	Jan/Feb 2007
Boise Breaks Barriers and Builds Bridges Sarah Auerbach, ELL Outlook™ Staff Writer Diana Lukenbill knows how important it is to get parents involved in the education of their children. As a high school ESL teacher in Boise, Idaho, she has seen how students flounder academically when they're not getting help at home. Even more striking, she has seen how badly students behave when they're confident teachers won't tell their parents what's going on. For example, she taught one student who was consistently disruptive and rude. The student and her parents spoke Swahili at home, a language Lukenbill didn't speak. But after a few weeks of tolerating the disruptions, Lukenbill made up her mind to pay the parents a visit, no matter how difficult it might be to bridge the language gap. "I knew, as a mother, that no parent would want their child to be rude, no matter which culture," says Lukenbill. So Lukenbill found an interpreter who spoke Swahili, and she went to the family's home for a parent-teacher conference. She discussed the student's behavior with the parents and asked for their help in putting an end to it. After the conference, the student's behavior changed radically for the better. It was clear to Lukenbill that the student now knew her behavior would have consequences. "Once I made that home connection, it was almost as if the student was a different child," she says. Now, years later, Lukenbill works at the district level to get Boise parents of English language learners (ELLs) involved in their children's education. This past fall, Lukenbill began her job as coordinator of the Boise Parents of English Learners (BPEL) program. BPEL brings parents of ELLs together so they can learn about the Boise schools, talk with each other about issues in their lives, and give feedback to the district about their needs. It's Lukenbill's job to overcome the challenges that she and all educators face in trying to collaborate with parents of ELLs. Parents of ELLs often speak little or no English. Some have schedules packed with multiple jobs. Others can't afford cars or don't have the documentation to apply for driver's licenses. And often, they come from countries and cultures where school and home are very separate spheres. That makes it hard for teachers and administrators to communicate to these parents not only complex concepts such as how students' course selections affect their futures, but even some extremely basic ones, such as what graduation requirements are, or how to phone in a student's absence. As a secondary effect, students, who often act as interpreters for their families, realize that their parents are disempowered and may begin, like Lukenbill's African student, to take advantage of the situation. In helping to build BPEL, Lukenbill actually is responding not only to the needs of parents and students in the Boise district, but also to a federal mandate that has been around since 2001. That's when Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), usually called No Child Left Behind (NCLB). NCLB 2001 Title I governs education for the disadvantaged, and Title III governs language instruction for "Limited English Proficient and Immigrant" students. But both contain language calling on schools and districts to involve parents in the education of their children. Crucially, for educators of ELLs, Title III stipulates that school districts using Title III funds must tell parents how they can be involved in their children's education and how they can help their children learn English and excel academically. It also says that schools have to hold regularly scheduled meetings with parents of ELLs to listen to and respond to parent recommendations. Shortly after NCLB made its debut, Ann Farris, who is Lukenbill's boss and the district's federal programs supervisor, began to look for ways her district could comply effectively. She found a model program in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and traveled there to learn more about it. She was most intrigued by the fact that parents regularly gathered on a district advisory board. Some of the board parents sat down with Farris and told her just how much the board was helping them and their children. "I thought, 'This is exactly what we need to do,'" says Farris. On a bitterly cold winter night in 2002, when the streets of Boise were coated with ice, Farris, with the help of Molly Jo Fuentealba, federal programs consultant, held their first BPEL meeting in an elementary school gym. Given the weather, says Farris, she would have been happy to see 50 parents show up. "We had almost 300 parents and not enough room in the facility, which is a great problem to have," says Farris. Boise has more than 4,400 ELLs; with a student population of 25,000, ELLs make up about 18 percent of the total population. While not enormous, Boise's ELL population is staggering in its diversity: Students speak 142 home languages. Farris and Fuentealba couldn't deliver their message only in English and Spanish, so they purchased multilingual translation equipment. While snow and sleet fell outside, parents put on headsets, tuned in to a special frequency, and listened to interpreters positioned around the gym who simultaneously translated through microphone mouthpieces on those same frequencies. "That equipment is key," says Farris, because it allows parents to sit in mixed groups, instead of with parents of the same ethnicity or language group. "It's very freeing for the parents," she says. Farris and Fuentealba divided their huge crowd into small groups of 10 to 12 and asked each group to answer three questions: What is it that you know, understand, or feel good about in the school district? What do you find confusing or challenging; what are barriers to your participation in the schools and in your child's education? How can we improve our schools to better help you with the challenges that you're facing? The results, says Farris, were "phenomenal . . . just picture this gym full of people speaking multiple languages and sharing and talking. Some people will say, 'These parents don't really care.' We know that these parents care." The parents told Farris and Fuentealba many positive things about the Boise schools. "They knew that the teachers were helpful, that they were helping their children, that their ELL teacher specifically was really helping them learn English. They felt like their children were safe." Their complaints, say Farris, are common to ELL parents everywhere. Many couldn't make sense of the papers coming home with their kids. What was important? What wasn't? Both language and transportation were barriers to gaining access to meetings and parents' classes. And more documents needed to be translated into more languages. Farris says parents were shortest on solutions, which isn't too surprising, since many were hesitant to say anything that implied they didn't think educators were doing a good job. And that's one place where Lukenbill intends to get some answers this year, as she takes on the coordination of BPEL. Lukenbill has made BPEL's theme "Breaking Barriers and Building Bridges," and she hopes to focus meetings on problem solving and strategizing, not complaining. "I don't want [parents] to feel that it's just throwing eggs without offering a recipe," she says. Each year since BPEL's snowy inception, Farris and her staff have held two "Big BPEL" meetings, a fall information-gathering session like the first one, and a spring celebration and awards ceremony. Farris and her staff also produce parent handbooks in nine of the district's 142 languages and facilitate BPEL site meetings at Boise's 52 schools. These BPEL site meetings are an important element of Boise's response to NCLB's parent involvement mandate. Farris and Lukenbill want each school to hold three BPEL site meetings per year. Some schools incorporate these meetings into other events, such as parent-teacher conferences, and others hold them as separate events. At Whittier Elementary School, where Debby Bailey is in her fourth year as principal, nearly half of the parent population is Spanish-speaking. That means that meetings at the school, where enrollment is only about 340 students, mix ELL and non-ELL parents. But because of the district's-and Bailey's-commitment to involving parents of ELLs, bilingual parents call their Spanish-speaking neighbors to remind them to attend every meeting. Whittier also holds Learning Together workshops, another district-level innovation, where teachers distribute to parents special kits in English and Spanish containing activities that let parents support their kids' learning at home. Farris says that BPEL represents a new approach to parental involvement. Before NCLB, there were PTAs and bake sales and parents making photocopies in classrooms. "Nothing's wrong with any of those things at all," says Farris, "but the question is how to involve parents in meaningful ways." The challenge, she says, is how to make the switch from what she calls "random acts of parent involvement"-cupcakes on birthdays-to something that can be repeated and built upon. One encouraging sign is that parents who first became involved in BPEL in 2005 are now moving with their kids up to the high school level, where previously it was nearly impossible to engage parents. Wendy St. Michell, Limited English Proficient (LEP) Program Manager for the state of Idaho, says that BPEL sets a great example. But she cautions that while Boise is a good model for other districts in the state, it shouldn't be a standout. "It's innovative in terms of their approach, and it's consistent, so those two things are out of the ordinary," she says. "It doesn't mean it shouldn't be happening in other districts. Most districts wait until we monitor them and then say, 'Oh, we have to do that.'" Boise has more resources, both in terms of staff and funding, than many other districts in the state, says St. Michell-and that makes it easier to meet the mandate. Ann Farris administers both Title I and Title III programs for Boise, so she is uniquely poised to call upon the district's resources. She funds BPEL with a combination of state LEP funds, the district's tiny Title III grant, and Title I funds from the "set-aside," monies intended for use in schools in need of improvement. She pays teachers $500 per year when they facilitate site-based BPEL meetings, and uses a portion of the $134,000 Title I set-aside to cover materials such as the Learning Together activity kits used at Whittier, and to pay Diana Lukenbill's salary. So far, Farris's office has not collected much hard data to quantify the program's success. Preliminary numbers do indicate that students whose parents participate in the Learning Together workshops show a greater increase on standardized reading tests than those who don't, says Farris. Administrators often look at attendance patterns to gauge whether parent involvement programs are working, and although Farris's office isn't tracking attendance numbers yet, Whittier's Debby Bailey can point to an improvement at her own school. During Bailey's tenure, coinciding with the existence of BPEL, Whittier's attendance has improved from 92.4 percent daily to 98.4 percent daily, last year surpassing the district's daily attendance average. Those numbers can tell part of the story, but parents have to tell their own. Last year, a Whittier parent, Maria Albizo, went with Ann Farris before the Boise District board of trustees. "She speaks English but it's not easy for her," says Bailey. "Our ELL teacher even asked her, 'Do you want to speak in Spanish and have me translate?'" But Albizo was determined to speak English. "She was so nervous, she kept rewriting her notes," says Bailey. When Albizo stood and spoke, she told the board, "For parents like me, that come from other countries, and we put our children in your schools, we want to support our children's education, but if we show up at your school and there is no one there to communicate, then what chance do we have?" Then she told the board that, because of BPEL, "we know there is someone there." If you have any comments about this article or questions for for the author, please send them to: alex@coursecrafters.com.
Copyright © 2007 Course Crafters, Inc.® All rights reserved.

Jan/Feb 2007

Boise Breaks Barriers and Builds Bridges

Sarah Auerbach, ELL Outlook™ Staff Writer

Diana Lukenbill knows how important it is to get parents involved in the education of their children. As a high school ESL teacher in Boise, Idaho, she has seen how students flounder academically when they're not getting help at home. Even more striking, she has seen how badly students behave when they're confident teachers won't tell their parents what's going on. For example, she taught one student who was consistently disruptive and rude. The student and her parents spoke Swahili at home, a language Lukenbill didn't speak. But after a few weeks of tolerating the disruptions, Lukenbill made up her mind to pay the parents a visit, no matter how difficult it might be to bridge the language gap. "I knew, as a mother, that no parent would want their child to be rude, no matter which culture," says Lukenbill.

So Lukenbill found an interpreter who spoke Swahili, and she went to the family's home for a parent-teacher conference. She discussed the student's behavior with the parents and asked for their help in putting an end to it. After the conference, the student's behavior changed radically for the better. It was clear to Lukenbill that the student now knew her behavior would have consequences. "Once I made that home connection, it was almost as if the student was a different child," she says.

Now, years later, Lukenbill works at the district level to get Boise parents of English language learners (ELLs) involved in their children's education. This past fall, Lukenbill began her job as coordinator of the Boise Parents of English Learners (BPEL) program. BPEL brings parents of ELLs together so they can learn about the Boise schools, talk with each other about issues in their lives, and give feedback to the district about their needs. It's Lukenbill's job to overcome the challenges that she and all educators face in trying to collaborate with parents of ELLs. Parents of ELLs often speak little or no English. Some have schedules packed with multiple jobs. Others can't afford cars or don't have the documentation to apply for driver's licenses. And often, they come from countries and cultures where school and home are very separate spheres. That makes it hard for teachers and administrators to communicate to these parents not only complex concepts such as how students' course selections affect their futures, but even some extremely basic ones, such as what graduation requirements are, or how to phone in a student's absence. As a secondary effect, students, who often act as interpreters for their families, realize that their parents are disempowered and may begin, like Lukenbill's African student, to take advantage of the situation.

In helping to build BPEL, Lukenbill actually is responding not only to the needs of parents and students in the Boise district, but also to a federal mandate that has been around since 2001. That's when Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), usually called No Child Left Behind (NCLB). NCLB 2001 Title I governs education for the disadvantaged, and Title III governs language instruction for "Limited English Proficient and Immigrant" students. But both contain language calling on schools and districts to involve parents in the education of their children. Crucially, for educators of ELLs, Title III stipulates that school districts using Title III funds must tell parents how they can be involved in their children's education and how they can help their children learn English and excel academically. It also says that schools have to hold regularly scheduled meetings with parents of ELLs to listen to and respond to parent recommendations.

Shortly after NCLB made its debut, Ann Farris, who is Lukenbill's boss and the district's federal programs supervisor, began to look for ways her district could comply effectively. She found a model program in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and traveled there to learn more about it. She was most intrigued by the fact that parents regularly gathered on a district advisory board. Some of the board parents sat down with Farris and told her just how much the board was helping them and their children. "I thought, 'This is exactly what we need to do,'" says Farris.

On a bitterly cold winter night in 2002, when the streets of Boise were coated with ice, Farris, with the help of Molly Jo Fuentealba, federal programs consultant, held their first BPEL meeting in an elementary school gym. Given the weather, says Farris, she would have been happy to see 50 parents show up. "We had almost 300 parents and not enough room in the facility, which is a great problem to have," says Farris.

Boise has more than 4,400 ELLs; with a student population of 25,000, ELLs make up about 18 percent of the total population. While not enormous, Boise's ELL population is staggering in its diversity: Students speak 142 home languages. Farris and Fuentealba couldn't deliver their message only in English and Spanish, so they purchased multilingual translation equipment. While snow and sleet fell outside, parents put on headsets, tuned in to a special frequency, and listened to interpreters positioned around the gym who simultaneously translated through microphone mouthpieces on those same frequencies. "That equipment is key," says Farris, because it allows parents to sit in mixed groups, instead of with parents of the same ethnicity or language group. "It's very freeing for the parents," she says.

Farris and Fuentealba divided their huge crowd into small groups of 10 to 12 and asked each group to answer three questions: What is it that you know, understand, or feel good about in the school district? What do you find confusing or challenging; what are barriers to your participation in the schools and in your child's education? How can we improve our schools to better help you with the challenges that you're facing?

The results, says Farris, were "phenomenal . . . just picture this gym full of people speaking multiple languages and sharing and talking. Some people will say, 'These parents don't really care.' We know that these parents care."

The parents told Farris and Fuentealba many positive things about the Boise schools. "They knew that the teachers were helpful, that they were helping their children, that their ELL teacher specifically was really helping them learn English. They felt like their children were safe."

Their complaints, say Farris, are common to ELL parents everywhere. Many couldn't make sense of the papers coming home with their kids. What was important? What wasn't? Both language and transportation were barriers to gaining access to meetings and parents' classes. And more documents needed to be translated into more languages.

Farris says parents were shortest on solutions, which isn't too surprising, since many were hesitant to say anything that implied they didn't think educators were doing a good job. And that's one place where Lukenbill intends to get some answers this year, as she takes on the coordination of BPEL. Lukenbill has made BPEL's theme "Breaking Barriers and Building Bridges," and she hopes to focus meetings on problem solving and strategizing, not complaining. "I don't want [parents] to feel that it's just throwing eggs without offering a recipe," she says.

Each year since BPEL's snowy inception, Farris and her staff have held two "Big BPEL" meetings, a fall information-gathering session like the first one, and a spring celebration and awards ceremony. Farris and her staff also produce parent handbooks in nine of the district's 142 languages and facilitate BPEL site meetings at Boise's 52 schools. These BPEL site meetings are an important element of Boise's response to NCLB's parent involvement mandate. Farris and Lukenbill want each school to hold three BPEL site meetings per year. Some schools incorporate these meetings into other events, such as parent-teacher conferences, and others hold them as separate events. At Whittier Elementary School, where Debby Bailey is in her fourth year as principal, nearly half of the parent population is Spanish-speaking. That means that meetings at the school, where enrollment is only about 340 students, mix ELL and non-ELL parents. But because of the district's-and Bailey's-commitment to involving parents of ELLs, bilingual parents call their Spanish-speaking neighbors to remind them to attend every meeting. Whittier also holds Learning Together workshops, another district-level innovation, where teachers distribute to parents special kits in English and Spanish containing activities that let parents support their kids' learning at home.

Farris says that BPEL represents a new approach to parental involvement. Before NCLB, there were PTAs and bake sales and parents making photocopies in classrooms. "Nothing's wrong with any of those things at all," says Farris, "but the question is how to involve parents in meaningful ways." The challenge, she says, is how to make the switch from what she calls "random acts of parent involvement"-cupcakes on birthdays-to something that can be repeated and built upon. One encouraging sign is that parents who first became involved in BPEL in 2005 are now moving with their kids up to the high school level, where previously it was nearly impossible to engage parents.

Wendy St. Michell, Limited English Proficient (LEP) Program Manager for the state of Idaho, says that BPEL sets a great example. But she cautions that while Boise is a good model for other districts in the state, it shouldn't be a standout. "It's innovative in terms of their approach, and it's consistent, so those two things are out of the ordinary," she says. "It doesn't mean it shouldn't be happening in other districts. Most districts wait until we monitor them and then say, 'Oh, we have to do that.'"

Boise has more resources, both in terms of staff and funding, than many other districts in the state, says St. Michell-and that makes it easier to meet the mandate. Ann Farris administers both Title I and Title III programs for Boise, so she is uniquely poised to call upon the district's resources. She funds BPEL with a combination of state LEP funds, the district's tiny Title III grant, and Title I funds from the "set-aside," monies intended for use in schools in need of improvement. She pays teachers $500 per year when they facilitate site-based BPEL meetings, and uses a portion of the $134,000 Title I set-aside to cover materials such as the Learning Together activity kits used at Whittier, and to pay Diana Lukenbill's salary.

So far, Farris's office has not collected much hard data to quantify the program's success. Preliminary numbers do indicate that students whose parents participate in the Learning Together workshops show a greater increase on standardized reading tests than those who don't, says Farris. Administrators often look at attendance patterns to gauge whether parent involvement programs are working, and although Farris's office isn't tracking attendance numbers yet, Whittier's Debby Bailey can point to an improvement at her own school. During Bailey's tenure, coinciding with the existence of BPEL, Whittier's attendance has improved from 92.4 percent daily to 98.4 percent daily, last year surpassing the district's daily attendance average.

Those numbers can tell part of the story, but parents have to tell their own. Last year, a Whittier parent, Maria Albizo, went with Ann Farris before the Boise District board of trustees. "She speaks English but it's not easy for her," says Bailey. "Our ELL teacher even asked her, 'Do you want to speak in Spanish and have me translate?'"

But Albizo was determined to speak English. "She was so nervous, she kept rewriting her notes," says Bailey.

When Albizo stood and spoke, she told the board, "For parents like me, that come from other countries, and we put our children in your schools, we want to support our children's education, but if we show up at your school and there is no one there to communicate, then what chance do we have?" Then she told the board that, because of BPEL, "we know there is someone there."

If you have any comments about this article or questions for for the author, please send them to: alex@coursecrafters.com.