Educational Leadership - February 2010

incorporate information gleaned from a home visit into a lesson, warm-up question, project, or assignment; and we are trying to do this more in our second year of visits. One teacher drew on what he’d learned in talking with a student’s father to develop a lesson with that student in mind. The father mentioned that his daughter, who was disengaged in school, was highly interested in crime scene investigation techniques and forensics. This teacher then related a chemistry lesson to forensic methods.

Cleveland High requires all certified teachers to conduct home visits. Administrators, our bilingual instructional aides, and such resource personnel as the school nurse sometimes accompany teachers. A partnership with the University of Washington provides extra professional development for our staff. Teachers receive appropriate training led by our professional development coordinator and Cleveland High’s home visits coordinator. The arrangement includes a yearly stipend for teachers—$2,500 per teacher this year—for conducting visits and attending professional development in the summer.

Last year, each of our 40 teachers visited five 9th grade students’ homes; this year, each teacher will visit the homes of at least five students from his or her advisory class, choosing a mix that represents the academic, racial, and linguistic diversity of our school. Although some may choose to visit a few students who are struggling, the focus remains on getting to know the family, not addressing problems. We hope to eventually visit all students in the school. We follow up by tracking the academic progress of the visited students in our professional development time. Teachers plan together how to incorporate what they have learned from visits into lessons, and they later examine student work created during these lessons.

Some educators perceive home visits as auxiliary to what occurs in the class-

al., 1992) to the classroom by creating lessons that directly relate to a family’s knowledge or having family members volunteer in ways that tap their skills.

For example, when Cleveland High teacher Lydia Stone visited Sarah, she realized that Sarah’s father had an insider’s knowledge of standards for college-level work. She drew on this professor’s expertise by inviting him to serve on the panel that judges students’ senior projects. A father who wants to mentor male students is a great find, and when we discovered that Sapphire’s father wanted to make this commitment, we connected him with teachers in a career center who could line him up to mentor district students. He now volunteers on our senior project boards as well. When teachers design or extend opportunities for including parents with the talents of specific families in mind, they can count on increased parental involvement.

Family strengths have been a focus of our home visits since we piloted the program. In summer 2007, several Cleveland High teachers attended a training on engaging families conducted by GEAR-UP, a program that works to prepare low-income students for college. These teachers learned of Margery Ginsberg’s work about home

Teachers discover the family’s musical talents on the home visit.

visits and heard presentations from other educators who did visits. This pilot team made a plan to initiate visits at Cleveland High, met with teachers at another school who were veteran visitors, and arranged for a trainer from the district’s family engagement department to do a workshop on conducting family visits for all interested Cleveland teachers that spring. They used the process Ginsberg described in a 2007 Educational Leadership article—outlining how to prepare the groundwork for a home visit and collect data on funds of knowledge—to guide their initial work.

Our teachers don’t deliver information during a visit; instead, they try to listen. This stance is a significant departure from the traditional home visit— and a challenge to maintain. Teachers do provide school forms, staff and resource directories, and other information as part of the visit, but only give them to families just before they leave. The primary focus is to build relationships, create a more tightly knit school community, and eventually design classrooms that better reflect our students.