This blog captures the experiences of an instructor in a pre-service ELL course carrying out a collaborative project with her university students and a small school district around questions and answers.
After reading the ESL questions posed by the teachers of The Great Northern school we found question #1 (about parent involvement) very interesting as we realized that despite coming from this background we still were not sure what constitutes the lack of Russian/Ukrainian parent participation in the education of their children and how to change that. We remembered that one of our friends, who is a certified public school teacher, has worked as WSU Gear Up parent involvement coordinator and figured that she may have some advice regarding this issue. Few of her suggestions: • Make sure to contact the parents beyond the newsletter that gets sent home with the students • Work on having a letter or a phone call in their native language • Include an interpreter when meeting with parents who don’t speak English and let them know that such is available • Conduct a one-on-one (plus interpreter) appointment/meeting with the parent/s rather than including them in a group parent conference BY STAN AND YELENA
After reading the ESL questions posed by the teachers of The Great Northern school we found question #1 (about parent involvement) very interesting as we realized that despite coming from this background we still were not sure what constitutes the lack of Russian/Ukrainian parent participation in the education of their children and how to change that. We remembered that one of our friends, who is a certified public school teacher, has worked as WSU Gear Up parent involvement coordinator and figured that she may have some advice regarding this issue.
ReplyDeleteFew of her suggestions:
• Make sure to contact the parents beyond the newsletter that gets sent home with the students
• Work on having a letter or a phone call in their native language
• Include an interpreter when meeting with parents who don’t speak English and let them know that such is available
• Conduct a one-on-one (plus interpreter) appointment/meeting with the parent/s rather than including them in a group parent conference
BY STAN AND YELENA