Mentors. One question I get asked often is "How can we support your school?" The answer is simple. If you have an hour to spare each week and like kids, we can use your help. Our community volunteers spend countless hours mentoring at risk students. Many of our students do not have positive adult role models in their lives. A lot of our students come from single parent families or are being raised by someone other than their parents. If they do have both parents living in the home, they often times do not get to see them on a regular basis. The parents work blue collar, shift work jobs limiting the amount of time they can spend with their children. We know by personal experience and mounds of research the importance of building relationships with students. We have seen countless lives being touched by personal relationships that are built within the walls of our school. What a blessing it is for our students to interact with successful business men and women. It helps give them a vision for their future, so they can begin to build a pathway to the lives they dream.
Reading Buddies: Research tells us the importance of children reading books. Students need opportunities to hear good role models reading out loud, and they need audiences to practice their reading skills. Volunteers can help students be better readers by being a reading buddy to a classroom, small group of students, or individual students.
Resources: When dealing with at-risk students at a high poverty school, resources become a vital need. The term "resources" often triggers the thought of financial support, but that is not the "resources" I'm referring to. Our partnerships have opened a world to our school. One personal vision I've had since becoming principal of Jones Elementary School is to be a school that meets the emotional, physical, academic, and familial needs of the child. Although academics are important, we know we have to help students and families overcome a lot in order for our children to succeed. We have many community, business, and non-profit organization partnerships to help our school connect resources to our students and families. Community Clinic of Springdale (federally funded health clinic) partners with us to provide a school based health and wellness center. Ozark Guidance (non-profit mental health facility) partners with us to provide two full time mental health specialists and a case manager. Springdale Police Department provides classes to our families and students on various topics. The police department also provided the Sandlot Program during the summer. They travel to schools, apartment complexes, and area parks to provide activities for students during the months of June to August. Fellowship Bible Church of NWA offers a "Life's Healing Choices" class to interested parents to help them deal with hurts, habits, and hangups. Our colleges and universities partner with us to provide education to families about post secondary education opportunities for their children. They also offer a myriad of classes to parents. Northwest Technical Institute offers an adult education teacher to support our Springdale Family Literacy Program. This is not an exhaustive list...just some hi-lights of the impact of powerful partnerships.
Safety Safety is the number one priority of all educators. We know without a safe environment, children will not learn. It is not uncommon for our partners to be seen helping students cross the busy street in front of our school. Our fire department comes to help carry students (literally carry students) across the street when the perfect rainstorm comes and floods our road.Our district has forged a strong, solid partnership with the Springdale Police Department. It is not uncommon for patrol officers to stop in and walk our building to ensure our school is safe. Along the way, they stop and visit children with strengthens the relationship between our students and the officers.
Live Event Learning: What better way for students to learn than bringing in the experts to show kids how reading, writing, and math are applied in real life situations? Children are most engaged when business leaders and community members visit classrooms to talk about their jobs. It helps our children to begin to goal set beyond the classroom into their future.
School Decision Making: We meet with our community partners annually through a community focus meeting. I start by welcoming them to the meeting, share the vision/mission of the school, and set the purpose of the meeting. After my brief welcome, I turn it over to the experts of the school....the teachers. They walk through our strategic action plan with the focus group. They explain things our teachers and students are doing to increase student achievement. Each teacher is assigned a table of community members. Throughout the presentation, tables are periodically allowed to have small group conversations facilitated by the teachers. This allows for questions to be asked in a less intimidating situation. At the end, we ask the community focus group a couple of questions: 1. What evidence did you hear or see that we are working towards the mission/vision of the school? 2. What suggestions do you have to make our school better? The answers are shared with the teachers and taken into consideration when doing strategic planning for the next year.
Financial: Our community partners do support our school financially. The biggest support they give us is for the Angel Tree that Wasn't Project. With the high poverty rate of our school, it is impossible for us to have an angel tree at Christmas. Who would take the angels? Several years ago, we started providing Christmas gifts, toiletry items, and food bags for all of our students. Our community and business partners have been invaluable with their support of this project.
There is no way possible to capture the importance of community involvement and partnerships in our school. They are an invaluable part of the culture of Jones Elementary. Everyone involved in the community partnerships benefit. The question is....who benefits the most? The students? The community partners? The teachers? The verdict is still out; each would say they are the greatest benefactor from the partnership. My challenge to the readers of this blog...if you are in education, what are the needs of your school? Who are some people in your community to help your school? If you are a community member, what resources can you provide to help the local school system?
