Jones Family 2008-2009

Have you ever wondered if you are the only parent who has a difficult time making connections to your child’s school? As the new director of the Center for the Improvement of Student Learning (CISL) at OSPI and as someone who has just moved into a new community, I decided it may be helpful to use this blog to chronicle my experiences as the mother of three children (an 11 year-old, a 12 year-old and a 13 year-old) and an educator. I hope you can learn from my experiences.

I know there are some of you out there saying, “School must be easy for her. She’s an educator. She works for OSPI. If anyone ‘gets’ school, it must be her.” I am passionate about doing this blog because as experienced as I am, I do not have all the answers. Furthermore, I have not always been here. I have not always had positive or easy experiences. I think each one of you will be able to relate to some portion of my past story and/or some portion of my current one.

I am an African-American woman who was raised as an ex-patriot in the Netherlands. I grew up as one of the only brown people in a sea of very wealthy Caucasians. When I decided to come to America for college, I came very aware that I was a foreigner in this country. I knew I would be culturally different from the other African-Americans, so I was ready to “not belong” to their community right away. What shocked me was how I was perceived by Caucasians in my college community. My first three years in America were years of self-discovery and much pain as I realized I was not like anyone else around me. Not only was I called a “foreigner” by those in the African-American community, most of whom had never heard of the Netherlands; I was also called the “n” – word as I walked down the street to the store. I was followed by security in stores as I walked down aisles looking for a new toothbrush or a bar of soap. It was not until my junior year that I finally decided either people would like me or not like me. I couldn’t change where I had grown up or the color of my skin.

Shortly after graduation from college, I married an African-American man who had grown up in a single-parent home in an urban community. We married and spent the first four years of our marriage living in very poor communities where gang violence was a daily affair and meals consisted of whatever we could gather from our WIC checks and the food bank. He was working on his graduate degree, and I was substitute teaching when I could get work. Finally, I was hired as the only teacher of color in a private school. In the midst of that first job, I became pregnant with my oldest child. As my children grew from infancy to school age, I became concerned about the state of affairs in our public schools. I looked at the resources my students had in the private school where I worked as compared to the lack of resources and apparent lack of concern for education I was seeing in the public schools. Suddenly, my perceptions of school were personal and not just professional.

I now have three school-aged children. I have one child who has struggled with academic endeavors from the time he was four and I asked him to practice writing. Based on his difficulty remaining focused to complete tasks, we suspected he was ADD, which was later confirmed. He is very intelligent, but struggles with organization and completing assignments. He is gifted athletically and musically. My second child struggles with the content of some subjects but is organized and persistent so has demonstrated above-average grades throughout elementary school. This child is very social and thrives on daily interactions with peers, as well as participation in team sports and band. If there is “drama” to report in school, she is somehow involved. The third child has participated in highly-capable programming for most of his academic career. Although he demonstrates high achievement academically and participates in band, he struggles socially amongst his peers.

Anyone with more than one child knows that no two children are ever alike. This makes parenting at home and at school very complicated. Each child has different needs. Some can be left alone to complete assignments and to manage their behavior. They are self-motivated and self-sufficient. Others require many reminders and a regular call to a teacher.

I am a teacher by trade, so maybe you think I should have this all together. Let me tell you, I am still learning. I still haven’t figured out the way to guarantee that the homework my son has done at home in front of my eyes will make it to his teacher’s desk. I still haven’t figured out how to stop my daughter from allowing other people’s “issues” to distract her from her job at school – to be a student. I haven’t figured out how to stop worrying about whether or not my youngest will have made enough friends by his birthday to warrant having a party. I haven’t figured out how to get as involved as I would like in my children’s school while holding down a full-time job.

As we begin a new year, I want you to know that I send my children off to school the first day just as nervous as you. Will my children get the best teachers? Will my youngest son be laughed at because he’s not good at playing football or basketball like the rest of the boys? Will my children remember to bring home all the necessary beginning-of-the-year paperwork? Will their classrooms be overcrowded? Will they like their new schools?

Don’t think because I have an important position in education that schools will treat me any differently from you. I have been yelled at (when a teacher thought I was a student skipping class, not a parent visiting a classroom). I have been ignored (I mean, not even looked at or spoken to by office staff). I have been told by a teacher that she thought my child was stupid, until she realized he was ADD and just needed to be refocused. I have had important paperwork lost by a teacher. I have struggled just like you to get my kids the kind of education I believe they (and all children) deserve.

As we begin a new school year, I have already made appointments with my children’s principals. I want them to know me and to know that I care. Did I not care before? That was not the case. This will be the first year I can get away from work to make these appointments. I was always in school working with other people’s children and unable to get away to take care of my own the way I would have liked to.

This is a new season for me. As I walk through a new year as a parent of children in a new school, as an employee in a new position, I want to be very aware of ways other parents who are busy during school hours can be involved. I want to think more intentionally about how to support those of you who may have to work two or three jobs or who work a 9:00 – 5:00 and can’t get away to visit a classroom during the day.

Join me for the next nine months and learn with me about how we can do a better job of partnering with our schools to create more successful experiences for our children. Hear about my successes and feel free e-mail me with yours.
If you have questions or suggestions to add to this blog, please write to me at erin.jones@k12.wa.us. I may not have answers for you, but I can help connect you to the resources you need.