Sara Schwabacher Associate, Community and Parent Engagement

On two different occasions this spring, I had the good fortune to spend time with author and first grade teacher Paula Rogovin. Paula spoke about "Family Involvement" to staff and parents at the Bishop Woods Elementary School in New Haven in March. A few weeks later I joined a team from Talladega County, Alabama Cornerstone Partner Schools Munford and Comer Schools on their visit to the Manhattan New School where we spent time in Paula's classroom. Having shared Paula Rogovin's books, Classroom Interviews: A World of Learning and The Research Workshop: Bringing the World into Your Classroom, with Cornerstone schools over the past several years, I was prepared for her classroom to exude the excitement of a community of learners and a curriculum built around inquiry into children's questions.

I was particularly excited to visit Paula's classroom because building relationships with her children's parents is among the most important things she discusses. As she writes in a chapter on "Family Involvement":

The children and their families are the heart and soul of our research... Family involvement empowers families to become even more involved in their children's education, both at home and at school... Families are among the greatest resources a teacher will encounter. With a class of twenty-five children, you have potential access to fifty or a hundred people - the children's immediate families, their extended families, and the families' friend, contacts, and coworkers... I say "potential" access because family participation involves a lot of effort and time on the part of teachers and other school personnel.

By being in Paula's classroom, I was able to see this powerful concept in practice. Thinking of parents as co-workers in a classroom built around inquiry into children's questions develops family and community relationships from which everybody benefits:

• Children develop stronger relationships with their parents.
• Children become proud of their families and able to talk and write about their strengths.
• Parents are equipped to help their children with school work and to have conversations that have an impact on their achievement.
• Researching their own questions ensures students' continued enthusiasm and a high degree of rigor in their learning.

Viewing parents as co-workers automatically connects the classroom inquiry with community experience.

Visiting Paula's classroom
Several of us visitors walked into Paula's class on a Thursday morning in late April during a good-bye party for a student teacher. The classroom was already crowded with 28 children, 6 parents, 2 student teachers, an Educational Assistant, and Paula, the classroom teacher. A table of food had been provided by the families and Paula was thanking Gabriella's mother, Damaris, for bringing Puerto Rican sweet bread back from her trip. Everywhere you looked there was evidence of student inquiry. The walls were covered with murals displaying the results of research. The book collections, newspaper clippings, little books with a page written by each child in the class for each of the weekly interviews, centers full of materials, all support the inquiry going on.

Paula pointed out a new student who had arrived from Mexico speaking little English two weeks ago. She was being shepherded through the room and the party by two other students, one holding each hand. Paula told us that during an earlier class discussion the children thought together about how to help this new child transition into the class. In addition to helping her themselves, the children suggested that Gabriella's mother Damaris come in and translate. By this time of the year, everybody in the class knows that family members are co-workers who can be asked to help.

We visitors enjoyed the party, but decided we should return later when "instruction was going on." It took us awhile to remember that we were visiting to see how parents were involved in instruction. Our problem was that there was so much parent involvement and instruction going on we just couldn't take it all in.

Paula's teacher and parent workshops at Bishop Woods
On March 30, Paula spent the day at Bishop Woods, presenting the concept of parents as co-workers in the first grade classroom. She described the steps she takes at the beginning of the school year to establish a community among students and their families.

On the first day of school, Paula invites the families into her room for the first ten minutes of the school day. At that time she introduces the idea of parents as "co-workers", takes out her guitar and teaches a song to all the children and adults, and holds introductions all around. This is followed by sending home a letter adding specifics. Here is a selection from this year's first day letter which she with us:

Dear Families of Class 1-407,

Welcome to our first grade class. I'm looking forward to working with you because I consider YOU so important to your child's learning and development. You are my co-workers. Together, we have so much to offer the children.

Parents, grandparents, guardians, and other family members are welcome to work in our classroom. You may want to come to class daily, a few times a week, one half-hour before you rush off to work, on a day off, or whenever it is most convenient for you.

Your child will receive FAMILY HOMEWORK every Monday in a blue folder. In the FAMILY HOMEWORK you will find out what we have done in school the previous week, what topics and issues we have raised, whom we have interviewed, and so on. Then, I will tell you what we will be doing in the coming week. I will ask you to discuss issues with your child. There will be 2 homework assignments that will be due on Fridays.

This is homework for your family to do with your child. While I want you to help, the actual writing or drawings must be done by your child. I check the homework over the weekend and return it on Mondays.

You are welcome and encouraged to help our class by sending in resources. We will need books, magazine and newspaper articles, computer programs, music and art, videos, etc.

Paula referred to the information she sends home every week as "bonding material" to help parents have conversations with their children about what they are learning in school.

Also on that first day, the children pick the topics about "community" they want to study and begin to come up with questions. Their questions form the basis of the social studies curriculum for the year.

Since interviews with people who might be able to shed light on these questions are a primary resource in Paula's inquiry classroom, an interview with a parent is scheduled for the second day of school. At the initial class meeting, Paula had asked who would be available to be interviewed about their neighborhood the following day.

So Paula introduces the interview process, including note taking and an interview journal, on day two. The children produce a class book about the interview in which each child writes a page based on their notes. Paula translates text into standard spelling (above child's print). The book is duplicated, sent home, and used as a basic text for teaching surface-structure skills.

Paula demonstrated impromptu and more formal approaches to the interview process with several parents during the visit to Bishop Woods. Looking at the sample books, watching the interviews and participating in a role-play (such as one about job quality control at a local medical instrument supply company) clarified the benefit of this type of interview. The interview process:

• expands on traditional sources of information by making connections for children,
• develops respectful bonds among teachers, parents and children based on valuing the experiences people bring, and
• gives concrete guidance for using community knowledge to enhance the curriculum.

Paula told us that this year one of the topics her students selected was "Restaurants". She shared some examples of children's questions:

• Why do they have menus?
• Where do they get the food from?
• Why do they have waiters and waitresses?
• How do waiters and waitresses learn their jobs?
• Who cuts the food?
• How do they make the food?
• Who clears and cleans the tables?
• Who cleans the dishes?
• Why are there sometimes flowers at the tables?
• Why do some people stick bubblegum under the tables?

Results of what students learned from interviews of people who work in restaurants and from class visits to restaurants in the neighborhood are all over the classroom. Information is on the walls in the form of murals, in the book basket in the little books written after each interview, and in the play areas where children had set up their own "Restaurant 407". The research was extended by following the topics that came up in the children's investigations, such as how food is grown and picked, worker health and safety, and restaurant health regulations.

Establishing community among families
Paula uses both informal and formal contacts to connect parents with the children's research. Families are involved both at home and in school. Paula tells families about the research children are doing when she sees them in the school yard or in phone contacts, as well as more formally through the weekly Family Homework letter and surveys. She asks families for their help finding people to interview and for other resources. She makes special efforts to reach shyer parents. The class books that go home about each interview also bring families together. As part of homework, families read these little books together and learn about the other families in the classroom. Children are proud that their families and friends are the subject of the books they are reading.

Paula tells us that the most important way to get parents involved is to build relationships. Family Celebrations where students share what they've learned by singing songs and performing original plays bring the community together. Many of her students' parents have become friends and are eager to come back to be interviewed if the class research would benefit even when they no longer have students in Paula's classroom. Paula's approach to parent involvement also seems to create an atmosphere in which families connect with each other.

Damaris told us how she became an active parent in Paula's classroom. When her older daughter was in Paula's class, one of the fathers offered to coach a Saturday soccer game. Damaris invited all of the children and their parents over to her house after the soccer practice for hot chocolate. The group of families that bonded over post-game hot chocolate remains friends to this day. Another parent hosted a "get to know you" party for all the class parents early in the school year and invited the teacher and other school staff. These gatherings and the friendships they have fostered have become significant supports for students as well as parents.

When you have a community of co-workers, the resources are there when you need them.
When I returned with the Talladega delegation to Paula's classroom after lunch, we joined a class meeting. Paula played the guitar and the students sang their favorite songs. Paula and the children explained the research they were doing and what they had been learning. The girl newly arrived from Mexico started to look lost. But then she looked around and saw Gabriella's mom, Damaris, and moved to sit near her for translation. Because Damaris visits Paula's classroom often and feels completely at home there, she is available to be called upon when the need arises.

What happens next?
Several teachers at Bishop Woods are thinking about ways to incorporate interviews into their curriculum for next year. Munford Elementary School kindergarten and first grade teachers Teresa Finch and Jill Reeves left Paula's classroom with ideas about extending an interview project begun this year with the Talladega School for the Blind. North Myrtle Beach Primary School first grade teacher Jenny Abbott conducted an inquiry-based community involvement project called "Hearts' Stories: A Vision for Change" and, in partnership with her professors at Coastal Carolina University, has put together a website sharing her classroom interviews with everyone. Check out Jenny's website: http://ww2.coastal.edu/stan/jenny/

I invite any and all Cornerstone teachers to take advantage of the co-workers all around us and to write about what you learn