Parent University of Jones

As educators, we focus a lot of effort in what we are going to do to ensure we are meeting the diverse needs of our students. Occasionally, we even have discussion about their post-secondary education. We talk to the students about what they want to be when they grow up; we talk to them about why it's important to learn to read, write, and do math. We've written vision statements, mission statements, and defined core beliefs for how students should learn and how teachers should behave. As all good vision, mission, and core belief statements have, we included terms such as life long learners, data driven instruction, and the list goes on and on. I'm not undermining the importance of the work we'd done, but there was a key piece that was missing.

I am of the firm belief that overall, parents love their kids. They do the best they can with what they know how to do. The problem becomes when parents have an empty tool belt and do not have the resources to be the parents we know they should be. This became glaringly apparent one day as I was having a conference with a parent. As we were discussing why her student was not succeeding in school, the solution seemed apparent. The parent just needed to read at home with the child. Simple enough, right? Just. Read. With. Your. Child. That should be happening in every American home as far as I was concerned. Then something happened....I started listening to the parent....I started asking probing questions.....I removed my judgmental glasses. What I began to realize was this parent did not understand what it meant to "read at home" with your child. 

I started interacting with parents through a different set of lenses. I started talking about what concerns they had; what they wanted to know more about; what dreams they had for their child; what fears they had; what concerned them. 

The key piece missing was we had not been serving the needs of the whole family. I began to realize how important it was to fill the parent tool belt with the hammers, wrenches, nails, and glue of life. I began to realize their dreams would not be built if not given the proper tools to do so.

So began this crazy idea of the Parent University of Jones. A parent committee (made up of parents, teachers, and administrators) began to meet and create the vision for this program. We studied the eight sectors of the community and brainstormed classes our parents could take. They ranged anywhere from basic banking skills, basic technology skills, gang education awareness, setting up a neighborhood watch program, health and nutrition, parenting classes, helping your child with reading and math, Pathways to Graduation, dealing with hurts/habits/hangups, immigration topics, post secondary opportunities, etc, etc. A survey was given to all the parents and the data was analyzed to see what classes our families were most interested in. We worked with partners within the community to provide classes for our parents to attend. With each hour a parent attends classes, they will receive 1 college credit. At the end of the year, parents with more than 4 college credits will have a "graduation."

Is this a lot of work? Yes. Does it take a lot of community involvement to make this happen? Ask and you shall receive. Jones Elementary is all about serving kids to the highest level. We feel honored and blessed to be able to serve the families to the highest level as well.