Sara Schwabacher Associate, Parent and Community Engagement

 

Community literacy
How many of you read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this summer or know someone who did? I wonder how many family gatherings included exchanges among children as well as adults like, “Where are you in the book?” to determine whether or not it would give the plot away to share feelings or argue a theory about Dumbledore, Snape or Horcruxes.

The Harry Potter phenomenon is an excellent example of family and community engagement around literacy. Adults and children all over the world are reading these books, talking about them. Now that’s “homework!”

I’ve certainly lived in Harry’s world this summer. I’m now reading the latest Harry Potter book for the second time, to a friend, and am planning to re-read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in preparation for the 4th movie debuting in November. I have argued my theories about Snape and Dumbledore with family and friends of all ages. The disagreements have been passionate but good natured. We have returned to the text to argue our points, and ended up agreeing on everything that has happened so far, but disagreeing on what we think will happen next.

If one of our Cornerstone goals is for all our families to promote home literacy, author J.K. Rowling is helping us out. Even the bookstores are throwing midnight book parties for kids and their families. Newspaper editorials are exclaiming how Harry has brought books into children’s lives.

Cornerstone parent and community engagement
What do we in Cornerstone mean by parent and community engagement around literacy? Adults and children enthusiastically sharing the books we care about is certainly a big part. The research is very clear that students whose parents are actively engaged in promoting literacy are on the road to success in school.

But let’s take that apart a bit. The beginning of the school year gives us a good opportunity to plan for parent involvement while keeping community literacy at the heart of it. What does it mean for families to be engaged in their children’s literacy development?

Schools and classrooms
The tone set by the principal, the resources provided for parents (parent centers, parent coordinators, handbooks), special activities for parents (workshops, open-school nights) and school-wide activities (award ceremonies, student performances, family literacy nights), all communicate the message that families are crucial members of the school team.

When the teaching of literacy is integrally connected to students’ lives, students begin to see themselves as the “protagonists of their own lives and authors of their own stories” (Alma Flor Ada, A Magical Encounter: Latino Children’s Literature in the Classroom,
p. 10), and parent and community engagement become central to life in school. Students’ interests, language, community and culture are reflected on the walls, in the library collection and through the daily activities. Parents and other members of the community are welcome and frequent visitors to classrooms.

When students are involved in decisions about topics to be studied, they often will choose large topics with meaning and significance in their lives, topics which move the classroom out into the world or bring the world into the classroom. This content will naturally include students’ families, neighborhoods, communities and cultures. Parents, school staff and members of the school and larger community are then seen as the experts and become indispensable sources of materials for study.

Homework becomes work that needs to be done at home because there is something the student is meant to learn by involving the people at home, rather than school work to be done at home because there wasn’t time during the school day.

Families and communities
Families, both adults and children, benefit by becoming consciously aware of the value of the many ways they use literacy -– reading, writing, speaking and listening –- at home in their daily lives. Children learn ways their family values literacy:

All families have strengths. Literacy exists in all homes. Language is one of the most significant elements of a culture, crucial to passing along values and connections. Every family member is a resource to the other members; families are resources to other families, to neighborhoods and the larger community. Parents who can identify and build on their personal strengths and cultural identities are in a position to make family literacy learning purposeful.

It is a truism that parents are their child’s first teacher. Cornerstone schools support parents by helping them appreciate the important roles they already play with their children, and by continually providing opportunities for parents to gain experience and information about being more effective at supporting children’s academic and literacy growth.

Connections between home and school
Good human contact between all members of the home and school community reinforces the value of each person involved. Student growth, development and literacy achievement are profoundly affected by the relationships within the school community. The impact is obvious and immediate:

Cornerstone schools are creating productive school-wide communities built on quality relationships. Parents and educators clearly have in common interest and concerns for the same children, which is the logical basis for mutually supportive relationships. Effective home-school interaction has a major impact on academic achievement and is essential for students’ well-being and full growth. As stated by an ecological systems theorist:

“ A child’s ability to learn to read in the primary grades may depend no less on how he is taught than on the existence and nature of ties between the school and home.” (Urie Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design., p. 3)

Back to Harry Potter as a community literacy experience
Many of our children, staff and families may have been caught up in the Harry Potter phenomenon this summer. A community literacy experience of this magnitude invites the entire school community to get involved:

The opportunities for engaging an entire community around reading and writing, speaking and listening are endless Harry Potter may or may not be right for you and your school. But the idea of your school community being passionate about learning together is, I would bet! So what is your plan for fostering community literacy this year?