Home Visits 2011

A few years ago as I began my training year as a Literacy Collaborative Coordinator, I grieved the loss of home visits in the beginning of my year. I missed them. They'd been a teaching ritual since 1980 (with a few years off when I wasn't teaching) and it was hard to imagine having students and not meeting their families. It was an important experience for me.

About that same time, two young teachers asked me about home visits. They were ready to try them. I got pretty excited about those two heading off to meet families knowing what the knocks on the door would bring; students proudly showing teachers their work areas, parents and student bonding with their teachers, the teachers having an opportunity to communicate face to face. I was happy they would get that feeling about a family that can only come from sitting on a sofa or kitchen table, sharing a cup of insam cha (ginseng) tea or chai or cardamom or Ethiopian spiced tea with them, them sharing what they know about this precious student and finally, sharing what they want to accomplish together.

This year I sat on those sofas, sipped tea, and listened to parents speak about their children along with my very willing co-teacher, the second grade classroom teacher with whom I teach literacy.

We brought student artifacts, a translator, our positive thoughts, and the hope we'd learn something. We weren't disappointed. How else would we know about our writer who had books he'd written from first grade stuffed in a drawer and couldn't wait to show them to us? Or about our budding reader who read her books to her baby sister everyday because both parents only spoke Spanish? What about the reader we continue to be worried about, who loves rabbits and his younger brother, whose mom is practically raising four boys on her own, barely providing for them?  We noticed many students share small spaces with lots of people. "Quietly working" can't really happen when it's a far off idea. A side discovery; one thoughtfully quiet, typically still student wasn't so quiet or still, as he showed off his exceptional ability to move. On furniture.

Those memories come to visit us just about every day. We can't reflect on our instruction without those memories. We teach small children with families who love them. Big house, tiny apartment, under the poverty line, well over it, rhythms of another language or fluent English spoken, our students come to learn and their families support them the best they are able.

Sostantivo casa due*

My home visits (post 2)* for 2007 are almost over. They have once again literally opened my eyes a little wider. They were:

• hour long (sometimes more) conversations and sharing
• images of hard working parents (chefs, construction workers working in other states, salesmen, retail store clerks, restaurant servers, building supervisors, moms, dads, single moms and single dads, housekeepers, manicurists, computer technicians, government workers, bank personnel, staff assistants)
• grandmothers, grandfathers, cousins, aunts, uncles, boyfriends of aunts, older and younger siblings, friends, and pets listening and sitting with us to support their favorite students
• doors opening to the sight of over animated, excited students greeting me
• the sights of libraries for children in the homes of families whose first language is Spanish or Vietnames or Korean or Urdu, small desks with pencils and crayons, neat homes
• the sounds of a trumpet and keyboard played by two students and singing by another whose talents were hidden from me til then
• delicious bites of hot Indian food, grilled salmon with potatoes, orange juice and crackers, cold water, fresh fruit, offers for more food and beverage
• translators who thought they were coming to provide parents access to negative news (they told me so)
• a fresh look at how I would start second quarter
• three weeks of afternoons, weekend mornings, and evenings (I have a supportive husband) that I wouldn't trade for anything else I do professionally

Autumnal equinox and home visits

Every year at this time leaves begin to turn back to their hidden bright colors and fall. That whole photosynthesis process bugs me a little. As good for the leaves as it is, it masks the brilliance of the leaves' born with color. Why should we only get to see those colors when days become shorter and the angles of sunlight change? The bright autumnal colors also signal another favorite season for me...home visit season.

Just past the first quarter's halfway point I begin to build a new bridge. My student's parents make appointments with me to share and conference about their child's progress in third grade. Instead of meeting in our classroom we meet in their homes. We meet after work in the evenings, before or after dance practice on Thursday, after soccer practice on Friday, before or after church on Sunday, during dinner, and sometimes before breakfast on Saturday. It is the chance for parents to talk about their precious children, at their convenience, in their space, with the whole family present, in the comfort of their own home.

It started 27 years ago in my first year of full-time teaching. I was in a second grade classroom in a diversely populated Title I school in northern California. Included in the majority of our school population were families who had precariously immigrated from southeast Asia escaping communism or dictatorships, families living in poverty, families with little to no English speaking skills, single parent families who had become single parents due to abuse or other crimes, and a few middle class families living in small pockets of our boundary enclosures.

A blink moment: Intuitively I felt the more I knew about my student's whole life, the more I could respond to the life we shared between 8am and 3pm. I thought if moms and dads had a chance to tell me about their children in their own words, those words would more naturally flow if they were surrounded by the things that made them naturally think of their children. That had to happen in their homes. My revered principal, a retired career Air Force aviator drawn to the service of teaching after his 20+ years of military service reluctantly gave me his blessing. So I started out finding my students' homes on maps, plotting a schedule, making calls, often using my seven year old students as interpreters for their parents to set up our meetings.

My first home visit was with Destiny and her mom. Destiny was a dark-haired, verbal, socially confident little girl. She was also mature...too far beyond her 7 years and that was reflected in her words, actions, and style of dress. Mom spoke only Spanish and Destiny often served as her interpreter between home and school communications. I arrived at 7pm in a dimly lit apartment neighborhood that paralleled highway 101, a major freeway. The apartment had the thinnest front door I'd ever seen and I had grown up in very modest homes. The noise from the highway was overpowering. Note to self...quiet reading time is impossible at home.

The one bedroom apartment was small, modestly furnished, and dominated by a large television. The television was turned on during the whole visit and the commercials sometimes drowned out the conversation. I learned Destiny and her mother lived together alone, but sometimes aunts and uncles would come by and stay. I wondered where they slept. Destiny told me at one point her mom was shacked up with her boyfriend Lou, (I wondered where Destiny slept then) but he was in jail now. They visited him once in awhile. I tried to look cool and matter of fact when I heard this language coming out of a seven year old's mouth. I'm sure I shared information about Destiny's progress in reading and how she needed to read every night, and that she was reading below grade level. I remember mom nodding as if she understood between translation, but knew she wouldn't be supervising a quiet 30 minutes of reading each night, reading to her, or taking her to the library on a regular basis. She was busy barely making a living.

I didn't get what I thought I'd get out of those first home visits. In fact, I got more. I thought I'd be sharing great educational practices I'd learned about in college with parents and they'd be drinking it all in with wide eyes and open ears. It was a little like seeing the true colors of a leaf in the fall. Instead I built relationships. I bridged cultures a tiny, tiny bit. I laid a foundation that often wouldn't get built on until much later in the year but, at least it was a foundation. I opened some communication between home and school even when the spoken language wasn't the same. I tasted incredible Vietnamese, Samoan, Filipino, Mexican, and American foods. I experienced gracious, generous hospitality when I knew material possessions were few. I had a chance to walk across a bridge in both directions.
I love autumn and all its color!