Positive Calls Home in the Multilingual Space
Recently, I came across Trevor Muir's blog post on the power of positive phone calls home. I absolutely loved this read and it reiterated how important these phone calls truly are to families. You can click here to follow him on Twitter.
As we look at disproportionalities in education, we can recognize that students of color are more often receiving disciplinary referrals than their white peers. While not all multilingual families are families of color, it's critical that we pay attention to these statistics and analyze these in our school settings.
We recognize the power of a phone call, but how many of those phone calls are provided in a student's heritage or home language? We always must advocate for language access for families, and we have civil rights laws that ensure families receive critical school information in a home language- however, how do we deem whether or not a piece of information is critical? We don't want to skip over opportunities to connect in positive ways with families we serve. How can we set up systems to ensure that we are providing these positive calls home in multiple languages?
By establishing language liaisons in your school, you can help to provide more language access and representation in schools. Checking in with local agencies, organizations, and businesses is a powerful way to build a sense of community that values multilingualism. Investigate ways to build up your language resources!
Of course- we cannot share private information with members of the community - however, we can look at ways to increase language access and opportunity.
As a multilingual staff member, I have the additional language (that I learned out of a privilege, not out of a need to survive) of Spanish. When I moved out of the classroom and into the role of a district-level instructional coach, I wanted to ensure that I was using my language to help build community.
I set up a Google Form that allowed any staff member to submit a compliment for a student. I asked them to include their staff name, the student first & last name, and their family/guardian contact information so that I could make positive phone calls on Friday afternoons. I also printed out QR codes with links to the Google Form and placed them in various teacher-facing spaces in the school (teachers' lounge, front office, mail room, copy room, etc.). Some teams decided to keep this Google Form as a standing agenda item during team meetings. This is what my "flyer" looked like:
Each Friday afternoon, I would block out about 20 minutes to make parent phone calls to families across the district. Families were truly touched and overjoyed that their teachers were recognizing their child. There were very often tears on the other end of the phone. Sometimes, the tears were out of relief (since so many families were accustomed to only receiving a phone call from the school when their child was doing something wrong). Sometimes, the tears were out of immense pride! Other times, the tears came from expressions of gratitude, thanking the teachers for recognizing the greatness of their child.
I would follow up with each teacher/team that submitted a compliment and share the family's reaction. I also personally thanked the teacher/team for complimenting their student, because this is an incredibly important way to build positive relationships with those we serve.
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