PITP - Equity, Diversity and Design Principles Bryan Harms Background During Student Lead Conferences (SLCs) this

year I had a conference with a student named Jio and his Dad. Jio is an 8th grade student in my integrated math science class at High Tech Middle Chula Vista. He is athletic, clever, social and dedicated to skateboarding. He is well liked by his friends and his teachers and is often reflective and insightful. He is also failing both of his core classes. His scores on pre-assessments for the year show that his math skills are far below the majority of his peers. The gap between his ability and his achievement is not a new issue. During the SLC, Jios father shared that he felt frustrated because he just didnt know how to talk to Jio about school. Additionally, his father confided that he dropped out of the school in the 9th grade and was frightened that Jio was following in this path. I know the importance of getting parents and kids talking about school. It is one of the primary reason are SLC are student lead. Why then at this moment was I not prepared with resources for facilitating these conversation outside of the structured SLC environment. An Equity Issue Kids who regularly talk to their parent/guardians about school perform better as a result of those conversations. This is true of the kids in my classes and research suggests my classroom is not unique in this respect. These conversations are a resource, and these resources are unevenly distributed amongst our kids. This uneven distribution often correlates with the

economic and educational levels of parents. The unequal access to the resource of family academic discourse is an issue of equity in my classroom.

Disseminating Data and Facilitating Communication In addressing this equity issue I have broken my approach into two parallel paths, one addresses dissemination of information and the other address facilitating conversations. Disseminating data consists of: Identifying feedback sources (the student and class related information that is available to parents) Surveying parents to determine what information they have access to, utilize and value. Assessing the value of that information and identifying areas that can be improved on. Hosting workshops to improve access and understanding of the information we provide. Facilitating conversations includes: Researching methods already being used in our and other schools to increase the frequency and improve the quality of academic conversations between parents and kids. Hosting workshops that help parents and kids communicate more effectively with each other.

Additionally, pre and post surveys need to be conducted to assess if the steps I am taking are improving the frequency and quality of student, parent conversations. Current Progress Currently my efforts have been focused on information dissemination and I will summarize my progress their shortly. It is important to note that throughout my Equity class that my thinking about this issues has changed significantly. I will reflect more about this at the end of the document but it is useful to note that had I begun this PITP today my initial efforts would have focused on facilitating conversations right from the start. Thus far I have created a survey designed to assess what types of resources parents are using to learn about their childs academic and emotional growth. I have surveyed the parent done some initial analysis of the data. Parent Survey The goal of the survey was to assess what types of resources parents are using to learn about their childs academic and emotional growth. To aid this effort I created a list of the resources that we offer and designed the survey around several of the most used resources in this list. This table represents the avenues through which my parents receive data about their students. Primary Feedback Sources Source PowerSchool Updates Description Per assignment Updates on student performance Frequency Daily or weekly

My Digital Portfolio Student Digital Portfolio Mid semester Progress reports Grade reports

Provides daily schedules, home work and project descriptions Provides samples of students work

Daily

Sporadic

Lets parents know if students are in danger of Mid semester failing twice per year Semester Grades Twice a year, end of the semester Twice a year, end of the semester Twice a year? Or is it once? Twice a year

Comments

Accompany semester grades

Student Led Conferences

Student led conference, covers a wide variety of topics including student performance.

Presentations of Learning

Twice per year. Provide students an opportunity to show what they have learned and provide parents an opportunity to question student and teacher. Teacher to parent, parent to teacher, student to parent, parent to student

Informal Checkins

Sporadic and informal

After identifying the informational avenues I created the survey. The contents of the survey are attached to this document. I asked parent to fill the survey out with their parents right after their SLC and included a question in the survey about the effectiveness of their SLC. My teaching partner and critical friend analyzed the data together and have identified what believe are some of the key learning from the survey, they include: Many parents would like hardcopies of important information as well as an online overview.

Many parents would like information sent home in a language, other than English, that they are comfortable with.

Few parents subscribe to automated DP updates Few parents have automated powerschool updates set up Most parents would like more information on how to use powerschool more effectively

Most parents would be interested in attending a workshop on how to use these resource more effectively

Next Steps My next task is to host be a student run workshop for parents and students on how to use the resources that we have available. I hope to address issues related to hard copies and language translations and have options for these as well. This might also be an opportunity to begin discussing the importance of family conversations about school. I would like to invite Zoltan Sarda to host a discussion about effective methods of communicating between children and parents. Additionally I am aware that other educators across our village are taking creative steps to address this issue and it might be a good time to pilot some of the ideas that others are using. Reflections The biggest shift in my thinking during the time that I have spent working on my PITP. Involve moving my focus from disseminating data to facilitating conversations. Although, earlier I described these as parallel paths I think it is more appropriate to view the dissemination of data as one means to the end of creating

conversations. Part of that shift was a personal one. As a struggling student in my youth my father would often complain that he didnt know what was going on with me at school. This information shortage became the gap that needed to be crossed before conversations could occur. The gap was both infinite in nonexistent. No amount of information would have substituted for the work we needed to do to improve our own ability to talk with each other. And no information was needed to tell us what we both already knew, that I was struggling and not sure how to deal with it and not anxious to talk about it. In my own practice, the information that I provide parents is not of much value if it does not help create lively and effective conversations in families about what is going on at school. The communication between parents and students is what is proven to help academic growth not the dissemination of information itself. Having all the facts should not be considered a bar that must be met before these conversations can take place. My focus on dissemination is useful but I think I will see the most exciting results when working in parallel to help support the family conversations about academics.