We Don't Want Nobody that Nobody Sent

Just back from a memorial party held by one of our Far South Side community leaders to commemorate the 16th anniversary of her father's passing.  During a meeting Thursday to touch base about turnaround-school community engagement efforts, Jane invited a few of us from the Network office.  With a look that said, If you don't come, this community will not be engaging with you.

"You free five o'clock Saturday?"

"Absolutely."

***

As a white guy not from Chicago and not from an urban school system, working on community-engagement with an entirely African American turnaround school on the Far South Side ... well, my work is cut out for me.

As it should be.

I've been in this sort of situation before, and my approach to crossing borders is to cross them listening.  While I have my own knowledge and experience with community engagement, it's not my job to write a handbook in 10 weeks, pass it to the school and parents, and pat myself on the back.  Rather, I've tried to be democratic, inclusive, empowering: to take the ideas that the school and community have, and bring together the strands into a coherent whole.

After all, my thinking goes, community engagement will be an ongoing process throughout the school's five-year turnaround (and beyond).  Long after I am gone, parents, teachers, and community members will be holding the reins.  If they've had a hand in building community-engagement strategies, they'll be more likely to own them, and to implement them.

What's my approach been, concretely?

I've used one-on-one meetings--chit-chat over coffee, usually--to get to know the experiences and visions of teachers at Wallace Elementary, visions that can be tapped as the community-engagement work gets underway.  I've talked to all three leadership members of the staff--some of them more than once--as well as nine other staff members.  I've led off meetings with a few words about my background, how I became aware of my race and privilege, and the teaching and counseling that first got me interested in school-family partnerships.  I've listened to the stories of teachers, elicited their thoughts on engagement, and talked about the talents they bring to the process.

Feedback's been positive.  But it's been a harder go to connect to parents or community members.  Harder to get access, to get calls returned.  Harder to know who to contact.

I did, however, finally connected to two community members this week: Jane.  Community broker par excellence, parent to children who passed through Wallace, member of countless councils and boards.  Our meeting revealed one more thing that makes community connections harder than teacher connections: a reservoir of skepticism that may run very deep.

Wallace's teachers are all new, and the ones I've met with unvaryingly eager.  But as I quickly learned from Jane's questions, she's one of probably many community member who's seen attempts to change schools.  Seen people from the outside try to impose a vision.  Seen white people who know what's right.  Seen students extract an experience that becomes the basis for their thesis at a far-off university.

On Thursday, Jane voiced that skepticism to me; but also an optimism, and an invitation to her home tonight.

***

It was a rollicking good time: Jane's sisters and brothers and children and grandchildren, tin foil platters of rib tips and pasta primavera as far as the eye could see, and (I didn't quite expect ever to say this) a stirring a cappella rendition of Barry Manilow's "One Voice," sung by a middle-aged gentleman with a truly impressive range.


I stuck close to my supervisor--who knows Jane well--until I had a handle on the room's genealogy, ventured out to mix a little, had very much very good food.  As darkness came and conversation moved inside, it took a turn I'm becoming increasingly familiar with: clusters of folks separating off to discuss a new charter school opening, developments of a parent council, how a candidate in an old race approached the community.  Talk of redistricting, and how it will affect upcoming elections.

There's politics everywhere in this city.  It runs very local, it's very tied to schools.  Having never worked in another large urban district, perhaps this is par for the course.  But nevertheless, it's striking.  One moment I'd shaken the hand of a tall fellow by the sink--next he was telling me he's running for the board of a local, newly-opening charter school.

Perhaps the most important moment for my work came when Jane used her booming voice to command the stage with a few words.  After she thanked the crowd, she moved on to the three Network staff who were there.  She called me out--talking about how she was skeptical when she first saw me, but was coming around because now she witnessed passion and commitment.  She vowed to put some meat on my bones.

I felt good for a moment; but the listening, the awareness, the work, must go on.

Welcome to the Big Time, Kid

I know a little bit about Chicago politics.  I've read about the pork and patronage.  Followed the Blagoyevich Senate-seat selling scandal.  The wards, the "mini-mayor" aldermen, the machine, the voter-turnout traded for jobs.  

When it comes to the school system, I've been slowly absorbing the lingo associated with the web of roles, rulers, and responsibilities in and around CPS.  At the local level, perhaps the most unique manifestation of politics and schools are the "LSCs," or Local School Councils.  Created during 1980s decentralization, with one for each of the 600-plus schools, they have survived recentralization--and maintain the power to hire and fire principals.  

In addition to the LSCs, the system's alphabet-soup includes CACs (Community Action Councils) and PACs (Parent Advisory Councils).  Powerful?  Evidently, yes.  Why?  I'm not sure yet.  

In the case of the south-side turnaround elementary school I'm working with on community-engagement, leaders from the LSC and CAC supported the turnaround.

Oh, and did I mention there's a PTA?  The PTA did not support the turnaround.

It's one thing to conceptually know the politics.  It's another to see it with all its brass-knuckles gleaming--as I did Thursday night during a community meet-and-greet for the school.

The meeting featured an invigorating opening speech by Principal Brennan, who recounted the teachers that first sparked her love of science, laid out her turnaround vision, and was generally a beacon of energy and optimism.  

It was an important speech.  But the real drama seemed to lie elsewhere.

Two community members were invited to speak.  One the head of the LSC, the other the head of the CAC. 

Community speaker #1 addresses the assembled parents: "You don't have to like me, and I don't have to like you.  Because it's about the kids."

Okay, glad we got that out of the way.

Now she addresses the principal: "Principal Brennan, people have been asking me, What do I think of you?"

An opportunity for a show of unity in the face of enormous challenges?

"And to be honest, Principal Brennan, I don't have an opinion about you.  Come back in December and ask me, and I will then."

How do you like them apples?  

Community speaker #2 was a little longer on the forward-looking and esprit-de-corps ...

... until I was introduced to her after the meeting.  As a non-Chicagoan white male in a suit, it often takes a little explaining to convey why I care about community-engagement and may have something to offer.  

Fair enough.  As it should be.

Well, let's just say: speaker #2 was and remains skeptical of my capacities in that regard, which she did not hesitate to directly tell me.  My status as an outsider, my choice of coffeeshop location, my taking of the bus ...     

I needed a glass of wine and a good 30 minutes of yoga after the meeting.  The school politics, the parent politics, the turnaround politics, the politics of race, of accountability, of community engagement.  This city breathes politics.  I've got a lot to learn.  

My Big Five

Everybody gets to the point, I guess, where the job search becomes serious.  I spent months and months exploring jobs, calling up folks for informational interviews, and mulling.  Lots of mulling.  Now I need  a job in the next two months.  I've applied for things, but unfortunately HR offices don't calibrate their hiring processes to the end of my grad-school program!

Folks at Education Pioneers have nudged me to reach out transparently to people I know, with a single message: I'm on the job market.

I'm even getting sort-of headhunted.  By a pretty cool nonprofit for an intriguing job, but I will admit it's a bit ... weird.

A couple years ago, I was asked what are the five most important things I'd need in a job.  I made a list back then.  I've tweaked it since, but it hasn't changed much:

Mission: I've got to work for a place I can connect to.  For the most part, I always have--a blessing, but also a need.

Grassroots Connection: I struggled teaching high-schoolers, but loved teaching adults.  I loved being a student activist in college.  I love talking to people.  I don't know if I have to be on the front-most of the front-lines, but I feel a deep need to be close, at least.

Strategy: Okay, this one can be hard to square with the preceding one.  I like the opportunity to think strategically, make plans, deal with "big ideas" (even if they only seem big to me).  Some mix of grassroots and strategy would put me over the moon.

Sharp Colleagues: I want to work with people who push me.  "Push" can mean a lot of things--push me intellectually, emotionally, experientially.  But at the end of the day I want to be challenged not just by my supervisor, but my peers, too.

Support, Growth, Development: Though I am very self-motivated, I struggle when I feel "out in left field," with lack of clarity or lack of support.  I thrive when I can bounce an idea off someone.  When I taught adult ESOL, that person was not just my on-site supervisor, but also a mentor I connected with almost exclusively via email.  In other words, I'm flexible as to where I get the support, but I know I need it.

Those are my big five.  I'm trying to keep them in mind as I search for jobs: considering lots of options, trying to stay true to myself.

Engaging a Turnaround School: Dispatch #1

I've got my workplan, I've got my action steps.  Today the rubber met the road: I conducted my first "one-on-one" with a staff member of the turnaround elementary school in Chicago--let's call it Edwards Elementary--I'm working with this summer.  The topic is community engagement.

I've made the case to myself--and am trying to make it to my office team--that the best thing I can do is build and support relationships about community engagement, relationships that can far outlast my brief tenure as a summer consultant.  As a professor of mine said last semester, "People are more likely to support something they helped to build."  I'm trying to help them to build it.


I escaped from the 103-degree heat into a Starbucks on the far south side of the city to meet with the Edwards's newest clerk, Eileen.  I'd first connected with her at a school meet-and-greet the week before.  I asked her to tell me a bit about herself, and I learned that she grew up in the neighborhood of the school, still lives there, and went to the school herself some 15, 18 years ago.  That was all news to me.

Part of her story, then, was this: "I want Edwards to be the place it was, the place people came to for school from all over the city.  I want it to be the place, again."

Another part was the views on parent engagement she's developed in her previous job as the clerk at another turnaround school on the (somewhat less far) south side.  She was eager to open up about her experiences, and had some definite feelings about what works and doesn't work when it comes to connecting with families.  

If she could recommend only one or two key things to teachers at Edwards, what would they be?  Her eyes lit up: You've got to connect, she said, one way or another.  Email, text, phone calls.

At your old school, I asked her, what did staff do to reach out to families who didn't have a working phone or email?  Her face lit up: Oh--we'd get the security guard who'd lived in the neighborhood for 50 years, and he'd either find someone who could get to them, or he'd go knock on their door.

Just the first of many one-on-ones.  Should be an interesting summer.