A single father in New Haven revealed to a televised audience the “sneak attack” that prodded his son to study. The secret weapon? Text messages.
Last year, Kevon Reyes (at left in photo) needed help staying on track in school. So dad Enoc Reyes (at right in photo) gave Kevon’s cellphone number to his teacher at Troup Academy. Pretty soon Kevon was getting evening text messages, reminding him to do his homework.
Reyes shared his strategy with a panel of teachers, parents, and school administrators during a live episode Tuesday night of a monthly Citizens Televison (CTV) series produced by N’Zinga Shani. (See previous coverage of Shani’s show here.) Tuesday’s topic: community involvement in the schools. Panelists — including New Haven State Sen. Toni Harp and Hamden school superintendent Fran Rabinowitz — spent an hour at CTV studios talking about ways that teachers and parents could cooperate more effectively.
One of the main themes to emerge was the importance of teachers reaching out to become a part of their students’ lives outside of the classroom.
Grace Griffin, a fifth-grade Hamden teacher, has gone to countless of her students’ birthday parties and soccer games in her ten years on the job. Griffin’s extra efforts have helped her to create partnerships with the parents of her students, making her a more effective teacher. (Griffin found out on Monday that she had won the prestigious Milken Award for being an outstanding educator.)
Retired New Haven principal Jeffie Frazier picked up on the theme. “Go and visit that church! Go to the football game!” she urged teachers. “Take your family so that they can see you have a family!”
Superintendent Rabinowitz (pictured) said that although she can’t expect all of her teachers to be totally motivated and involved outside of the school, she can set minimum standards for them to reach.
“I expect all my staff to contact parents at least two times in the first month,” Rabinowitz said. She added that she expects all calls and emails from parents to be answered within 24 hours.
Enoc Reyes(pictured), who works at Gateway Community College, shared an anecdote of effective parent and teacher involvement outside of the classroom involving one of his three sons. Last year, Reyes gave his son Kevon’s cellphone number to Kevon’s sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Moore. One evening Reyes was in his kitchen when he heard Kevon get a text message in the other room and exclaim, “Jeez, I can never get rid of this guy!”
Mr. Moore had texted Kevon to ask, “Are you doing your homework?”
“That was like a sneak attack on him,” Reyes said with a chuckle in the hallway at CTV after the show. Reyes said that his text message strategy had created a continuity of supervision for his son that helped Kevon to stay on top of his school work.
Kevon, who had accompanied his dad to the studio, was standing nearby, drinking a grape soda and eating some chips.
“I had no choice but to be good,” he said, smiling ruefully.