Educational Leadership

education opportunities in their home countries and their struggles to help their children; staff members also shared their education journeys. Parents who attended the house meetings began to approach teachers more often with questions and to take part more readily in parent workshops.

Staff members at a literacy program at Marie Kramer’s elementary school likewise made sure to put parents at ease. The Latina literacy coach shared stories about her immigrant family upbringing, jokes about her children, and updates on her family members in the military. Parents said that it was her sabor (flair, enthusiasm) that made them keep coming. The parent center directors warmed up the auditorium with decorations, refreshments, prizes, and attentiveness to parent needs and questions. At the culminating session, parents received certificates and presented letters to their children about their hopes for their children’s future. When schools reach out in these personal ways, parents often liken the school to a family in which people care about and help one another.

School leaders send a message to both staff members and families about the importance of family engagement when they interact frequently with parents face-to-face. At a small elementary school in a working-class Latino neighborhood of Los Angeles, Principal Sylvia Perez held weekly platicas, or open conversations, with parents, which evolved into Parents as Authors workshops led by Perez and several staff members. Parents, many of whom had limited formal education, were guided through the same steps of the writing process as their children were, from brainstorming to publishing, to create family books. “I hear the parents’ stories

and make a connection at such a human level,” Perez said, noting that this helped repair relations with a previously angry parent. Perez considered parents the “heartbeat of the school” and time spent with them one of the high points of her job.

Parent outreach efforts like these affirm that schools care for families as human beings and recognize the importance of relationships as the foundation of school and family partnerships. Other strategies that have proven effective are personal telephone invitations to activities, events designed to attract fathers, open-ended gatherings for coffee with the principal, and more interactive approaches to back-to-school night.

Lesson 3:

Nurture Parent Voice Some well-intentioned programs impose school agendas on immigrant and minority parents, for example, parenting classes that aim to “fix” their child-rearing practices or programs in which parents merely receive information and services. In contrast, some of the

most promising efforts encourage parent voice and leadership development. These approaches are especially important with immigrant parents who often feel marginalized and rebuffed by urban schools.

Parents come to schools with their own education beliefs and priorities, which may not always match those of the school. In democratic schools, we need to elicit more parent perspectives to jointly shape policies and programs and address inequities. And in the case of immigrant parents whose home countries stress parent deference to education authorities, we need to help them find their voice to be advocates for their children.

Delgado-Gaitan (2004) believes a central purpose of Latino parent involvement activities should be to promote ongoing dialogue between parents and educators for mutual understanding and accommodation. A former Los Angeles principal took this approach in trying to “co-construct the school” with mostly immigrant parents through weekly discussions. “The number one complaint wasn’t about academics or their kids’ futures,” she recalled, “it was about food and the cafeteria. So I thought, that’s where I’ll start. . . . It started with cafeteria food, and by the end it was about curriculum and philosophy, so it grew into something very powerful” (Auerbach, 2009).

In a poor gateway neighborhood for immigrant families, Principal John Zavala saw parent engagement as intertwined with social justice and community revitalization. He brought in the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) to train parents in their rights, the U.S. school and political systems, and leadership skills. Then he enlisted parents and teachers in planning an annual parent