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Richard Vong
Meg Goldner Rabinowitz November 8, 2014 Action Project Reflection Learning & Motivation Class I “Family Engagement” The primary strategy discussed by Helen Gym that I attempted in the past few weeks was to make phone calls home to a majority of my students, focusing on multiple/frequent phone calls for students who misbehave daily. Gym talked about phone calls home as one of many effective strategies in order to build rapport with students’ families and to gain improved understanding of students’ engagement. During the week, I would call parents whose children had received a pink slip or more than two verbal warnings to inform them of the disciplinary action and to ask for advice on how best to engage the student. During the weekend, phone calls to whole sections (around 30 students) would be made to highlight good and bad behavior. The mediums of contact with parents range from text messages to voice calls depending on the parents’ preferences. Phone calls are logged on an excel document for personal reference and in order to collect data. For students who were troublesome on a daily basis, phone calls home were least effective in ceasing misbehavior but most effective in gaining understanding of students’ lives. There were four scenarios. In the first scenario, phone calls would not reach home due to a number that is out of service. In the second scenario, an incorrect number was provided and the wrong party reached. In the third scenario, the call would reach voicemail. In the fourth scenario, a successful phone call would be made. Numbers that are out of service or incorrect are listed incorrectly in the school’s data file. Calls that go to voicemail are left with a message containing my name, affiliation with Tilden, reason for call and a call back number. To date, no voicemails have resulted in a return call out of all calls tried. For calls that did reach the parent or guardian, a lot of background was provided by the parent/guardian on the child’s life. Isign, a 6th grader, exhibits misbehavior on a nearly daily basis and has low classroom engagement. His actions include being out of his seat for the majority of class, cursing, distracting other students and shouting in class. Despite providing Isign with differentiated work in alignment with his IEP, Isign at times finds it difficult to remain seated and productive in class. During an initial phone call home with his guardian, she explained that Isign is her adopted son. In addition, he still has occasional contact with his biological family. On a day when Isign was acting out more than usual, a phone call home revealed that he was told he wouldn’t be able to see his biological family that weekend. The guardian explained that due to this news, Isign was agitated that week. Although knowing this and calling home did not cease the misbehavior that week, I was able to understand a possible reason why Isign was acting out. Positive phone calls also proved to be effective in raising student engagement in the classroom. Emani, a 7th grader, was more than eager to provide an updated phone number for her mom when asked on the premise that I wanted to give a positive phone call home. During the call with her mom, I gained little background information on Emani’s life, but in the next day, her engagement in class increased. She raised her hand to answer most questions and was willing to help other students during independent practice when she finished early. On another occasion, a similar case occurred when Anja, a 7th grader in a different section, voluntarily wrote her mom’s number and passed it to me at the end of class after receiving over 3 positive reinforcements during the day. A phone call home did not lead to much information about Anja’s life, however Anja’s classroom engagement spiked in the following few days. There are multiple reasons that positive phone calls home lead to little background information. Upon reflection on past phone calls, I realized that I did not ask about the student’s life in positive phone calls. This is because there was no perceived need to gain information on student background when the student was doing well for the day. In contrast, asking a parent how best to handle a student’s behavior in a disciplinary call inadvertently leads to a discussion about the student’s life. Positive phone calls are measurably shorter in duration than disciplinary phone calls. Because there is no perceived “problem,” parents are quick to say, “Okay. Thank You for the call, and you have a great night.” The phone calls made on the weekends were not as effective as weekday calls in culling misbehavior, but they proved useful in understanding students lives. For Alex, a 7th grader whose student engagement is below satisfactory, a phone call home on the weekend revealed that his mom works three jobs and rarely sees Alex when he is awake. Conversations about school between mother and son are brief and not in depth. As a result of gaining this information, I provided Alex’s mother with daily text updates on Alex’s engagement and monthly progress reports. This did not raise Alex’s active participation in class. However, it did raise his self-regulation in completing assignments and getting work done in class. In a minority of cases, calls that successfully reach the parent or guardian neither resolved the misbehavior in class nor resulted in better understanding of the student’s life. In the case of Assiatu, a 7th grader, a phone call home and explanation of Assiatu’s behavior was met with the response “Okay. Thank you.” Assiatu continued to misbehave in class and exhibit low engagement. It was in a later incident when she had her phone taken away, that she told me her parents worked “all day” and could not come pick up her phone; it was her second offense with a cellphone out in use, and per the school rules, a parent/guardian needed to pick up her phone. From this experience, I realized that I could not rely heavily on phone calls home to resolve misbehavior. In conclusion, the phone calls home overall proved to be effective in gaining information about students’ lives and having some positive effect on student engagement. Disciplinary phone calls were most effective for gaining background information whereas positive phone calls were more effective in increasing student participation in class. However, phone calls home should be supplemented with other strategies such as conversations with the student, home visits and parent-teacher conferences in order to gain a better understanding of students’ lives and ultimately student engagement in the classroom. |
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