This remarkable young single dad, James Via, made it with his three kids to orientation night at King/Robinson Interdistrict Magnet School, where the principal told parents that their involvement must go beyond checking homework.
Via and his children Jameisha, Nate, and Michael were among 100 kids and parents at the Wednesday night event at King/Robinson. Attending a beginning-of-the-year orientation is technically compulsory for all New Haven Public School parents.
Via would have been there even without the requirement. He’s an involved parent, even though he has yet to attend a parent teacher organization (PTO) meeting, which used to be a traditional measure of parental engagement. The timing of PTO meetings conflicts with his work schedule.
When Via separated from his wife, two years ago, he said she became less involved with the children, and he picked up the slack. They now live with him primarily. His mother has moved back from Virginia to help him take care of them. He works from 5 in the morning to 5 at night, and often longer, managing a Burger King on Dixwell. The kids sometimes meet him after the after-school activities there; they walk home together. Via also attended Southern for a year.
He’s just finished his contract in the Marine reserves. On the night of the orientation he was going to attend an event for people interested in becoming New Haven cops.
Via has made a point of finding time to be involved with his kids and their school. He attended teacher conferences in the classroom of his youngest, fourth-grader Michael, when the child was having motivation problems. He provided props such as cardboard crowns (courtesy of a local Burger King that Via manages) for his Nate’s drama productions. He participated in research focus groups for the administrators. He signed off nearly every night on Jameisha’s math and other homework.
Principal Says: Talk To Your Kids
All this seems to be reflective of the broad new definition of “parent involvement” promoted by King/Robinson’s dynamic principal, Iline Tracey (pictured below). The Independent is following the Vias and two other New Haven families this academic year to look at different ways schools involve parents.
On Wednesday night, Tracey was explaining to the Vias and about another 100 kids and their parents highlights from the school’s parent/student handbook: A seventh-grader like Jameisha would receive an hour and a half of work per night. Fifth-grader Nate, one hour; and Michael 30 minutes. Parents, says the handbook, are “encouraged” to monitor the work.
A new plan this year, said Tracey, will involve an “agenda” or portfolio showing the child’s work at the end of each week, and sent home to the parent for review.
“But,” added Tracey, “take time to talk to your kids too. Model the values of caring and responsibility that are the bywords of this IB school [IB means International Baccalaureate, for which King/Robinson recently qualified], and listen to them. Homework’s important but so also is listening, as our teachers do. Homework, when it works, only reinforces lessons taught in class. If your child is struggling over it, talk to the teacher.”
After grades they covered uniforms (khaki and burgundy are the colors); gum-chewing (a no-no, but, Tracey added, with a wink, a losing battle); and cell phones — to be turned off all day and kept in backpacks. Since King-Robinson is a magnet school, some students attend from Ansonia and surrounding towns. With bus and transportation connections, parents would worry if they were not permitted cell phone contact after school.
One parent asked about visitation policy of parents in classrooms. Citing the recent debate at the Board of Education, Tracey said, memorably, “I don’t consider parents as visitors at all. We very much have an open door policy here. Nevertheless, do make an appointment if you can. We love your interest in the children, but imagine we cannot have 22 parents in a classroom.”
“If you feel the need to drop in to see about an issue without having made an appointment,” added Keisha Redd, one of King/Robinson’s two assistant principals with whom James Via has a good working relationship, “go to the office and they’ll call to see if it’s a good time for you to visit the teacher. If they’re in the middle of testing or whatever, you’ll be told to come at another time. But we can be creative here. I’ve had parents who just wanted to observe, so we stationed them outside the class looking in, so the learning environment wasn’t disturbed. A win-win.”
Redd said that Via is a generous and caring parent.“We’d like to see more men involved in the lives of their kids. But Mr. Via is definitely special. He’s not just there, he’s ‘present.’ “
Principal Tracey said she has seen in general a positive arc of parent involvement in the last five years. “You should see the number who come to open house and to the student productions….my, do the parents like to see their kids in productions!” Redd said there are also ways beyond those Tracey cited and even beyond fundraising and traditional PTO activities that she feels are as important.
Such as? “We’re talking about getting parents into the classroom more this year, on a planned, rotating basis, to read to the kids. Wouldn’t that be great for a kid to have his parent function in a way as a teacher for the day, or for the hour? To have a parents’ reading circle formalized. We’re working on that idea seriously this year.”
George Flanagan, a 14-year veteran of the NHPS system and the other assistant principal at King/Robinson, also knows James Via and Michael Via well. He agreed with Redd on finding ways for bridging the gap of a sense of two worlds, one school and one home.
“Consistency is really important,” he said in connection with conferences that he had with the father and son. “We wanted to find ways to motivate Michael; he didn’t seem that interested in math, or his other subjects, and he’s very active. So we sat down and, with the father nearby, we talked about baseball and he got interested. He’s now involved with the band too because he’s musical. We’ll reward him in school for showing motivation, but what about on the weekend? When James comes in and we decide together what to do in school and to do the same techniques at home, it works much better.
“We are doing a really good job here, I think, in communicating with the parents through the newsletter and other means. We want to be sending the same message as the parents. The report card conferences are a lot more than about grades, much deeper.”
Attendance at the conferences he refers too are also, along with orientation, “required” of the parents, not merely encouraged. The NHPS system requires two report card conferences,; King/Robinson urges a third. At those conferences, data is shared with the parents based on the CMT results for each child, and on the DRAs (Developmental Reading Assessments), so that, said Flanagan, parents are getting a deeper and more rounded picture of where their kids are.
“I’ve never met a parent,” said Redd, who graduated from Hillhouse (like Via), “who didn’t want to be involved with his or her kids. But the reality of the various jobs people work often make it challenging. Mr. Via really stands out, not only because he’s always here, but he’s a strong quiet influence all the time in his kids’ lives; you can sense it.”
This article is part of the Independent’s ongoing series about parental involvement in their children’s education. Throughout the school year we’ll be focusing on the issue through three families, one at Amistad Academy, this one at King/Robinson, and, next week, we’ll meet a family at St. Martin de Porres Academy — a charter, a public, and a parochial school. Stay tuned, and ask your kids what they’ve been reading lately. Click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for previous articles and debates in this series.