Parents have to keep a lot of balls in the air at the same time, but this parent, James Moye, wasn’t just demonstrating the ongoing juggling act. He was also learning how science is taught in the New Haven Public schools — in this instance learning the scientific method and how to conduct an experiment using bouncing balls— so he can help his own child, a student at King-Robinson, and other parents understand the scientific method and learning process.
Moyce was participating Thursday in the 17th year of the New Haven Public Schools Summer Parent Training Institute, and he was having a terrific time.
Moye is one of 25 parents (including six men) who are all volunteers (transportation and child care provided) who have been attending ten approximately two-hour morning sessions held at the Lincoln-Basset School this year. Other sessions have included nutrition, and wellness, and exercise; how math is taught in the classroom; an exploration of the achievement gap; and how to read and interpret the Connecticut Mastery Test results. It concludes on Friday. Then these parents will take a lead role starting in the fall in helping the New Haven Public Schools explore and refine their parental involvement policies.
At Thursday’s and today’s sessions, Moyce and the other parents, such as Florence Caldwell, who has grandchildren at Lincoln- Basset and at New Haven Academy, were learning from Richard Therrien, the K‑12 Science Supervisor. They sat in the kids’ little chairs, and had hands-on experience in measurement and scientific method.
“What will affect the dropping of the two balls?” Therrien asked.
He elicited “density” and “texture” and “size” from the parent-students. Then Moyce added “force.”
Therrien moved the discussion along to isolate these factors, teaching the lesson, or rather having the parents discover the notion of dependent and independent variables in conducting experiments.
“This is really exciting,” said Moye. “I mean the stuff we’re learning, it’s awesome.”
Therrien said they go over questions that the kids might see on the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMT), but “the key thing is for the parents to learn the process of scientific thinking to help their kids in the same direction.”
“It’s no accident that Richard is here, ” said Patti Avallone (pictured here with Barnard School parent Terrence Patterson), who’s the chief coordinator of the NHPS’s parental involvement policies and programs, “because this coming year will be the first that CMTs will be given in science.”
The institute, she was at pains to explain, is one of a wide range of parent-involvement initiatives, which, she says, are critical for students’ success. “All the research shows that the more parents are involved, the less the truancy, the more the academic accomplishment, the less kids drop out, or become behavior problems.”
In addition to the institutes, NHPS has a parent academy that gives ongoing workshops, parent advisory councils (of which Caldwell, pictured above is a co-chair), Saturday sessions, a committee of parent teacher organization (PTO) presidents, and much else. “It’s a three-legged stool,” said Avallone — family, school, community — “that all gets strengthened together.”
What’s new about parental involvement this year and in recent years? “It’s always exciting,” she said, “but no question that parental involvement has increased under the No Child Left Behind law. [Avallone’s full title is supervisor of Title I, the largest federal grant given to high poverty areas to increase student and parent participation.] We’re really mandated to empower parents — and we want — these parents to tell how us ways we can serve them better.
“That’s what we’ll be doing at the last session tomorrow. We’ll be doing a survey, soliciting their ideas, and brainstorming. There will be follow up meetings, and all-important focus groups on what parents need. That we’ll be doing beginning in the fall. Then the preparation of an official document for the Board of Education.”
In general Avallone cited a wide-ranging level of participation by parents. “There’s no single measure. You don’t have to go to a PTO meeting to be engaged as a parent. You can learn how your child studies, like these volunteers are doing, and work with them at home. That is parent involvement, big time. On the other hand, at Celentano School, in May the parents and the kids put together a dance, in which the parents were escorted by the kids. 250 showed up. There’s no one measure. The Daniels school had no PTO a year ago, and now it’s thriving. At John Martinez, a school that was the creation of a number of smaller schools, there is not an active PTO; we’re going to work on that.”
She saw special challenges in reaching the new kinds of parents in the NHPS.
“I think it’s fair to say, at least here in New Haven, that we have an especially heightened interested in parent involvement in recent years. We have parents who are very young, who are working two jobs. How do we get them involved? We’ve developed this successful Parent-Link, automatic phone calls that go out about open schools day, and all the various meetings. Kids often don’t deliver notices that are put in their backpacks. Because of Parent-Link, we’ve had meetings — with the Chamber of commerce, for example, where we show parents how their kids can transition to the workplace— where in years past we had seven people and now we have 75.
On Friday morning, the last session of this edition of the parents’ institute, Superintendent Reginald Mayo planned to be on hand to give Moye, Caldwell, and the other graduates of the institute their certificates. As a former 7th grade science teacher, Mayo just might take in this remarkable gathering of parent-students and be motivated also to offer a brief lesson on electricity while he’s at it.