accomplishment and satisfaction

Tonight we had our third parent meeting in the last six weeks. Yes, this is a lot. A parent meeting is held in our parent center. We send home a letter stating there is a meeting and we also send a pre-recorded message to parents.  Additionally, we have a committee of two teachers who call the parents who have shown up in the past.

Remember, I teach in a large comprehensive high school that has three small learning communities (SLC) and one independent school that shares our space, lunches, library, etc.  

Our first parent meeting had just a few parents and then they slowly trickled in, however, for our first parent meeting (yes, very late in the year) us teachers were “into it” and outnumbered the parents. At that meeting we reminded parents of the dress code, A-G grad requirements, and other basics relating to our SLC,  At the end of the meeting we announced the topic for our next meeting which was Pilot Schools. We held our second meeting with a bit of a higher parent turnout.  The third meeting, tonight, was to ask final questions and express concerns about Pilot Schools and to take a parent vote.

For those of you not familiar with the Boston Pilot School model, you can read more at at the Center for Collaboration’s website,  The teachers of my SLC have been working on going Pilot for over a year. There are many advantages, that of course will bring challenges.  However, most of us feel up to the challenge so a committee has spent hours upon hours writing our 18 page proposal.  The next step in the process of becoming a pilot is to pass a 2/3 teacher vote of the teachers in our SLC. We also need a majority parent vote. Once we have those two things, we can formally submit our proposal.

Tonight’s meeting went better than I think any of us suspected it to.  The parents of my students are low income, immigrant, struggling. Each meeting we have had to translate in both Spanish and Armenian. You know, an inner city school. However, I have to admit I have been pleasantly surprised with the turnout and knowledge of the parents who have come. The parents didn’t hesitate to ask us challenging questions regarding the benefit to their kids, the data, the reasoning, and other questions to understand why we want this. We answered questions randomly (I probabaly talked too much).

At the end of the meeting we took a vote and had an outside party, the woman who runs our parent center, count the votes. We had 15 parents turn out for this meeting. That is 15 out of apx. 400 kids! Yes, not a lot, but more than we would need for a parent committee. Of those 15 parents, we had 15 YES! GO PILOT! votes.

It was nice to come home, albeit another late night, with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.