Life is as the
sea, art a ship in which man conquers life's crushing formlessness, reducing it
to a course, a series of swells, tides and wind currents inscribed on a chart.
—Ralph Ellison,
“Richard Wright’s Blues”
I’ve discovered a few things this
summer, and high up on that list, I have discovered the power of the “one-on-one.”
The one-on-one is a key sequence from
the organizer’s playbook. Though my own
organizing is limited to two years of student activism in college, I’ve
snatched the idea for my work on family and community engagement this summer—and
boy has it paid off.
A fact sheet from Organizing for America’s
Virgina branch revealed the power of meeting people in person,
individually. OFA tracked the outcomes
of various forms of reaching out to potential volunteers over a four-month
period in the winter of 2010. They found
that only 3% of people talked to on the phone became leaders in the
organization, and 6% of volunteers at events.
Folks entreatied through one-on-ones, meanwhile, were converted to
leadership roles fully 23% of the time.
***
As I took stock of my summer-long
work supporting family and community engagement (FACE) at the Wallace
Elementary School in Chicago, I knew that I had something to offer. I also knew I had to hit the ground
listening.
Part of my mandate to listen was
because I am the ultimate outsider to the work: a white, middle-class male not
from Chicago, not living in the neighborhood, and not recently a schoolteacher,
working with a heavily African American K-8 school on the Far South Side.
But equally a part of my mandate to
listen was that FACE work inherently has to be democratic. Though surely there are many schools that
give lip-service to family engagement, for a half-dozen reasons, I don’t think
you can meaningfully “engage” families if you don’t listen to their
perspectives—and put those perspectives at the center of your work.
As I developed my summer work-plan,
a three-stage process came into formation: Assessing,
Assisting, and Achieving. The first stage:
assess the needs, capacities, and perspectives of teachers, school leaders,
families, and community members with respect to FACE. The second stage: capitalizing on what I’d
learned in the first stage, assist the various parties in developing engagement
strategies—contributing my knowledge and experience with engagement. The third stage: from the end of my placement
forward, it would be up to the school, families, and community to achieve their
vision for engagement.
The currency of the assessing stage
would take several forms—attending community meetings, holding focus groups—but
above all else, I plunged into one-on-ones.
***
To carry them out, I’ve broken bread
at local diners, met up for coffee at Starbucks, cleared a space in the corner
of a library under renovation. Through
the process of more than a dozen such conversations, mainly with teachers but
now branching into parents and community members, I’ve honed my techniques into
what seems to be a workable set-up.
Before we even broach engagement, we
get to know each other—at least on some level.
I’ve learned that a key ingredient of the one-on-one is telling and
hearing each other’s stories.
And it pays to go first, to tell my
own story before I put my interlocutor on the hot seat. I talk about where I grew up. I put racial issues on the table: I talk
about my choice to major in ethnic studies in college, the awareness and
passion for social justice I gained from that.
I touch on my experience as a high-school teacher, then an adult ESL
teacher, and how that led to an interest in family literacy and parents engaging
with schools. And I express a desire to
work together with whoever sits across from me on community engagement. By going first—and I’ve tried it both ways—I can
show my interest in going deep, in being candid.
Then I listen.
One teacher told me about the intentional
multiracial housing community she lived in in college. Another about the ministry she leads. Another about attending the Wallace back in
the day, when it attracted students from across the city. About the dozen pathways into education
they’ve taken.
Another talked about his high-school
days at a strict Catholic school, where they vowed to turn boys into men. Another about how her very parents reflected
both visible involvement (her father served on the Local School Council) and
subtle but critical engagement (her mother pushed her learning at home).
I’ve seen faces open up, start to
glow. Not just about their experiences—also
and ultimately, their vision for community engagement.
I usually don’t open my notebook
until their personal story is over. Then
I dive into questions about community engagement, and start writing. It’s striking how much information can be
conveyed in merely an hour. Even my
limited stenography, when I retype it into Word later, can run for a dense
page-and-a-half, full of insights I might have forgotten if I hadn’t been
writing as I listened.
As we talk, I’m jotting notes about
the person’s values, interests, and resources.
I’m identifying possible leverage points—attempting to chart Ellison’s
sea: I plunge deeper when a topic seems to strike a chord, when the other
person really cares about positive phone calls or the nuts-and-bolts of
preparing for a parent-teacher conference.
I pivot off a topic when it’s exhausted itself.
Finally: the commitment.
As the conversation winds to a
close, I make explicit two to three talents in family engagement that I see in
that person. And I suggest a small way
in which they might be able to contribute to FACE strategies. In some cases, I’ve asked for a commitment on
the spot: Would you be willing to teach
newer teachers in how to make positive relationships with families in the first
weeks of school?
Such commitments get funneled into an action plan, the template for next steps.
***
On their face, the one-on-ones I've put at the center of my work this summer may appear inefficient. They are, however, purposeful--and purposefully limited, usually an hour, no more than 90 minutes. And I have explored focus groups as a way to meet with more than one person at a time.
Beyond that, though, the value of the one-on-ones is that they allow me to make a potentially deep connection with the very individuals
who will be responsible for carrying out—or not carrying out—community
engagement long after my work is done.
They allow an individual’s perspectives, vision, and talents in the area
of FACE to surface in ways that they might not in even very small focus
groups. As I’ve come to believe, it’s
school leaders, teachers, and families who will ultimately have to do the work:
if they are energized about community engagement, if they are the ones to build
the strategies, they’ll own them.
And the hope is—they’ll implement
them. One-on-ones are only the first step in a pathway that requires a lot of hard work. But they make a very good first step indeed.
