Awareness Of Your School Community

Awareness of Your School Community Within your school community you have a wealth of experiences, knowledge, skills, talents and perspectives that could potentially take learning in a different direction for your students. By making sure that you are aware of who is in our school community, and by making your school community aware of what you and your students are learning about, you can harness this potential resource. Parents Teachers have mixed feelings about involving parents any more than the amount required by the school. A few parent tea sessions, information evenings and conferences are generally seen as enough. In these examples they tend to be passive recipients of information If they are involved more, however, they can have a very powerful effect on your community of learners. By bringing them in as more active participants than is usually the case, you are able to harness their potential as mentors, as experts and as people who can make things happen that may not have been possible before. Naturally, you are usually going to get one or two “squeaky wheels”, parents who want to have their say all the time or who criticize what you do the more aware they become of what you do. This can be highly irritating, but is it irritating enough to prevent you from trying to involve parents more? We would argue not. Think about the dynamic that you currently have with the parents of your students. Where would it fit along this continuum? Continuum of Parental Involvement

Passive observers

Practical “helpers”

Active participants in learning

Many of us use parents as an audience, a chance for students to showcase what they have done at the end of units of study. Parents are, of course, always extremely proud, and the experience is valuable for the students. However, there are opportunities to enhance student learning by not limiting parents to this passive role.

In many international schools, parents are people with a fair amount of power at their fingertips. They might be directors of multi-national companies, NGO employees, factory managers, art gallery owners, chefs and sports coaches. They may be able to offer opportunities to make real-world connections with your curriculum. They may be able to speak to your students as experts in their field. They may be able to come in and teach specific skills to your students. They may also have hidden talents, skills and interests! The more aware they become of what you are learning about, the more likely those connections are to happen for you. Parent/child relationships will blossom as you involve parents in their child’s learning. Instead of just seeing what their child has done, they will become increasingly aware of what their child thinks about things, what their opinions are, what their learning styles are and who they are when they are at school. Children will also become more aware of what their parents think, what their opinions are, what their talents are and what their life has been like. These conversations are usually not possible in the context of home. Making them happen in your classrooms is really powerful and very exciting to watch as they unfold. The connections that emerge from experiences like these can become pivotal points in each child’s education.

Get to know who the parents are Most schools have some kind of “Back to School Night”. This is a great chance to find out about the parents by making it a two-way information session. Try to avoid standing in front of everybody and lecturing, unless that is required by school policy. Create some slideshows that show you in action as a teacher, share you resumé, have your blog or website available for them to look at, have enlarged copies of school information such as schedules available. Then, set up ways for parents to provide information about themselves. This could include: • A hobbies, talents and interests chart. • A business card collection box • An interactive “Making Curriculum Connections” poster that outlines your curriculum for the year and invites them to look for opportunities to help in some capacity.

Involve parents in the initial stages of learning

Get them to come in and work with the students when establishing what they already know about a topic or issue. Allow students and parents to use their mother tongue so that they may have deeper conversations. Involve parents in formative assessments and have them using rubrics or continuums to assess their own child’s knowledge and understanding as well as to develop their own understanding of those assessment methods.

Bring them back in the middle Invite parents to come and talk to the children in the middle of an inquiry. Have the students present their ideas and their decisions to parents and encourage parents to provide guidance, feedback, support and even expert help.

Bring them back at the end This is where parents usually find themselves becoming involved, as an audience. However, don’t always settle for a passive audience. Get the parents to take part by providing feedback, by encouraging the students to teach them a skill, by getting the parents to help with summative assessments or by gathering evidence of student-initiated actions outside school.

Include parents in excursions Parents can be a very valuable resource when it comes to planning excursions. Assign them a group each and get them to take responsibility for those students during the excursion. This can provide a lot more freedom to move and to respect the students’ wishes with regard to stopping and looking at things, or going in different directions to the larger group. It can also provide great flexibility for differentiation as you are able to create a wider variety of groups that match the learning styles and needs of your students. By allocating groups to parents, teachers can be more free to interact with students and to move between groups, taking photos and gathering evidence of student reactions to the experience. Other teachers in the school Don’t be afraid to annoy your colleagues with emails or face-to-face conversations that solicit their advice, their expertise, their talents or their skills. Here are some examples of how we have brought other teacher in to our community of learners:

• Teachers have acted as parents for students whose parents are unable to attend an event. • Teachers have acted as experts in a particular field and have made presentations to the students. • Teachers have acted as mentors to students by sharing their skills and talents. The teachers in any given school represent a huge variety of personalities, cultures, interests, talents and skills. A teacher who is not interested in helping you during one unit, may well be very excited about the prospect of helping you in another. There’s only one way to find out… make sure teachers are aware of what you and your students are learning about and send them emails to provoke offers of help! Other students in the school As with teachers, your student body is a hugely diverse group of people that could be transformed into powerful members of your community of learners. Make the other students in your school aware of what you and your students are doing by: Making thinking visible in public areas of the school Advertising the need for “student experts” using posters Sending emails to the student population requesting “student experts” Requesting the help of students with specific skills and talents that you are aware of • Inviting teachers to bring their classes into your learning environment at key times during an inquiry • • • •

Encourage your students to make connections with students who could possibly help them to move forward with their learning by sharing their skills or by acting as a mentor. This can have a profound effect on your students and can also have a profound effect on the other student too. Here is an example: During our unit of inquiry in which we studied art, Meg (Grade 12) gave a presentation about her IB artwork to the whole of Grade 4 in which she shared her work and spoke of her motivation, inspiration and influences. Makenna (Grade 4) really identified with the things that Meg had to say. She began work on a piece of art that was influenced by what she learned from Meg. Meg came by the classrooms on a number of occasions and gave Makenna some practical tips that Makenna really took to heart and applied to her work. Meg then attended the opening night of the Grade 4 art exhibition. Both students expressed how much they had benefited from their new relationship.

Other adults in the school Be aware of how other adults in the school can play a part in your community of learners. Administrative and office staff, cleaners, bus drivers, gardeners, technicians and guards could all contribute meaningfully to learning if you remain aware of opportunities.