Calling for 500 volunteers
Some people may be skeptical that the city school system will find 500 volunteers in the next two weeks. (I report on the campaign in today's paper.) But whether the initiative is successful may depend less on the number of people who step up to the plate than on how they're received at a school. System officials say the schools where they'll be deploying volunteers en masse will all have to ask for the assistance, and they'll have to give the volunteers something specific to do.
Historically, though, it's clear that some schools have struggled with parent involvement because they haven't made parents feel welcome. Letting parents into a school means more eyes on the adults running the place, as well as on the children.
If you haven't read Dr. Alonso's email to the community yet, I've pasted the text below.
Dear friends and colleagues,
I am writing to speak directly with you about safety in our schools, to share some important facts with you and to ask for your help. There has been a great deal of attention in the media over the past week about an altercation at one of our high schools, a disturbing cell-phone video of which was posted on the internet. As we have explained in the press, by law we are prohibited from commenting publicly about a specific incident involving a specific student or staff.
But beyond a specific incident, it is critically important that we communicate together about how to make our schools safe. This is fundamental to our work together of creating a system of great schools for our great kids.
A school must first of all be a safe and supportive place to learn. This is a fundamental commitment to our students, teachers, and parents and a major focus of our reform efforts. We take any disruption of the learning environment extremely seriously and must respond immediately and forcefully to any disruption. Certain behaviors should be and must be unacceptable, when they endanger adults and other children. I have made it clear over the past year that administrators in schools should follow the protocol which outlines the disciplinary process for our schools. There is a quite specific directive that when students engage activities that trigger persistently dangerous status (and they are specified by law) then they MUST be suspended. This year there have been 112 expulsions for incidents involving assault on staff, compared with 98 last year at this time. When students are not engaging in those types of activities, then schools should do everything possible to provide interventions that keep students in school, as opposed to pushing them out of school.
The evidence indicates that schools are following this guidance. Extended suspensions—a consequence for serious, violent disruptions-- are up by 7% over last year (1,254 compared to 1,173 last year at this time) while total suspensions for all conduct are down from 13,943 last year at this time to 10,502 this year.
The answer to the question of what makes a great school is not an automatic reaction that moves to throw a kid out of school for any inappropriate behavior. Earlier in the decade, the school system had over 26,000 instances of suspension, while outcomes were those abysmally low graduation rates you've also read about in the past week. The outcomes have improved as the number of incidents of suspensions has been reduced. That might have to do with this simple fact – you cannot teach children when they are not in school. Similarly, you cannot teach them to value themselves if the reaction to any mistake is to exclude them and to push them out. We cannot go back to practices that haven't worked because we still face challenges in our classrooms.
Schools are safe when there is:
A clear vision for the school that the entire school community supports and owns.
Instruction that reaches all kids, with their many different needs.
Support and interventions for students who –like many of our students—are dealing with serious challenges in their homes and communities.
Training to give our teachers, staff and students the tools to solve conflicts peacefully and respectfully.
Clear norms that everyone in the school understands and enforces, about what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
Support from parents and community.
Please know that we are taking specific steps in each of these areas –in professional development, student support and re-emphasizing school norms. But, this essential work of making safe schools cannot be done by the administrators, teachers, staff or students at each school alone. I cannot say strongly enough how important it is for families and community members to rally around our schools, our teachers, and our students. To volunteer to take specific action to help our schools and students feel safe please click here. Please do all that you can to help.
We have taken critical steps toward making ours a system of great schools. We are shifting resources and responsibility to schools and away from the central bureaucracy. We are creating new options for students that address critical needs. And we are engaging parents and community in a much deeper way.
There is a great deal of good work still to do. Thank you for being steadfast in insisting that all our great kids get what they deserve: great schools.
Sincerely,
Dr. Andres Alonso
Comments
In order for something like this to stand a chance of success, there needs to be at least a 2-3 day system-wide training for volunteers, and I am not even sure that is enough. I had very well-meaning parents come to my room and end up undermining the climate of my classroom when they were as confrontational as my 5th graders. Some parents had just as much baggage that they brought in from the community (neighborhood feuds, etc.) that they would treat some students differently, including yelling and belittling them - which I had diffuse and which distracted me from my job teaching my students.
It is a plan that has potential, but it also has so many places it could go horribly wrong if people aren't given the right training - if it was supposedly Ms. Berry's fault because she escalated the situation, I can only imagine how easily this could happen to someone with even less training.
Posted by: Michelle | April 15, 2008 8:41 AM
I have been a teaching in the city for a year and a half and have been reading this blog for nearly as long. I have often felt close to responding to the myriad of issues that face both myself and the system, but not until now have I really needed to write something.
I guess my naivete took over my practical side last week when I was waiting and hoping for Dr. Alonso to say something profound in the midst of the media frenzy that was taking over our system. I understand the legal obligation to make sure that nothing specific is said, but I felt like this was a real opportune time for him to stand up and say something to quell all the negative publicity and reassure staff, community leaders and other interested parties that we are working towards a better end.
What we got instead was this obtuse and strange response that is reassuring on one level, but also frustrating and comedic on another.
As Dr. Alonso has rightly pointed out, parental involvement and engagement is the missing link that needs to be addressed on a systemic level if we are to have any hope that the system will change. To fix that link involves a lot of time and community outreach to help people in disenfranchised and marginalized communities see the abstact AND practical value of education.
He recognizes this basic fact and then, in almost inexplicable fashion, asks for volunteers in the schools to help create safer environments. This makes no linear sense to me. We know the fundamental problem to be lack of parental engagement, but then we simultaneously ask those disinterested members to suddenly show up and care. It is like the important step of showing them HOW to care about their schools is gone. The decree for volunteers is a necessary one, and I do not mean to mock or demean it, but it seems that we need to cultivate in a much more pro-active way the recruitment of positive influences in the communities and schools.
My time in this system has made me exceedingly weary of the empty platitudes that abound about affecting change, both on a micro and macro level. I fear that this call for volunteers is another step that is being undertaken without putting into place "real" community-based interventions that are going to want to make people in the communities we serve. And with those empty platitudes comes further disenfranchisement among an already weary staff, at-risk students looking for consistency, and a community that already has a built-in mistrust and lack of interest in improving the quality of schools here in Baltimore.
Posted by: David Ortiz | April 15, 2008 10:15 AM
Dear Dr. Andres Alonso;
You have brought up so many valid points about what this school system needs and your solutions are brilliant. And because of my belief that those kids should be safe in their schools and that of course the school system is not able to do that on it's own. I would like to volunteer some of my time ensuring that these children are safe. Please sign me for the team, that I am sure you will be leading to the most difficult of assignments in the most dangerous of environments. I will be there to watch your back as you patrol those hallways and keep them safe for these children. Then after our tour is done for the day - we can both ride the bus home together to make sure that these children are also safe on the MTA buses.
Posted by: lloyd | April 15, 2008 10:45 AM
Before our children can graduate high school, so many hours are required for volunteer, Why dont we make it the same for the parents, we too would have had to volunteer so many hours before our children can graduate.
Posted by: shirley jo | April 15, 2008 10:55 AM
Those of you who are calling for parents of city students to volunteer their time, what will you require for those of us who teach full time in BCPSS as well? How much of my time is enough for you so that I can feel safe in my job and so that my child is safe to attend school in the system I support with my taxes and with my hard earned labor? Lack of parental engagement indeed. Based on my dual-role experience, I know that many parents do not feel welcomed by the schools; in fact, many parents feel misinformed about what is happening in the schools - for example, not being notified by some schools about report card pickup/parent conferences this Friday. Rather than engaging parents in dialogue and inviting them to provide input and making them feel like genuine partners or valuable members of the school community, parents face assumptions and censure from school staff members who communicate with the home only when student behavior has reached intolerable levels.
I don't appreciate the persistent criticism directed at parents who want to have faith in the public schools, especially those of us who chose to make our careers dedicated to educating within the public school system. As a teacher and as a parent, I would never assume to point fingers at parents if I hadn't made the effort to connect with my students' families first. As a fifteen year veteran in public education, I have never been so "weary" as in my attempt to secure a meaningful education for my child in the public schools.
Posted by: Kris Sieloff | April 15, 2008 1:09 PM
"Empty platitudes that abound about"
-Unfortunately, this statement itself is a platitude. What does it mean? How is the creation of a volunteer database that's tracked and targeted according to school need and community desire a passive effort at driving change through community involvement?
"The decree for volunteers is a necessary one, and I do not mean to mock or demean it, but it seems that we need to cultivate in a much more pro-active way the recruitment of positive influences in the communities and schools."
-I don't know what this means either? How would you do it? I ask that seriously, not in jest.
David, I understand your hesitancy and desire to see results. Keep it up and demand better.
However, please propose constructive solutions along with your critiques. What do you recommend? How can the system be improved, especially in regards to school violence and community buy-in?
Lastly, I think you may be confusing the purpose of Dr. Alonso's message. First, parents are without question the most important. Having them volunteer in schools is critical to reforming public education in this city. Second, parents do not have to be the only ones volunteering. In fact, every single taxpayer is invested in the process of public education simply by filing a yearly return. The volunteer request is going to the stakeholders and community at-large (beyond just parents) to challenge them to take part in their public investment. The message is going beyond those with children in the school to send the message that the community is an integral component to school success. I recognize your frustration, but I'm worried that you may not have perceived the scope of the effort. Finally, keep up the great teaching and critical analysis of system-wide reform. It's only through people like yourself that the children of Baltimore will get the education they deserve.
Posted by: Bill | April 15, 2008 1:15 PM
In all probability, it will not be the parents of students who will volunteer. Why? Because most will be too busy working 2, 3 jobs to make ends meet.
How many parents even have the time to come to parent-teacher meetings? Only a tiny percent, and it's not because they don't care. It's because they have more pressing things to do - like put food on the table, or pay the rent. That's the reality.
Posted by: blur | April 15, 2008 4:10 PM
The only thing that ever bothers me as a teacher is when other adults make promises to be there to support the school, and then don't show up. This makes planning for lessons (resources, supervision, etc) chaotic. An interruption to the mission that teachers usually try to avoid. Otherwise, I like Dr. Alonso's suggestion that there be more adults in the buildings. So why is it that we cannot coalition in neighborhoods to combine other community, city services along with the physical plant of the schools? There have to be any number of combinations that could creatively be facilitated, and would certainly lead to economies of scale and improvements in quality. After all, I've never seen a fire department that did not have working plumbing! The goal to have great schools is the ideal. How do we productively get there? I don't think there should be any wrangling over this, because it is pretty much not disputable that these improvements to the schools will lead to many other improvements to the community?
Posted by: VoiceForSchoolTruth | April 15, 2008 4:59 PM
I am a teacher at one of the high schools where a staff member was assaulted and had to be taken to a hospital in an ambulance. I just can't figure out why the student who assaulted that teacher is in school this week. The only thing we are teaching these children is that they are allowed to behave like criminals.
Is the school system in some sort of financial trouble? Because it seems to me that they are trying to run all of the experienced teachers out and hire younger, cheaper labor.
Posted by: Hank Pym | April 15, 2008 5:36 PM
Bill-
Thanks for your good questions. I appreciate them a lot. It helps me sharpen my own line of thinking as I attempt to process everything that goes on around me professionally.
As for the comment on empty platitudes, I was referring to the near-constant stream of "ideas" that come to me via the system about how to affect change-both for myself in my classroom or on a school level. It was a rather cynical take on the idea that we are constantly subjected to these empty statements/action plans that seem to disconnect somewhere in the implementation stage because they are predicated on being reactionary responses. My fear is that this call for volunteers is entirely well-intentioned, but MIGHT fall flat because like many of the other ideas,other crises come along that demand an immediate public, and unfortunately, reactionary policy and response that will somehow take precedence.
As for the school need and community desire continuum, I fear that need will be highest in schools that have the least investment from the community.. That is in part why those schools struggle so much. It is not so much that I fear it as a passive effort, but more a concern that getting AND sustaining volunteers in the neediest places is going to be a challenging task. Concerted efforts need to be made to form, cultivate and strengthen the PTA's in these schools and then find volunteers FROM those PTA's. That seems more sustainable and linear to me.
This type of thinking assumes that the parents of the children in schools are so proud of the goings-on in their school that they will be enlisting the help of others in their efforts to improve their schools.
While community members are valuable parts of the process and their volunteering will provide fruitful on some level, lasting change can be rebuilt with those who have tangible investments in the system-their own children.
I do think that I understand the scope of what Dr. Alonso is doing here in Baltimore. I have no historical perspective on it all since I have only been in the city for a year and a half, but I see a broken system and a man bent on changing that. I also understand that a system that is in this much trouble not only needs to break the cycle of bureaucratic inertia, but also needs to re-engage the community in ways that are seen not only by us as pro-active and possible, but also by the communities that we serve. The fruits of the volunteer push will be seen in how Alonso and the schools are able to sustain volunteer involvement and engagement over a sustained period of time.
Posted by: David Ortiz | April 15, 2008 8:55 PM