

And one thing I want to say about unaccompanied immigrant youth. This population is still very relevant to the family engagement field, because for any of you who know anything about the system that they go through, they are released from federal custody to a sponsor of some kind. It could be their parent, but oftentimes it’s their aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa neighbor, someone. And so, all the dynamics that occur around when unaccompanied youth are reunifying with family members, it’s intense. And that family piece has everything to do with our work and family engagement. And so, those three courses, the fall session is already underway, but the winter session begins January 11th. Unless you have a group that’s a full cohort, then we can take you at any time. If you have, I don’t know, 15, 20, 30 people that want to take it, just send us an email.

Laura Gardner:

All right, next slide please. And then lastly, just our catalog. You can see some of the other types of trainings that we do. People will email me and say, “Laura, we want you to come and do a live training for us on Zoom on this date and we want a combination of what you have on pages five and six of your catalog,” or something, and I’ll craft something unique for them. All right, and then I think the next slide is yeah, just our contact info. So you can go ahead and email if you want, check out our website, Twitter, Facebook, what have you. And I’m looking forward very much to the Q and A part of today. So thanks so much.

Sherri Wilson:

Awesome, Laura. You are a treasure. Thank you again for sharing this really important information with all of us. There was so much good stuff in there and I hope everybody got a chance to bookmark all the links. So I’m going to ask everyone to turn their cameras and microphones on now so that we can all come back together for the Q and A portion. And we have a few questions already lined up. For those of you who were still on, if you have questions and you haven’t posted them yet, if you posted them in the chat box, please post them in the Q and A box so that we can respond to all of those. So our first question is for Angela. Angela, Karen says, “I love that you talk so much about relational engagement.” She would love to know recommendations that you have and if any of the other panelists have them as well for families who are unable to show up in person. How can we develop effective relationships if we can’t meet in person? This is a challenge, particularly with the global pandemic we’re all experiencing.

Angela Matian:

Yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. It’s a great question. I think what we need to do is, and we’re working with teams of schools right now in Hawaii and Hawaii Island. And then also, our neighbor islands as well. But one of the things that’s been really grateful, even though we’re in this pandemic is looking at different ways, by moving away from the traditional ways of engaging with families. And we go through this process of reviewing our core beliefs, what are we expecting from families and is families physically showing up on campus a way that we can engage them? No, we have to take another step back to take a look how we can engage families in different ways. And certainly we’ve actually been pushed into this right now in the pandemic, looking at these different ways.

Angela Matian:

And so, when we go through these process conditions, we look at our core beliefs and we look at what are we defining success? What are we defining what engagement is? And so, I really do encourage folks to take a look at the process conditions and use that as a way to examine the practices. I love how Laura brought up working and partnering up with folks because that’s how you build these different strategies and innovating ways. One of the things that we’ve learned is working with our Micronesian families is going through faith based institutions, right? Learning more through that and working with them. So I would say that it’s important for us to go through a different trajectory. Not the original or the traditional ways. I don’t know if Caryl has anything or Kathy has anything, the rest of our team.

Caryl Hitchcock:

Two things. Hi, this is Caryl. There was a wonderful story in our presentation with Dr. Mapp with our cohort two training for 10 schools on the big island. And one of our panelists was the homeless coordinator. And he described a story of how he was missing a lot of his families. So he had to load up a bus and go out and find them. And about 30 miles away, he found them and they didn’t have shelter, they had lots of needs, so he partnered up with the Boys and Girls Club and they, between them came up with some wonderful solutions and provided them with food, clothing, supplies they may need, hotspots and tablets so that they could participate in the educational process.

Caryl Hitchcock:

So that story was a wonderful example of somebody going above and beyond and going out and reaching out to the families and they can do it in a contactless way. And I think they are continuing to develop that intervention. And then I just wondered if I could ask Kathy to jump in and talk about the Sunday’s Project with the Micronesian families and the transition that we’ve had to go through to making things virtual with this group, because technology is something that they are not perhaps familiar or comfortable with. Kathy, did you want to add something there?

Katherine Ratliffe:

I can talk about the Sunday’s Project. This is a family education program that was developed for Micronesian families who were unfamiliar with U.S. schools. A lot of information was included, such as how to deal with head lice, health and safety issues, as well as educational issues. How to create a homework structure for your children and a place for your kids to do their homework. Even nutrition was addressed. The parents came up with the topics that they wanted to address and discrimination and bias was one of the topics they wanted to address. These were face-to-face sessions and I don’t know what’s happened with the Sunday’s Project since COVID has come on and taken away our face-to-face options. But I did want to talk about other community entities where we can engage with families.

Katherine Ratliffe:

There are some grant funded, community based tutoring programs, sewing programs for adults and even there’s a program that has steering committees from the different Micronesian groups. These are adults who are really interested in talking about the issues that people from their culture are facing when they moved to the U.S. such as discrimination, such as how do we maintain our language with our children, those issues. And you just need to find those groups and they’re so willing to help. They want to talk to people and explore these issues. Anyway, I hope that responded to your question, Caryl.

Sherri Wilson:

Thank you, Katherine. Laura, do you have any suggestions for how we can engage families virtually particularly immigrant families when it’s so hard to connect with them?

Laura Gardner:

Yeah, one thing I wanted to say. I mean, I don’t know if anyone actually said this or not, but I feel like these days, we’re all so into texting and I feel like phone calls, just going back old school, a regular phone call. You can build a pretty decent bond with someone over the phone. And as I mentioned, when we were talking about the interpretation options, if you need an interpreter, a lot of school systems do have a contract with one of those over the phone interpreter, like language link, language line, one of those vendors.

Laura Gardner:

It can be a little clumsy, you can only one sentence at a time kind of thing, back and forth, but it’s still great to connect just by phone. And then similar to what other people were saying. I mean, I have seen some schools within their public health guidelines in their respective areas, some have been doing home visits, on the porch, or wearing masks, but delivering school supplies and connecting that way. So I think there are still ways for sure.

Sherri Wilson:

Thank you. This next question is for you, Katherine. Do the affect modules involve anything besides just going through the materials? Are there quizzes or any demonstrations of understanding?

Katherine Ratliffe:

There are lessons included in each module, the lessons are activities that can be done in teacher preparation programs to help pre-service teachers practice some of these skills. They suggest activities that pre-service teachers can do in their classroom or for assignments. And also, that in-service teachers can do to feel more comfortable working with families. So there are no quizzes per se, but there are lots of activities.

Sherri Wilson:

Excellent. And here’s a followup question for you from Raquel. With those modules, where are the lessons coming from? Has there been any evaluation so far, and what are teachers sharing from their learning?

Katherine Ratliffe:

Good questions. We have evaluated the use of the modules. We’ve surveyed both the faculty and students in our teacher education programs, and they’re not being used as much as we would like to see them being used. The reason that they were developed is that the teacher education programs don’t have room in their curriculum for family a engagement course and that’s really unfortunate. And I don’t really like even the language that’s used for that. However, we’ve decided that it’s a good idea to just infuse family engagement into every course as much as we can. And so, we’ve created these modules so that the faculty can pick and choose what they want to include in their course. So different modules and different features are used by different faculty in different ways. And we’ve adjusted the modules as we get feedback from both faculty and students, which we try to get every year.

Sherri Wilson:

Awesome. Thank you. Here’s a question for you, Laura. How do you work to build trust with communities when you’ve been there for a long time, but it’s your first time to engage with them in this way?

Laura Gardner:

That’s a really good question. I think that, so it looks like I’m reading the question too, so the families and the communities have been there for a while, but you, the educator are new, if I’m understanding correctly. I think now there’s the pre-COVID answer, right? And then the COVID answer, the pre-COVID answer is again, like I was starting to say earlier. It’s when you identify the locations that families trust. So I think I mentioned the Nigerian community I used to work with in the churches, or the Vietnamese community near where I used to work many of them owned nail salons. And so, there were lots of different outreach initiatives that me and my team took on.

Laura Gardner:

One day or a couple of weeks there, I went with one of my Vietnamese parent leaders and we literally went from nail salon to nail salon, to nail salon, introducing ourselves, and explaining what our team did and just building relationships out in the community as much as possible. I’m a firm believer also in home visits. I love the parent, teacher home visiting project. I feel like I could always create a trusting relationship with many families within an hour, something that would have taken normally weeks or months. So that’s the pre-COVID answer. The COVID answer is a lot harder because again, we, it’s harder to go out into the community, not necessarily as safe and so, then we go back to the answers that we were all just giving before. I, again, think you can do a lot over the phone, but I think checking in, figuring out who the community leaders are is crucial.

Laura Gardner:

Usually most immigrant communities have some people that they identify as leaders. It could be a little more formal, maybe not so formal. I know in the refugee resettlement world, usually when a refugee community starts coming, they usually form a little community based organization, identify a leader, and it is fairly formal. You can figure out who to ask and okay, it’s this person, kind of thing. Whereas in some of the other communities, the larger they get, you might have a pastor over here and this person over here, but those people will help you figure out the next steps to take.

Sherri Wilson:

Angela, are you doing anything similar in Hawaii to connect with families?

Angela Matian:

We’ve made connections with our, I can’t remember the name. We just connected with them in terms of translation. And I actually learned Spanish growing up in Venezuela. So I could really have that experience with what Laura was saying about being pulled away to help translate during my duties. But we are making those connections going back in terms of language or making those connections and building that. Our grant is for five years and we’re in our third year working with schools. And as we’re working with different schools and communities across the Hawaiian islands, we’re establishing those connections to be able to tap into those particular populations, Micronesian populations and working with them.

Angela Matian:

So one of the key components is the capacity within schools is developing school teams, family engagement, action teams, and then bringing in the partners within the community just as Laura has mentioned and my friends here on the rest of the panel. So that is really key and really critical when you want to be able to really provide an equitable access or even have that knowledge of all the students and all the families. I always say that a school is a community within a community and even so, there’s so many smaller communities within that, right? So it’s important to really get the lay of the landscape and see how you’re able to support all of the students and their families.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah, that reminds me of my friends at the Massachusetts SFEC. They use a cultural broker model, where they have staff and volunteers who are brokers, cultural brokers from their own communities who get trained and then go back and share that with other people within their community. It’s a great way to extend your reach. Here’s a question from an old friend of mine, Sheila Jackson. She wants to know, is there a national conversation that we can all join? Their district has a small, powerful group of vineyard workers, but they want to know how they can coalesce and have a larger cohort. Does anybody know if there are more broad based communities that are tackling this?

Laura Gardner:

Hm. Specifically you’re looking at migrant workers, connecting around that? I’m not sure if I understand her question.

Sherri Wilson:

It could be migrant workers, or it could just be people who have an interest in immigrant and refugee families. Is there a national connection there?

Laura Gardner:

Well I will say this. If anyone’s interested about, I don’t know it was during COVID sometime, maybe three months ago. I started a Facebook group for EL family engagement, K to 12, and it has 700 people in it already.

Sherri Wilson:

Oh, fantastic.

Laura Gardner:

So let me try to find the link and I’ll put it in the box. I don’t know Sheila, if that’s what you were talking about, but I don’t know of many national … Angela or others, do you know of any?

Angela Matian:

No.

Katherine Ratliffe:

NAFSCE has a discussion group.

Angela Matian:

Yeah, I was going to mention that too.

Katherine Ratliffe:

Yeah, that’s really, I’ve found useful.

Laura Gardner:

NAFSCE of course, I mean we’re on NAFSCE at home.

Sherri Wilson:

So I would say that the group that you guys are referencing is not actually a NAFSCE group, it is a group of statewide family engagement centers who have expressed a common interest and formed an affinity group around these issues, so that is …

Angela Matian:

[crosstalk 01:06:24] bring that up because Sherri, participated in a couple of our meetings and I feel like everything is just how things align. I definitely want to connect with Laura because our affinity group has been trying to get feedback from the rest of the family engagement centers around this topic. So I think this a really good segue into continuing that conversation and our affinity group meeting with Laura and in the chat box, I did see Sheila clarifying. She said, “More people like Laura.” So that’s exactly how I see it. Who are those folks out in the field with that? With that passion and that drive with this work? And so, it will be nice to share with Carmen and Cambria and then also Twan here is part of our affinity group. So we look forward to making a connection with you, Laura.

Laura Gardner:

Oh, thank you. I love it. And actually, now I think the question is making more sense to me. So I did put the Facebook link in the box, but if you’re looking for more people that are doing this work, my top answers would probably be [inaudible 01:07:41] Colorado, which a lot of you probably know of. And the reason why, I mean, a lot of people love their work, but the reason why I love their work is because I think that they do a good job of also looking at the immigrant issues. They’re not just saying English learners and really focusing on the instructional nitty gritties. It’s pretty broad looking at families and larger immigration issues, also Migration Policy Institute, for sure. MPI, Julie Sugarman.

Sherri Wilson:

When I was at PTA, MALDEF was doing a lot of that work. I don’t know if they still are, because I left PTA a long time ago, but MALDEF might also be a great resource, particularly if you have large numbers of Hispanics or Latino in your community.

Laura Gardner:

Yeah. Another group that I will throw out there, I’ll put in the chat box is called IMM Schools. IMM Schools. If you Google them they’re pretty focused on the undocumented community and advocating for the undocumented community. And I think their focus is pretty much Texas and New York, I want to say, but they’re growing nationally, but they’re founded by …

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:09:04]

Laura Gardner:

But they’re founded by Latinx, undocumented women. I’ve talked to them before. Like they do some really good work. So there are some people out there, but even within schools, I don’t … and somebody can clarify this if they’re on this call, but I don’t think they do as much of the family engagement piece of the work. I could be wrong. Sheila, you got me thinking.

Sherri Wilson:

Here’s the question for you, Angela, you had mentioned those action teams. Are those based on the national network of partnership schools, family engagement framework, and NPS?

Angela Matian:

Our team has had the training NPS with Dr. Map’s work and it’s actually we are working with Scholastic around Dr. Map’s work. And so a lot of the groups are the family engagement action teams of Dr. Map. And also Joyce Epstein are very similar, but yes, it is around that work right there.

Sherri Wilson:

So there’s definitely some crossover there. And then also a lot of areas where they diverge, so that’s interesting.

Angela Matian:

Exactly.

Sherri Wilson:

Okay. Excellent. Here’s a question I’m just going to throw out to the group as a whole. What are some strategies you suggest for assessing the number of families not engaging at our school during COVID, having that information ready for staff and administration is particularly key in getting staff to commit to making changes in the way they approach family engagement. I know that assessing or measuring family engagement is a huge challenge any time because people tend to fall into the trap of headcount family engagement, where you count the number of people who show up. That’s not even possible in this age of COVID. So what are some strategies that we can use to demonstrate the need for better outreach to families and better communication with families?

Angela Matian:

So I’ll go ahead and kind of add to … so one of the most obvious things, and we don’t do the most, and Laura has talked about it is to go and talk to families to ask them what is the best approach, right. And what’s going to help support them. What we found now in this current times is that we’re doing virtual, Hangouts. We’re doing home visits. We’re doing things that we never really used to do. One of the kind of approaches that we’ve taken with our action teams, our school action teams, is that … how welcoming is your school? And Laura talked about this, how welcoming are schools. And so assessing that and using that as a baseline. And so there’s several pieces of data that we gather through surveys, through maybe a focus group, actually doing a virtual, physical walkthrough of the campus to see the type of information assessing the documents.

Angela Matian:

We do this and we go through these practices with our school teams and the hope is that they’re able to integrate these practices, whether they’re already practices that they’re doing that they didn’t realize that it’s really engaging families. And then you do more of it and embed it in different areas. And then also getting new practices. Getting new strategies. So one of the really great things about this experience and working with our school’s school teams in Hawaii is that peer to peer, right, school to school. So they get to be able to connect. Because when I was in a counselor school there, how often did I get to sit with my colleagues and talk about what we were experiencing and what was working. And so for us, we really want to be able to customize it. And so we see that the family engagement assessment, assessing the welcoming of your school, I think is really important.

Sherri Wilson:

Excellent. Somebody is asking a question about where this is streaming on Facebook because they can’t find it. So I’m going to go ahead and answer that. It is streaming on the NAFSCE page. And if you can’t find NAFSCE, you can look for me, I’m also streaming it on my page as well.

Sherri Wilson:

Here’s a question from Wendy Garcia, how can we assure our families that it’s safe to register for school, especially headstart, and that immigration will not come to our pre-K centers. Laura, I’m thinking of you first for this one, because I know that for immigrant families, particularly families who are not documented, there’s a legitimate concern that immigration is going to find them through their children.

Laura Gardner:

Yeah. The resource that’s coming to mind, there’s a coalition of folks and organizations that came together to put a … it’s called … I’m going to have to Google it while we go on. But I think it’s called Protecting Immigrant Families. And they often put together a number of helpful documents, both for educators, practitioners, providers, as well as families. And some of it is about the general kind of documentation concerns. But also they, I believe, started this coalition in response to some of the public charge stuff that was happening and kind of concerns around that. So I’ll pause there and try to look for the website of the organization that I’m thinking of, if that’s okay.

Sherri Wilson:

Excellent. While you’re looking for that. Here’s another question for Hawaii. I guess any of you could answer this one, what resources or strategies do you all have to educate staff on how to identify and support families whose hidden are in fact English speakers? Do you guys have any strategies for that?

Katherine Ratliffe:

I’m not sure what the question is? To identify families who are hidden, but are English speakers, is that what the question was?

Sherri Wilson:

Yes. So maybe English speakers who are … like immigrant families, but they speak English, I guess, is what Stacy’s asking.

Katherine Ratliffe:

I think families have the right to communicate in whatever language they wish. So even if they speak English, they may not feel confident of their English skills. So we need to accommodate their language needs, rather than blame them for hiding their English. I think it’s really important that we respect families for whatever they’re able to come forward with.

Sherri Wilson:

Excellent. Do you guys know, I’m sorry, go ahead. Carol.

Caryl Hitchcock:

I just wanted to give a shout out to Laura and all her excellent strategies. I think her strategy, number four, that peer to peer mentor, especially for middle and high school students, for families who are perhaps new to their schools, that would make the difference between being successful and not. And that is also a key to engaging the family as well. If they do speak another language and perhaps finding out what the best way would be to share communication.

Caryl Hitchcock:

I also wanted just to let you know that we’re developing a series of modules to capitalize on some of Laura’s strategies about the first phone call home and the virtual home visit. So the teachers, we were surprised because we asked them we thought, ‘Oh, well, they can just do it virtually, and they’re also technology literate. They won’t have any trouble with that.’ Well, it turns out they were really nervous about it. So we created these little scenarios with communication skills to give them some practice in a safe environment, to do these phone calls and to perhaps constructively make suggestions to each other. So that’s coming soon. We’ve just about finished the four modules. We’re hoping to put them on the AFECT website soon.

Laura Gardner:

That’s exciting to hear about, sorry, Sherry, I just want to jump in and say, I think that’s so needed. I think, like Angela, you said your background is counseling, I’m social work, sometimes there’s certain things that are intuitive to some of us or what have you, but sometimes just making phone calls or things can make people really nervous. So I think that sounds like a really great resource. That’s exciting.

Sherri Wilson:

Totally agree. I’ve done so many professional developments, trainings where it’s just a matter of coaching educators on how to even start those conversations, because they’re not something they feel comfortable doing because they’ve never done them before. And anything new is sometimes …

Laura Gardner:

Overwhelming.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah, for sure. Angela, I have a question for you and this one is from Edward Lopez and I’m asking you, because it sounds like you guys might’ve done family friendly or family engagement assessments in your schools. So Edward’s wondering, does anybody have a guide or a rubric for assessing how welcoming schools are? Can you talk a little bit about the process you went through?

Angela Matian:

Yes. And I also want to shout out our friends at South Dakota, the family engagement center, we’ve been partnering, working with them in understanding cause they actually do a family engagement assessment, and Sherri, when she said family friendly walk through that kind of … my eyes kind of lit up because of that work. And so really the processes … and I think which is essential is definitely working with the team because when you work with a team and go through this process with them at the school, which the teams consist of an administrator, a parent, a teacher, and then we have other folks that are brought on the team, whether it’s community members or additional teachers, but it really should reflect the diversity of your school and your community.

Angela Matian:

And so some of the information or data that we gather is, we have this rubric, of working with Scholastic and then other folks, but there’s a rubric and you actually go through this rubric and in a virtual, not a virtual, we’re going to do virtual because of the pandemic now virtual walkthroughs of campuses, but you do a physical walkthrough, And then I can go ahead and put that link to South Dakota in there if I can find it. But you do a physical walkthrough.

Angela Matian:

There’s also … kind of like those secret shopper calls to kind of assess customer service. Well, somebody calls the school and ask questions that a parent would ask. And then that insight of that experience is shared with the team. If they were able … the person answering the phone, how welcoming and warming they are were they able to get the resources? And then we also look at the technology. Even more so now there’s so many different ways that schools are engaging, different applications they’re engaging with families. So we take a look at that, whether it’s social media, Facebook, definitely their website. And then there’s a series of surveys that go out to folks that are working closely with families.

Angela Matian:

And then from there a report is given to the school teams, to the school. I mean really that report celebrates all of the great things that the schools are doing to really highlight all the great things that they’re doing. And then also to provide them feedback based on the data that’s gathered. Based on the experiences, from the insights from those experiences. So we found that that’s a really great tool. And what happens ultimately at the end is that they use that in addition to all of their school data to really embed family engagement within their school improvement plans. Right. So that’s kind of in a nutshell, but I’m going to look for South Dakota’s family-friendly walkthrough in and put that in there.

Laura Gardner:

Angela, somebody found it and posted it.

Angela Matian:

Oh, nice, it’s probably Lisa. Yes. She’s part of our, our team as well. She’s awesome.

Sherri Wilson:

Excellent. Chuan, did you want to comment on that?

Chuan:

Yeah. I just wanted to add, to make a clarification for South Dakota. They have … I think Sherri, you also know this you’re part of the developing the family engagement assessment too. So I think there are different versions going around. South Dakota has its own version and Scholastic has another version. So the components that Angela talked about is not going to be … it’s probably with one of the version. So just to clarify that we don’t mix it all up. Thank you.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah, for sure. So the North Dakota version is something you can use and it’s sort of a self-assessment tool. The Scholastic version is very intense and it’s an external assessment and usually done by a team from Scholastic and, full disclosure I was one of the authors of that and sometimes still do some of those assessments.

Sherri Wilson:

Okay. So we have a little bit of time left and we have a really important question from Linda Brown. I think this might be the last question we have time for, because I feel like it’s going to be something that maybe takes a little time to respond to. So Linda says ‘We have had several parent meetings to help with virtual learning, using Zoom, which, great tool. We have an interpreter come to the meeting and he is wonderful. It, however, makes the meetings very long for all the participants. We want our Spanish speaking families to feel included, but we wonder if a separate meeting for them would be better. What do you think?’

Laura Gardner:

I have a lot of thoughts on that. Do you want me to go or … okay. So my first comment slash question, or I guess consideration to make is, it sounds like the interpreter being used is using what we call consecutive interpretation, where somebody talks, then the interpreters repeats it in language and then they go and then it goes back and forth the whole time. And then yes, that would take double the amount of time, however, Zoom and a number of other platforms do have an option for remote simultaneous interpretation, where … and feel free anyone else to chime in who has used this, but where the family would be getting Spanish or whatever the language is on their channel, I guess, for lack of a better word, I don’t know if I’m using the right thing. And then you could literally have like Mandarin, you could have Vietnamese, you could have multiple languages going at once.

Laura Gardner:

Just the same as when we were back in person. I don’t know if any of you have, if any of you use interpretation equipment where you use the headsets, picture like the United Nations, and you’ve got some families sitting out there who have Spanish on channel one and Vietnamese on channel two, and what have you. Now it’s still human providing the interpretation in the back of the room or in the case of Zoom in their house or whatever. But I highly recommend if you have the ability to hire a trained simultaneous interpreter, that’s going to help you with your time issue.

Laura Gardner:

The other thing though, I do want to say, and then I’ll stop because I’ll talk too much. But I do think in this work, and I’m speaking very broadly about family engagement with kind of immigrant families, I’m a firm believer in kind of having a balance of both worlds. And what I mean by this is you always want to make sure that whatever the event or activity that’s going on, you provide equal access to that event or opportunity through interpreters if needed. Like any parent should be able to attend any event and you can not let language be a barrier, but, or I guess just should say, and, but, you, it is often a good idea as well to sometimes have perhaps a parent gathering or workshop that is specific to your immigrant families or perhaps by language group, or you could ask families what they prefer.

Laura Gardner:

Title III funds a lot of that, specifically the families of your English learner students. And I think there’s a lot of pros and cons of each of those approaches. I actually wrote a blog post about it. So I’ll post it in the box, but I forget the title of it. It was like unpacking the debate between should we have separate family events for our English learner and immigrant families? And I always think you have to have both. That’s my answer.

Sherri Wilson:

I wonder too, if in this age of Zoom meetings, we couldn’t start out together doing some of that simultaneous interpreting and then maybe do breakout rooms where people have opportunities to talk with other families. That speak the same language.

Laura Gardner:

Prince William County is doing that in Virginia. They’re doing virtual parent camps where everyone comes together and then they all do breakout rooms by language. It’s phenomenal. So they don’t need simultaneous interpreters because then … it depends on the goal of your event, but they wanted more of that like community building feeling, and wanted parents to be able to talk to other parents in their language and not have to go through interpreters. Sorry to cut you off.

Sherri Wilson:

Oh, we just had parent camp on here last month. So great connection. You guys, this has been phenomenal. All of you are doing the most amazing and incredible work. And I just feel like we, as a family engagement field are so lucky to have people like you that are so committed and passionate and out there doing this. And I’m just truly honored that you were able to join us today and share this information with everyone. So thank you all so much for presenting and participating and taking the time to respond to all of these fantastic questions from our amazing members.

Sherri Wilson:

Another reminder to everybody who’s still with us. Our third session in this series is parent advocacy for equitable policy and practice. We’re going to have a panel of family leaders who are going to be leading that and talking about their own experiences. So I hope you all can join us. It’s going to be October 21st from 3:00 to 4:30. Thank you all so much for being here today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, presenters Mahalo, Angela, Catherine, Chuan, Caryl. Thank you, Laura. And I will see you again soon. I hope.

Laura Gardner:

Thank you so much for having us. I really appreciate it.

Angela Matian:

Thank you. Aloha.

Laura Gardner:

Bye everybody.

Caryl Hitchcock:

Bye. Thank you.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:29:27]