Teaching the Parents

Reading to a child may seem as natural as breathing to some parents, but it’s a lot harder than it looks. The same goes for helping kids with homework or instilling moral values. There is a right way and a wrong way to read aloud, help a child with math homework, even a right and wrong way to get your son to clean his room. These tasks are especially challenging for parents who don’t speak English, who live in poverty or haven’t completed high school themselves.

To help those parents handle their children’s academic and social needs, San Diego’s public schools have a variety of parent-involvement programs, funded by organizations like the San Diego Foundation with the Neighborhood Civic Fund. Two notable successes are the Family Learning Community at Emerson/Bandini Elementary in Southcrest and San Diego Parent University, which targets parents of children at eight inner-city elementary schools.

The Family Learning Community was created with a $300,000 grant from the Disney Learning Partnership, enabling Emerson/Bandini to coordinate its efforts to involve parents in their children’s schooling.

Janice Lawhorn, parent academic liaison at the school, says the Learning Community has five subcommunities. One is the annual family conference, which drew 600 participants this year. Those parents learned things like literacy games, math activities integrated into real life, and character education based on the MegaSkills program, which offers teachers and parents 11 positive traits—such as confidence, focus, initiative—to instill in children.

In addition to this yearly conference, there are the ongoing Family Literacy Club, Family Communication Club, Family Character Club and Family Homework Club.

“With these clubs,” says Lawhorn, “we show parents things like the writing process their children learn in school, how to help their children make connections when they read, what questions to ask. We also teach parents how to help their kids with homework, how to recognize when a child is struggling, how to get them to stick to a task and finish it.”

Classes are offered day and night, and the program has just completed its first year. Parent feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “There’s a misconception about these people, that they can’t help their kids, but they can,” says Lawhorn. “And they do.”

San Diego Parent University is an initiative from the Blueprint for Student Success approved by the city’s board of education last year. The plan stipulates that parenting classes be offered so parents may become academic coaches for their children. The program started in the community with the greatest need, offering free classes in the evenings at the Harold J. Ballard Center at Gompers Elementary in southeastern San Diego.

“It showed me how to step back and actually look at conflict from my kids’ side and find some middle ground,” says Sonia Rodriguez, a mother of three who has been taking classes at San Diego Parent University since courses began. “I started so I would be able to help my kids get more out of their homework, and then I heard about a Thursday parenting class and thought I should see what it was about.

“I’ve taken almost every course—I think anything you can do to help you be a better parent is worth it,” Rodriguez says. “I used to yell a lot, and now I yell less. And I use a lot of the techniques I learned in class. One is to show your kids you understand how they feel, you validate how they feel, and then you approach the discussion from that point on. It works. There’s less arguing now.”

Bea Fernandez, program specialist for the parent involvement department at San Diego City Schools, says parents of children attending Baker, Balboa, Chavez, Emerson/Bandini, Jackson, Kimbrough, King and Sherman elementary schools are heavily recruited for the program, but all parents are welcome.

On Tuesday and Thursday nights, from 7 to 8:30, parenting classes are offered in Spanish and English. The subject matter is very similar to that offered through the Family Learning Community. “We want to give parents the tools to support their children’s learning at home,” says Fernandez. “They want to help, but they don’t always know how. For instance, if they read to their child, we teach them how to read with emphasis, to show the title page, to ask important questions. Not just questions like ‘What color is the truck?’ but questions that help a child think critically.”

Although about 85 percent of these parents are Latino and speak only Spanish, they can still learn ways to help their English-speaking children. “We teach them how to monitor homework, establish a routine and recognize if their child is having trouble academically,” says Fernandez. An added incentive for parents is that the program offers high-quality childcare, and no child is turned away.

The program began last October, offering an array of multiple-session courses, three classes per night, in English and Spanish. Seven hundred parents attended.

Fernandez says she’s always been told parents won’t come out at night but that it’s a myth. “They say it’s too dangerous, or the parents work and will be too tired. But when you offer parents a really good program, with quality childcare, believe me, they’ll come.”

—Eilene Zimmerman

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