Often the lone volunteer in her sons’ classrooms, Amy Anderson used to make assumptions about the other, missing parents—that they didn’t care, or that their priorities were somehow out of whack. That was before she met Lorelei.

Anderson and Lorelei were neighbors on a military base in Wichita Falls, Texas, whose boys were friendly in school. Once, as their sons played together, Lorelei commented that she admired Anderson for volunteering at the school and wished she could, too. Only she didn’t think she belonged there.

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A small town girl from rural Alabama with a syrupy southern drawl, Lorelei never finished school. To supplement her enlisted husband’s salary, she went to work nights at a local strip club just off base. She was afraid she’d be unwelcome at the school and would embarrass her children. It was just as well—as a high school dropout, she didn’t think she’d contribute much anyway.

“I convinced her to come in with me while I was volunteering so she could see that there are no academic skills necessary for handing out juice boxes,” says Anderson. “You should have seen her son’s face when she walked into the classroom. It just lit up.”

As a fellow parent and neighbor, Anderson was able to accomplish what no “Back to School Night” flyer or invitation to the PTA meeting could have. She brought a parent who had been hiding in the shadows through the school doors. Since that first day with Anderson, Lorelei volunteers regularly. And rather than embarrassing them, her presence at school is helping her children succeed. Research over the past two decades consistently confirms the link between parent involvement and student achievement.

Anderson’s actions exemplify what Eileen Kugler, author of Debunking the Middle-Class Myth: Why Diverse Schools Are Good For All Kids , says schools need to know about getting more parents  and guardians involved—nothing beats being invited by a peer. Schools that leverage parents’ relationships with each other, she says, can build networks of active parents.

“By increasing opportunities for parents to be involved, they not only help those families, but they build links among all families in the community, strengthening the school culture,” Kugler writes.

As Amy Anderson discovered, sometimes all it takes is a friendly invitation from one parent to another. In the right hands, that invitation can even break long-standing cultural, language, and socioeconomic barriers.

Involving Immigrant Parents

Jeaneth Lazima, like most immigrant parents, wanted to be more involved but didn't know how to start.

Several years ago, Jeaneth Lazima went to a PTA meeting at her oldest daughter’s elementary school in Virginia. She stood along the back wall alone. “I didn’t feel welcome,” she says. “Everyone was in groups. Nobody talked to me.” She decided not to go back.

Lazima is from Guatemala, her husband is from El Salvador, and the family speaks Spanish at home. Like so many immigrant families, the couple moved to America so their children could have a better education and more opportunity. So Lazima was dismayed when her daughter was placed in classes she knew weren’t advanced enough. “She knew a lot of English,” says Lazima. “Still, they put her back, and she got behind in reading and writing.” The experience frustrated her, but Lazima didn’t feel confident about her English or know enough about the system to intervene.

“Immigrant parents are eager to become more involved in school, but many don’t understand the expectations of the American system and don’t feel 100 percent welcome,” says Kugler, whose children graduated from Annandale High School, the same school Lazima’s daughter now attends.

Annandale’s students come from 85 countries and speak 40 languages. In an effort to engage as many of these parents as possible, in 2005 Kugler established the Immigrant Parent Leadership Initiative, a series of classes and workshops to introduce parents to other parents, to teachers, and to helping their kids navigate the high school system.

Drawing the parents in took time—and many, many phone calls. One call Kugler made was to invite Jeaneth Lazima back to the school. “I started going, and learned so much so fast,” she says. At the workshops, held in both Spanish and English, Lazima met parents from all over the world—Bolivia, Ethiopia, Algeria, Pakistan, and Vietnam. They discussed differences between their home countries’ educational systems and methods for motivating their children and helping with homework. They learned how to talk to teachers and how to help their kids plan for the future. They toured the school library and the career center and heard guest speakers, including college admissions officers. In the end, Lazima learned how to advocate for her children.

“I don’t get as upset if there’s a problem, because I know how to talk to their teachers and counselors,” she says. When a report card arrived with a few C’s, Lazima was able to discuss her daughter’s academic strengths and weaknesses with the teachers so that, together, they could help the girl do better. Lazima also learned why her kids should take a variety of classes and participate in extracurricular activities. “Now I know my daughter is on the path to college,” she says.

To engage more parents like Lazima, Kugler recommends finding at least one bilingual parent from each immigrant group who’s willing to help. They can translate flyers, act as interpreters at parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings, or simply sit down with parents new to the school system to act as mentors. They can also go out into the community, along with teachers and other school leaders, to cultural festivals, houses of worship, parades, soccer matches—any community event that draws families—to help introduce parents to the school and welcome their involvement.

Meet Working Parents Halfway

Anna Marie Weselak, immediate past president of the National PTA, applauds new efforts to engage parents, guardians, and family members. But on a practical level, how do you reach those who can’t take time off during the day, who work nights and feel overwhelmed and overburdened? You have to meet them halfway, she says.

“When I was in school, my parents were both in the PTA,” says Weselak. “Parents automatically joined, no questions asked. Today, we’re going to parents instead of waiting for them to come to us.”

Now you’ll see the PTA at high school sporting events talking to parents who have come to see their kids play. You’ll see parent volunteers offering rides to parents without transportation. You’ll see the PTA provide childcare so that parents with very young children can attend meetings. Weselak also recommends creating more opportunities for parents to come into school. Most working parents have a lunch hour—set up meetings at that time, or allow parents to eat with their children, she says.

A Tale of Two Parents The Partner Parent Meet Kim Wilson. The Helicopter Parent Meet Shani Weber.

Offering family members school access during mealtimes, and even providing parents with free or reduced-price meals, helps bring in low-income and time-strapped working parents. Weselak once observed a father eating lunch with his daughter in a Montana elementary school. “The dad comes in the two days a week that he doesn’t work nights. His little girl said if she didn’t see him on those days at lunch, she wouldn’t see him at all.” Another school holds a “Donuts for Dads” program that encourages working fathers to come to school early, before their shifts start, to eat breakfast with their kids. There’s even legislation currently in Congress that would, among other things, grant parents time off from work to attend parent-teacher conferences and other school events. Introduced by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), “The Balancing Act” is supported by NEA.

But there’s another group of parents that still avoids getting involved. They are the silent, alienated parents. This hardest-to-reach group had bad experiences when they were in school, feels uncomfortable with teachers, and is intimidated by the system. Maybe these parents blame themselves if their child isn’t doing well; maybe they don’t trust educators. Some grew up under the shadow of segregation and were mistreated or discriminated against in school. Others, like Lorelei from Wichita Falls, are simply afraid of being judged.

This is where creative community building comes most into play. In Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family/School Partnerships , authors Anne Henderson, Karen Mapp, Vivian Johnson, and Don Davies write about Bruce-Monroe Elementary School, which sits between the Columbia Heights and Shaw neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.—home to mostly Black, Hispanic, and Vietnamese families but whose teachers are predominantly White. To help build relationships between the school and the community, the PTA organized a neighborhood walk, led by the school custodian, a longtime area resident. Teachers, education support professionals, and parent volunteers visited community-owned businesses, like an African culture bookstore, where the owner agreed to share his knowledge with classes. They met families and heard about residents’ plans for their neighborhood. And residents saw interested, concerned school staff making an effort to get to know them. They began to build trust.

Parents Helping at Home

Another approach is to involve parents in their children’s schoolwork. We need to recognize it as involvement, says Henderson, when parents talk to their kids about school, encourage them, and get involved with homework. “Sometimes, they might not know the best way to help,” she says, “but educators can show them the way.”

Joyce Epstein of Johns Hopkins University tested and developed the Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork (TIPS) program, in which teachers design homework that requires children to talk to someone at home about the assignment. In a 1997 study of 700 Black middle schoolers, she found that TIPS improved student writing skills, grades, and test scores, and that parent involvement increased.

Cecily Myart-Cruz, who teaches English at Ralph Waldo Emerson Middle School in Los Angeles, didn’t need a study to prove TIPS works. Every morning when her students come into the classroom, they have a five-minute “quick write” about a daily quote Myart-Cruz writes on the board. Just in time for the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, she asked her students to write their thoughts about the quote: “May the Force be with you.”

“They like pop culture quotes best,” she says. “It trips them out.”

 Every night, the students take home their quick write and share it with their parents, who also respond to the quote. She’s had 100 percent participation from parents across the entire race and class spectrum.

“In middle school, students tend to not want to talk to their parents. It’s uncool. But parental involvement is important at every level…especially after they get older,” says Myart-Cruz. “My parents were working-class people, but at dinner time, they talked to me about things they saw in the news, or current events, and asked me how I felt about it. I wanted my students to share that with their parents.”

By broadening the definition of parent involvement, educators acknowledge the value of parental guidance and participation in student learning—that the parent has something meaningful and important to add, which, in turn, fosters more engagement.

“The bottom line is that we all want the same thing,” says Myart-Cruz. “Every single parent wants their child to succeed, to go to college. I tell them I’m living my dream every day that I walk into this classroom because I’m molding minds and shaping the future. But I need their help. This is where it starts.”

Related Content:

A Tale of Two Parents:

• The Partner Parent
  Meet Kim Wilson.
• The Helicopter Parent
  Meet Shani Weber.

Send comments on this story to  Cindy Long.

 

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Prison Drama

Teachers report to prisons and juvenile detention centers every day in the hope of improving the lives of their student-inmates, some of whom will never again live outside prison walls.

By John Rosales

Nancy Ahlquist never crosses the yellow line painted an inch wide on the concrete floor of her classroom.

On one side is her whiteboard, desk, chair, and supply cart. On the other are her students—adult male convicts who have committed crimes ranging from kidnapping and armed robbery to rape and murder. Some are serving life sentences without parole. Others are on death row. All are felony criminals at the Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP), a maximum security prison in Youngstown.

Most of the 530 inmates at OSP can’t add or spell very well and read at a seventh-grade level. Yet there are eager learners among them who will spend years striving to earn a GED.

Inmates are escorted by a guard from their cells to class, one at a time. Some are in handcuffs and shackles, which are removed only after they enter the 4-by-4-foot cells with prominent locks, desktops welded to the bars, and low stools bolted to the floor.

It’s surprising to find the affable Ahlquist teaching math and reading to grim-faced convicts. “I’m rewarded when they learn from me, just like any teacher,” she says. But educators in this environment need “life experience and maturity under their belts,” Ahlquist cautions. “I wouldn’t recommend this job to a teacher fresh out of college.” 

Another key to survival is not asking about the crimes that inmates have committed. A guard once let slip to Ahlquist that a new student was the person who had recently raped a 5-year-old girl and thrown her body out of a third-story window.

“I had to go to class and work with this person in five minutes,” she says. “I’d rather not know what they’ve done.”

About 15,000 correctional educators serve the country’s prisons and juvenile detention centers. Many started their careers in public schools. For Ahlquist, finding a full-time position in Youngstown schools was impossible following the decline of the area’s steel industry in the 1980s. She got by on substitute teaching for 10 years.

Longing for job security, in 1997 she took a position at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center and later switched to OSP because it offered a solid family medical plan and union protection through the Ohio Education Association (OEA) and the State Council of Professional Educators (SCOPE).

Before reporting to work at a state prison, teachers attend the Ohio Corrections Training Academy. There, they learn about criminal behavior and go through the same physical training in unarmed self-defense as prison guards. “I know how to take a punch,” Ahlquist says. “But I wouldn’t want to.” One Ohio teacher is currently recovering from reconstructive facial surgery after being punched by an inmate.

When she first arrived at OSP, Ahlquist had to figure out how education fit into her students’ lives. “Most have low self-esteem,” she says. “They have always failed and have a negative perception of school.”

All incoming inmates are enrolled in an education program if they don’t have a high school diploma or GED. Even those sentenced to life without parole or death row sometimes work toward a GED, often to show restitution and be better role models for their children and grandchildren, Ahlquist says.

In addition to GED lessons, the system provides inmates with adult literacy education, apprenticeship training, library services, special education, vocational education, and other programs. Some inmates even pay for college correspondence courses, says Ahlquist, who monitors the exams of those pursuing college degrees.

But most inmates are playing catch-up when it comes to school. In Ohio, approximately 30 percent of incarcerated males and 20 percent of females read at less than a sixth-grade level and are considered functionally illiterate. Nationally, about 80 percent of prison inmates are high school dropouts.

Whether teaching or learning, studying can be a challenge with controlled locks clanging open and shut, electric gates whirring, alarms blaring—all echoing through the corridors. The harsh fluorescent lighting makes such a glare that inmates have trouble seeing the whiteboard.

Nancy Ahlquist stands in one of her classroom areas at the Ohio State Penitentiary, a maximum security prison that offers GEDs to death row inmates.

“In spite of this environment, my students are learning,” says Ahlquist, who speaks in an earnest, deliberate tone and likes to open her classes with a hearty, “good morning, gentlemen.”

While the prisoner recidivism rate is 60 percent in Ohio and most states, Ahlquist says this figure could be reduced through more prison education programs.

“The more educated they are, the less likely they will return to prison,” she says. “There is a direct correlation.” 

Not all Ohio inmates are adults. At the Cuyahoga Hills Juvenile Correctional Facility, Stephanie Rippy is explaining Romeo and Juliet to her 10 male students. None seem overly interested in Shakespeare’s tragic story. When Rippy calls on one student to read from his text, he says he has a headache and doesn’t “feel like it.” Another student volunteers.

“They arrive here at different levels, usually very low,” says Rippy, one of 28 teachers at the all-male detention center, located in a Cleveland suburb. “Some kids who come here are illiterate.” The students perform below grade level, she says, simply “because they didn’t go to school. They have the intelligence but not the discipline.”

Gracious and even-tempered, Rippy has worked with all types of students during her 20 years at Cuyahoga. She started there as a teacher’s aide while earning her certification credential doing field work at local junior high and high schools. After experiencing large classes, disrespectful students, and the overall frenzy of Cleveland public schools, she decided to stick with correctional education, with her average class size of 16 students and single-sex environment.

The state’s eight juvenile facilities operate year-round schools that employ more than 200 teachers, education support professionals, and administrators. Almost half of the teaching staff have a master’s degree, including Rippy. All Cuyahoga inmates are enrolled at Luther E. Ball High School, a fully accredited school located inside the facility. It is part of a school district offering a core curriculum, electives, student assessment and testing, guidance, and library services. Special education and supplemental intervention services are also provided, all to help prepare students for the Ohio Graduation Test or the GED.

While some students return home to graduate, others opt to take the GED while incarcerated; Cuyahoga awards about 360 GEDs each year.

Unlike Ahlquist, who may work with an inmate over a period of years, Rippy’s student body is in constant transition. Cuyahoga houses roughly 385 offenders—serving time for drugs, stealing, vehicular homicide, and sex-related offenses—and the average stay is just seven months.

Rippy, Ahlquist, and other correctional educators share a common goal in the education of adult and juvenile inmates: to instill a value for education where none exists. “I try to get them to see that education is a personal thing,” says Rippy. “Once obtained, no one can take it away.”

The U.S. correctional education system, supported by local, state, and federal funds, has no school boards, local bargaining contracts, or regular school calendar. But like typical public schools, there are work schedules, pay scales, superintendents, and a statewide bargaining contract.

Ahlquist works year-round—11 weeks on, two weeks off. Her salary is comparable to what other public school teachers earn in Ohio. And like all educators, her job comes with tedious paperwork, administrative chores, and workplace issues to discuss with managers.

Her workweek begins at 8 a.m. on Mondays with a two-hour GED course. She often opens with a motivational reading and is careful to ask open-ended questions. “I encourage critical thinking and active listening,” she says. “It promotes maturity and might even contribute to an increase in self-control.”

Since there are no grades, report cards, or time limit on how long it takes students to complete the GED program, student success often depends on self-discipline. It can take years for an incarcerated student to pass the GED. Inmates are not allowed access to computers, cell phones, or CD players. In their cells, some are permitted a limited number of books, paper, and golf pencils—pencils with erasers are too easily turned into weapons.

Student progress is marked through testing and evaluation. The main stumbling block, says Ahlquist, is absenteeism. “They’re always doing legal research to get their cases dismissed, though I don’t know of any that have ever succeeded,” she says.

A few days each week, Ahlquist teaches in different classrooms, where there are no yellow bands dividing teacher from inmate. Only nonviolent inmates who’ve shown exemplary behavior—usually those not affiliated with one of the prison’s established gangs, such as the Aryan Brotherhood, Crips, or Bloods—are allowed to attend these classes.

On Tuesdays, Ahlquist works in the computer room to teach soon-to-be-released prisoners programming and Web page design.

She teaches another group lessons from the Employment Readiness Program, which covers job interviewing, résumé writing, personal goal-setting, and self-management skills. Inmates who’ve served up to 30 years prepare with Ahlquist for their release from prison.

“If they don’t help these people to be productive when they get out, they’ll be right back,” she says.

In June, 25 of these inmates were awarded GEDs in a cap and gown commencement complete with guests and cake. In a separate ceremony, 10 maximum-security inmates received their GEDs, though they were not allowed guests. In total, 65 GEDs were awarded during the 2006-07 school year.

Recently, Ahlquist ran into a former prisoner, who greeted her with open arms and an ear-to-ear smile. She had helped him get his GED several years earlier. He was now married, working for a tile company, and thinking about buying a house.

“When he introduced me to his wife and kids, he said, ‘Without Mrs. Ahlquist I could never have done what I’ve done,’” Ahlquist says. “That’s why I teach at a prison.” 

Send comments on this story to jrosales@nea.org.