Amy Baeder

T
he winding entrance to Fualosa and Vais house is
bordered by vibrantly colored dahlias and
hydrangeas, evidence of their grandmothers
interest in gardening. Their father, an evening
shift cook at an expensive restaurant in Seattle,
welcomes me into his home. He tells me that he talks to his
children every day about the importance of education, and he
asks me to pass on to other teachers at Cleveland High School
that, although he cant attend evening events at school, he
would still like to be involved.
Sarahs family meets me at a neighborhood coffee shop.
Sarahs adoptive parents are busy with their careers, her father
as a university professor and her mother as a religious leader.
However, they hope to serve as field trip chaperones and
panel members for our schools senior projects. I learn from
our talk that the family lives in an area with few teenagers
(Sarah calls it the diapers and dentures community) and
that Sarah feels isolated as a biracial teen in a mostly white
neighborhood. I also learn new things about Sarahs strengths;
although she struggles in school, she loves science and reads a
lot in her free time.
Sapphire lives with her father and half-brother. When I
arrive, she immediately takes me upstairs to show me her
spotless bedroom and the desk where she does her home-
work. Her father enjoys remodeling their homehis tools
and a newly purchased shower board are in the hallway. He
tells me he is proud of his daughters academic success, espe-
cially after the death of her mother, and also that he would
like to mentor young men at Sapphires school.
These three portraits exemplify the richness and diversity of
families at Cleveland High, a small school in southeast Seattle
serving approximately 700 students. Such portraits cannot be
found by reading the schools 200809 annual report, which
states that 95 percent of our students come from minority
backgrounds, 64 percent are eligible for free and reduced-
price lunch, and 64 percent live with only one parent or a
grandparent. The information teachers gained while talking
with these families may never have been shared in a parent-
teacher conference or PTA meeting.
These glimpses of students lives, and many like them,
unfolded during visits that our teachers made to students
homes during the last school year. Through listening to
parents, grandparents, and others, we learned of these indi-
viduals talents, experiences, and dreamsin ways that would
later help us understand and motivate our students.
56 EDUCAT I ONA L LE A DE R S HI P / FE B R UA RY 2010
By visiting students
homes, a Seattle high
school brings families
talentsand students
interestsinto school.
Stepping
Into Students
Worlds
The information teachers
gained may never have been
shared in a PTA meeting.
Baeder pp56-60_2:EL Template 1/5/10 5:42 PM Page 56
The Need to Cross the Threshold
Educators lives are increasingly disconnected from the lives of
their students. Many teachers commute to school from far-off
suburbs or simply live in different neighborhoods from those
they teach. Because the natural overlaps that once arose from
living in close community, such as shopping at the same
stores or sharing a place of worship, have largely disappeared,
teachers have a harder time getting to know students and
their families. As Thomas Barone (1989) puts it, educators
have lost the ability to reach out and honor the places
(whether the barrio, the ghetto, the reservation, the
Appalachian holler, or simply the peaks and pits of adoles-
cence) where our students live (p. 151). Home visits bridge
that gap.
Bridging the gap is especially important
when socioeconomic, racial, or linguistic
divides exist between the cultural groups a
schools families come from and those its
educators come from. When teachers get to
know families in their homes, they gain first-
hand knowledge about each family, rather
than accepting generalities about Latino,
black, Asian, or American Indian cultures.
Education researchers have discussed the importance of
visiting with immigrant families to discover these families
strengths and talents (Ginsberg, 2007; Lopez, 2001; Moll,
Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). When educators work hard
to make the initial visit positive, home visits can shift power
into the hands of families and overcome any negative school
experiences from family members pasts.
Entering as Learners
When we train Cleveland Highs educators to do home visits,
we encourage them to focus on discovering the strengths of
families, what Gonzlez, Andrade, Civil, and Moll (2001) call
families reservoirs of accumulated knowledge and strategies
for survival (pp. 116 117). We urge teachers to consider
how they might transfer these funds of knowledge (Moll et
AS CD / WWW. A S CD. OR G 57
Teachers from Cleveland High School visit
with the Galvan family in their home.
PHOTOS SUSIE FITZHUGH
Baeder pp56-60_2:EL Template 1/5/10 5:45 PM Page 57
al., 1992) to the classroom by creating
lessons that directly relate to a familys
knowledge or having family members
volunteer in ways that tap their skills.
For example, when Cleveland High
teacher Lydia Stone visited Sarah, she
realized that Sarahs father had an
insiders knowledge of standards for
college-level work. She drew on this
professors expertise by inviting him to
serve on the panel that judges students
senior projects. A father who wants to
mentor male students is a great find,
and when we discovered that Sapphires
father wanted to make this commit-
ment, we connected him with teachers
in a career center who could line him
up to mentor district students. He now
volunteers on our senior project boards
as well. When teachers design or extend
opportunities for including parents with
the talents of specific families in mind,
they can count on increased parental
involvement.
Family strengths have been a focus of
our home visits since we piloted the
program. In summer 2007, several
Cleveland High teachers attended a
training on engaging families conducted
by GEAR-UP, a program that works to
prepare low-income students for
college. These teachers learned of
Margery Ginsbergs work about home
visits and heard presentations from
other educators who did visits. This
pilot team made a plan to initiate visits
at Cleveland High, met with teachers at
another school who were veteran visi-
tors, and arranged for a trainer from the
districts family engagement department
to do a workshop on conducting family
visits for all interested Cleveland
teachers that spring. They used the
process Ginsberg described in a 2007
Educational Leadership articleoutlining
how to prepare the groundwork for a
home visit and collect data on funds of
knowledgeto guide their initial work.
Our teachers dont deliver informa-
tion during a visit; instead, they try to
listen. This stance is a significant depar-
ture from the traditional home visit
and a challenge to maintain. Teachers
do provide school forms, staff and
resource directories, and other informa-
tion as part of the visit, but only give
them to families just before they leave.
The primary focus is to build relation-
ships, create a more tightly knit school
community, and eventually design class-
rooms that better reflect our students.
We find it highly rewarding when we
incorporate information gleaned from a
home visit into a lesson, warm-up ques-
tion, project, or assignment; and we are
trying to do this more in our second
year of visits. One teacher drew on what
hed learned in talking with a students
father to develop a lesson with that
student in mind. The father mentioned
that his daughter, who was disengaged
in school, was highly interested in crime
scene investigation techniques and
forensics. This teacher then related a
chemistry lesson to forensic methods.
Cleveland High requires all certified
teachers to conduct home visits. Admin-
istrators, our bilingual instructional
aides, and such resource personnel as
the school nurse sometimes accompany
teachers. A partnership with the Univer-
sity of Washington provides extra
professional development for our staff.
Teachers receive appropriate training led
by our professional development coordi-
nator and Cleveland Highs home visits
coordinator. The arrangement includes a
yearly stipend for teachers$2,500 per
teacher this yearfor conducting visits
and attending professional development
in the summer.
Last year, each of our 40 teachers
visited five 9th grade students homes;
this year, each teacher will visit the
homes of at least five students from his
or her advisory class, choosing a mix
that represents the academic, racial, and
linguistic diversity of our school.
Although some may choose to visit a
few students who are struggling, the
focus remains on getting to know the
family, not addressing problems. We
hope to eventually visit all students in
the school. We follow up by tracking
the academic progress of the visited
students in our professional develop-
ment time. Teachers plan together how
to incorporate what they have learned
from visits into lessons, and they later
examine student work created during
these lessons.
Some educators perceive home visits
as auxiliary to what occurs in the class-
58 EDUCAT I ONA L LE A DE R S HI P / FE B R UA RY 2010
Teachers discover the familys
musical talents on the home visit.
Baeder pp56-60_2:EL Template 1/5/10 5:45 PM Page 58
room and unrelated to student achieve-
ment. However, when we visit a
students home, students become aware
that lines of communication have
opened between their family and their
teacher, and a feeling of trust and inclu-
sion develops. We are often pleasantly
surprised at how much student interest
in school increases after we begin to
make such connections.
How to Make It Work
Many secondary educators would like to
visit students homes but are unclear
about how to go about it. Students have
multiple teachers, and teachers serve
150 or more students. How can teachers
possibly make time to visit families in
the first few weeks of school? Weve
discovered that successfully launching
home visits requires schools to start
slowly, gather a pilot team, and lay the
groundwork:
Do research. Read articles about
home visits, seek professional develop-
ment regarding family engagement, and
talk to staff at other schools that have
implemented home visits.
Ponder your rationale. Carefully
consider why your school should do
home visits.
Think about your model. What
costs (such as for mailings or extra staff
time) may be associated with home
visits? Will you need translators? How
will you make this project sustainable?
Get the commitment of all staffor
a pilot groupbefore you plan logistics.
You might present the idea to a building
leadership team first or have a pilot
team share positive data from a fledging
visits program at a staff meeting. At
Cleveland, all staff had to sign a
compact agreeing to conduct home-
visits.
As you design the details of a home
visit program, youll need to
Designate a responsible person or
team to coordinate visits, ideally
someone who already works with fami-
lies (such as a school social worker).
You might give a classroom teacher
release time to devote to planning and
evaluating home visits. Small teams
work better than one person.
Train teachers to conduct effective
visits. Introduce the basics of home
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Home visits can shift power to families
and overcome past negative experiences.
Baeder pp56-60_2:EL Template 1/5/10 5:46 PM Page 59
visits and the concept of funds of
knowledge. Consider role-playing a
home visit and help teachers develop
questions that will be conducive to
learning from families.
I Agree on a method for selecting
which families to visit. Our first year, I
assigned five 9th graders to each
teacher, matching teachers with
students they had in class when
possible. This year, teachers chose five
kids from their advisory group.
I Decide how to contact families and
set parameters for visits. During our first
year, we sent letters to families and then
phoned to schedule visits ranging from
30 minutes to one hour. Be flexible in
arranging meeting times to accommo-
date parents schedules. We set a two-
month window for teachers to complete
visits, which gives teachers flexibility
but creates a sense of urgency about
conducting visits early in the year.
I Follow up with parents. The
program coordinator or a teacher
should contact parents or grandparents
after a meeting to answer questions and
tell them about opportunities for
involvement in school.
I Create opportunities for teachers to
use what they learn. You might design a
form or process that teachers can use to
describe key information they gained at
each visit and reflect on how to use that
rich knowledge. Its crucial to set up a
way for each home visitor to share infor-
mation with the students other
teachers; this may require further
professional development on how to tap
funds of knowledge. Teachers may also
need shared planning time to revise
lessons.
The Stories We Must Hear
Stories like those of Sarah, Fualosa, Vai,
Sapphire, and their families need to be
toldand its essential that their
teachers hear these stories. Each year,
on the first day of school, I stand in
front of a sea of faces, with names
swirling in my head. Some students
remain a mystery to me until I visit their
homes and they unfold into real people.
Teachers need to know students in this
way; every day we make instructional
decisions that hinge on what we know
about our kids. We can learn so much if
we just enter students homes and
listen.
References
Barone, T. (1989). Ways of being at risk: The
case of Billy Charles Barnett. Phi Delta
Kappan, 71(2), 147151.
Ginsberg, M. (2007). Lessons at the kitchen table.
Educational Leadership, 64(6), 5661.
Gonzlez, N., Andrade, R., Civil, M., &
Moll, L. (2001). Bridging funds of distrib-
uted knowledge: Creating zones of prac-
tices in mathematics. Journal of Education
for Students Placed at Risk, 6(1&2),
115132.
Lopez, G., (2001). The value of hard work:
Lessons on parent involvement from an
(im)migrant household. Harvard Educa-
tional Review, 71(3), 416437.
Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzlez,
N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for
teaching: A qualitative approach to devel-
oping strategic connections between
homes and classrooms. Theory Into Prac-
tice, 31(1), 132141.
Authors note: All names are pseudonyms.
Amy Baeder teaches biology at Cleve-
land High School, 5511 15th Avenue
South, Seattle, WA 98108; 206-252-7881;
aebaeder@seattleschools.org.
EL
60 EDUCAT I ONA L LE A DE R S HI P / FE B R UA RY 2010
Avoid the
Funding
Cliff...
Invest in
Sustainable
School
Improvement.
www.sustainableschoolimprovement.org
For the story of another schools home visit program, read the online-
only article When Are You Coming to My House? by Dana Aguilera
at www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/feb10/vol67
/num05/When_Are_You_Coming_to_My_House.aspx.
EL onl i ne
Baeder pp56-60_2:EL Template 1/8/10 9:56 AM Page 60
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