B-MEIS Newsletter - March 2021 (Plain Text Version)
|
||
|
In this issue: |
ARTICLES PARENT ENGAGEMENT IN A NEW ERA OF PANDEMIC Emma Chen, Department of Curriculum Studies, College of Education, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
An Immigrant Parent’ Story of Supporting Online Learning “My son has 100 undone assignments!” My friend K, who is also a Chinese immigrant mother, told me with deep frustration in June when schools had been closed for almost four months due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. K felt ashamed when she received a phone call from her son’s teacher asking her to help her son to catch up with the assignments, and the conversation was done through her yet-to-develop English. “I’m doing my best,” she said to me. “But I didn’t know about the assignments. I hope the teacher had reached out to me sooner.” Like many parents, K has spent the past few months trying to help her child learn at home. But unlike most, she has been doing this in a language she barely understands. K and her husband came to Canada three years ago from China, where they spoke Mandarin-Chinese and the dialect of their hometown. She knows basic English words and phrases after attending ESL courses provided for newcomers. When she needs to communicate with her son’s teacher, she relies on Google Translate and sometimes her son as an interpreter. She has no idea if the translations are correct, but it is better than doing nothing. “I wish I could help him more,” she said with a heavy sigh. Online school during the pandemic does not create new challenges. Rather, it exacerbates what’s already there. The students and parents who were struggling are now left further behind because they have less support. I know K. I know that she is a devoted parent who cares deeply about her child’s education and is capable of supporting her son in many ways. I saw pictures she posted online of their family doing garden work and house renovations, and during which she and her husband mentored their son with excellent crafty skills. I had family get-togethers with them and witnessed what loving and supporting parents they are. I had conversations with her and was fully aware of how fluent and elegant she could be when she expressed herself in her first language. My conversation with my friend K regarding her son’s 100 undone assignments happened before taking the Parent Engagement course in graduate school. After many thought-provoking discussions with fellow educators in the class, and hours of reading literature in this field, I found myself revisiting K’s story trying to organize my thoughts on parent engagement during remote schooling. I asked myself the following questions: What if she had been invited to the new format of learning at the very beginning? What if her family situation and their language barriers were considered a factor of supporting their child’s remote education? What if the teacher acknowledged K’s many contributions to her son’s education, instead of simply requesting them to “catch up with the assignments?” Rethinking Parent Engagement in the Pandemic Era Online/Remote learning Supporting online schooling is difficult for every parent. When working with my child on her remote Kindergarten learning experience, I felt completely invisible. The entire learning platform was built on an educational application that required a parent’s assistance to read the instructions, record the activities, and move and/or place numbers and letters on the screen. I had to delegate at least 2 hours a day to help my daughter with her assignments, not because they were difficult but because it was beyond a 5-year-old’s ability to navigate the online platform. Her teacher is an excellent educator who showed great passion and dedication to the children in her class. She wrote feedback on every single activity and assignment my daughter finished with encouragement and kindness. However, my efforts were never acknowledged, even for the activities which required the parents to video record children’s movements. There was zero direct communication with parents, as if the assignments were accomplished independently by the young children. This experience directed my attention to rethinking parent engagement in the age of remote learning, which might become a new normal after the breakout of COVID-19. As homes become part of the schooling landscape, and as parents become part of the educating team (willingly or not), ways of communicating, collaborating, and supporting each other call for a redesign and reformat. Supporting language learners remotely Remote schooling poses a special challenge for families whose first language is not English. Imagine you are a parent who held a university degree or higher. You had a great job that not only could support your family financially but also grand a great sense of accompaniment and self-value. But “poof!”, none of those were recognized or valued anymore when you moved to a new country where you could not understand the dominant language. You would struggle with self-identity, language barriers, and employment. In the meantime, you have a child to support as a parent and also as a teacher because schools are closed during a pandemic. You wish the teacher could know your situation and hear your voice. But you don’t know how to get an accurate message delivered since English is not your first language. I had the privilege of learning many approaches through my fellow educators during group discussions in my graduate Parent Engagement course. They went extra miles to communicate with immigrant parents, including sending welcome letters to parents translated into the family’s first language, home visits with the help of an interpreter or asking the child to translate conversations, exchanging Google-translated ideas via email or online applications, and so forth. I believe these are all great starting places for a trusting relationship between teachers and immigrant parents. We might need to figure out more methods and ways to work together. But having the core value of supporting language-diverse families in the heart has significant values. Inviting parent knowledge Remote teaching and learning during the pandemic era demonstrate an urgent demand for inviting parent knowledge. It is obvious, when children are home living and learning with their parents, there should be a place for parents to voice their experience, their knowledge of children, their hopes and dreams, their struggles, their challenges, and so many more. Keeping in mind Pushor’s (2015) understanding of parent knowledge that “[g]iven the particular nature of the connectedness within this caregiver-care receiver relationship, there are elements to parent knowledge, aspects of it, which are constructed, held, and used in unique ways.” The unique knowledge parents possess a valuable resource to children’s education, and it is time to acknowledge their contributions and make room for parents’ voices in education. Closing Thoughts I was deeply touched by all the great conversations exchanged with teachers in my graduate course on the topic of parent engagement. I was captured by the many stories they shared engaging parents in their school settings, of their deep commitment to supporting students and families from diverse backgrounds, and of the hopes and possibilities they presented for future work in this field. I draw on the excrescences of the immigrant parents (especially parents who are not fluent in the English language) as a way to capture your imagination so that you might come alongside me in my wonderings. Cummins (2000) reminds us that [I]f ability to speak English and the knowledge of North American cultural conventions are made prerequisites for “parental involvement”, then many of those parents will be defined as apathetic and incompetent and will play out their pre-ordained role of non-involvement. (p. 8). I am left wondering what would happen to the new format of learning in an era of the post-pandemic world if we spent more time developing relationships with students and their families and invite parent knowledge into the collaboration of children’s education. As the new and challenging time comes, are educators ready to shift the taken-for-granted perspectives and see parents as capacity-based partners? How are educators going to engage families and better support students and parents in remote learning? References Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power, and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Multilingual Matters. Pushor, D. (2015). Conceptualizing parent knowledge. In D. Pushor & The Parent Engagement Collaborative II (Eds.), Living as mapmakers: Charting a course with children guided by parent knowledge (1-20). Sense Publishers.
Emma Chen is a doctoral student in Curriculum Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, engaged in a narrative inquiry into immigrant children’s heritage language education, in the context of home, community, and school. Originally from China, Emma is an immigrant parent to two young bilingual children who speak both English and Chinese. Every day, Emma walks alongside her little girls exploring the wonderful (and sometimes challenging) worlds of language and culture. |
|