Execution

Ongoing Relationship and Community Building

Family Communication

Working in the elementary school level, during which families are appropriately highly engaged in their scholar's learning, it is critical to have regular, positive family engagement. During my first year teaching (2020-21), I tried on several strategies for frequent family communication in the form of a weekly newsletter on ParentSquare, regular updates on ClassDojo (on which families are connected to receive real-time updates), informal texts, and weekly progress reports for some of our highest needs scholars. Additionally, I was available for communication with my scholars through Clever messaging, text, and Google Classroom. While I do not regret having made myself so available for communication during such a strenuous time, I have since adjusted my plan for family engagement to be more sustainable for me and intentionally student-centered. I quickly realized that I was in frequent communication with certain student's families more than others and was overwhelmingly sharing concerns over celebrations. Not only was this inequitable, it wasn't actually building the partnership I was so sincerely seeking.

Returning to school in the 2021-22 school year, I made the commitment to send at least three to five positive notes home with students each day. Very quickly, it became apparent that this was an overwhelming system that lacked organization, accountability, and intentionality. I decided to pivot and use my pre-existing tracker from the start of the year's welcome call to add data about the frequency of messages to families. I already had all of the demographic information, contact information, and preferred mode of communication in place from the start of the year, and simply added additional columns to mark when I initiated contact with a family and if the intention was to lift up celebration or concern.

By using a spreadsheet to track family communication, I am able to check my own biases to ensure that I am equitably contacting each family in my classroom. Further, I was able to visually understand the frequency, nature, and format of my communication so that I could plan to adjust accordingly. For example, I realized early on that the first person I would contact from a student's PowerSchool contact sheet was usually the biological mother, if listed. I realized I was placing the onus on the maternal figure for handling all matters relating to the child as this was the case in my own household growing up. I also realized how often I was sharing concern over praise with families whose students are chronically absent or who hold an IEP with a Behavioral Intervention Plan (BIP). I realized the importance of collaboratively planning communication for these high needs groups as it became apparent that these families were receiving a disproportionate amount of messaging from Ed Specialists, administration, counselors, classroom teachers, and front of office staff. To mitigate this challenge, I proposed that we work as a lead team to better handle contacting chronically absent students and shared my communication tracker with our 3-5 Ed Specialist so that we can be in sync regarding communication frequency and style.

The template I have made can be viewed below along with the chronically absent student tracker that began as a direct result of my concern:

Texts with a student who had previously experienced tremendous behavioral challenges and was phased out of Tier 4 intervention by the end of 4th grade.

A ParentSquare message with a family to celebrate the culturally responsive Civics work their scholar had created in class that day.

By building a strong culture of open communication, I am able to quickly reach parents during high needs times like a lockdown.

Triumph Scholar notes sent home with students when they earn 16 or more green points on Class Dojo.

A copy of a family note sent via ParentSquare to check in around their scholar's reading progress.

As part of my commitment to culturally responsive teaching and community building, I make it a point to show up for my students and families in times of need and in times of prosperity. Even with the most thoughtful planning, preparation, and positive hopes, life happens and impacts the classroom community. From the murder of a student's father right across the street from our school in 2021 to ongoing housing and food insecurity that results in students' inability to focus on learning during the school day, I feel a strong responsibility to support my scholars and their families through challenging times. For me, this is what teaching the whole child really means.

One salient example of how I step up to ensure my students are getting what they need is ensuring that they are able to attend school. In the 2021-22 school year, I had the distinct pleasure of teaching a scholar who is brilliant, thoughtful, hilarious, and generous. He has also faced very serious trauma in his life, has severe ADHD, and is placed in Tier 4 behavioral intervention as a result of unsafe behaviors that look like throwing desks, eloping from school, and work avoidance by screaming. In the spring of 2022, he stopped coming to school for a few days as his mother was unable to take him to after school care from Triumph. Instead of going to school, he was spending the entire day in daycare. He had been asked to leave his previous daycare as a result of maladaptive behaviors and was not admitted to our school's free After School Program due to referrals. Together with his school counselor, I was able to coordinate with mom to drive him to The Boys and Girls Club from Triumph each day, where she would then pick him up. While this is not at all in my paid job description, I knew that this student would struggle without the services and supports he receives at school each day and would feel insecure about his absences. For the remainder of the year, I drove this student to The Boys and Girls Club each day and supported him in completing his homework. It felt critical to my ethos as an educator and to my relationship with this student that he have the continuity, support, and care necessary to come to school every day and continue growing.

Even in the Bay Area, there remains a great deal of hostility, discrimination, and intolerance for the LGBTQIA2S+ community. I have several students who identify as non-binary, queer, bi-sexual, and gay, among many other identity markers. Part of culturally responsive teaching means making space for each of these scholars' lived experiences in our learning. I have been reading a book about gender identity to my own classroom for years, and was thrilled to be able to share it with the entire school community, as evidence in the calendar artifact above. As a result, many teachers shared that they were able to provide meaningful conversation with their classroom communities about identity and celebration of self.

Historically speaking, Latinx Heritage Month has been thrown together at the last minute due to its early arrival in the school year. Not only is this problematic, but culturally irresponsive as it denies a significant portion of our student body the chance to celebrate their own cultural celebrations. This year (Fall 2022), our school celebrated with a door decorating competition to demonstrate student learning about a specific Latin country, taught tradition Latin American dances at school, and held a Latinx Heritage Month Family celebration with free dinner from a local taco truck, games, and art.

At our school, there is a very small, and very proud Yemeni population of student immigrants who recently arrived to Oakland. Every year I have taught, I have had students in my classroom who fast during Ramadan while still attending school. During the 2021-22 school year, I was alarmed to see ignorance and discrimination against these scholars by their peers, especially during Ramadan celebrations. To address this misrepresentation and bullying in our classroom, we came together to understand the importance of Ramadan and learned to write "Eid Mubarak" in Arabic.

Triumph strives to honor Black history 365 days a year in practice. Serving a majority Black student population in East Oakland, it is imperative that we lift up our young people and affirm that we do not relegate BHM to the shortest month of the year, February. Last year, a student's family came into my classroom to discuss the rich Black history in Oakland and provide meaningful context to the movements for Black Lives my students studied in Civics. For this month in particular, though, we celebrate Black history and present through a class potluck of our favorite family dishes, a spotlight on a different Black innovator, leader, and creator each day, and a school-wide assembly in which each class presents their work. Additionally we host a BHM spirit week during which students dress up, present learning, and celebrate.