Keeping it Real: Parents and Professionals as Allies

By Janet DesGeorges, Executive Director of H&V Headquarters

The following are excerpts from a speech given to Teachers of the Deaf at the Opening Doors/Unlocking Potential Conference:  Language, Literacy and the School/Home Connection in Virginia- June 2018

There are a variety of different professionals here in the room today. And as you were each introducing yourself in the positions/roles that you play, I was thinking about one of my own daughter’s teacher of the deaf, and I’d like to dedicate this session today to her – Karen Mika in Colorado, who was instrumental in my daughter’s life and education.

Today we’re going to talk about parent/professional partnerships. We’re going to do it in three different ways:

• The idea of building relationships you have with families. For those of you who work directly with students, you may be thinking about this in terms of parents that you individually work with. For those of you as administrators, I know that you often are thinking in the context of the system of all families that you work with.
• We will get into some practical suggestions to enhance parent/professional partnerships.
• We will explore what the law says about the partnerships between parents and professionals in the IEP process. (editor’s note: not included in this excerpt)

Building relationships

When I think about parent/professional partnerships, I have lots of different stories over the years that I experienced. By the time my daughter had turned 8, we had 37 professionals come and go in our life. And we have a deaf daughter without any additional special needs. Most likely, about 47 percent of families who have kids who are deaf/hard of hearing also have additional special needs, and I bet that number of professionals in their lives is even higher. I believe your biggest impact for students you serve will be in that relational door you create with the parent who, at the end of the day, have the responsibility and accountability to ensure the success for their kids. And parents, we need those partnerships with professionals. We just can’t get where we need to go without the professionals in our lives. Our daughter’s educational journey and success is due in part to the professionals standing next to us along the way.

Research bears out that the trust factors in high-stress situations are assessed in the first 9 to 30 seconds. Honesty and openness opens the door, and then confidence in expertise is lower on the scale. Relationship is built out of the idea that families feel listened to, cared about and empathy is displayed.

Supporting a parent’s ownership of decision making.

I think for me, I have a very positive idea about this school-home connection, and it stems back from the very first professional who came into our life, an early intervention provider. When I begged her, “please just tell us what to do for Sara”, she didn’t grab that bait. She let go of it, put it back in our hands as parents and said, “As parents, you will make the best decisions for Sara. How can I support you with more information so that you can make those decisions?”

She trusted my judgment before I looked like a parent who had it all together. I think it’s important to think about anytime you’re interacting with a parent across from you who you perceive as a certain way– whether you think they’re not following through, they’re not committed, they don’t know anything, or they’ve made a bad decision about their child. That is not a static place. Families can move from one level to the next in meaningfully being involved by getting the information, supports and resources they need. You are a part of that story for families.

I am not your Mother–I went to a meeting once where I sat down with a group of professionals, and they were discussing a family, and I thought, what is going on? Why is that teacher talking about her mother? I honestly could not wrap my brain around what was going on. It’s because when the group was talking about this family, they were using the word ‘mom’ such as, “so mom is going to be here today, and when we discuss…” I’m not trying to pick on anybody, but I think you can get into that energy at times of discussing parents in the abstract. But there is something important about the relationship between professionals and parents in the need for using people’s names. I think honestly some of the people were using that name ‘mom’ because they didn’t take time to remember the mom and dad’s name coming through the door. I actually had a professional once call me “mom” and maybe other parents think that’s sort of familiar and nice, but for me it was a sign of disrespect —I think it is a really basic thing of building relationships when we say…”How would you like me to address you, your first name, Mr. and Mrs…?”

Practical Applications of Partnerships

There’s some real power in partnering together. Think about parents not only in the individual relational sense but collectively, and how you might engage parents programmatically – whether you work as part of a center-based program at a school, at a school for the deaf, even in a general education classroom.

Ideas for Communication between school and home

• Do you have a website section for families of d/hh kids linked on your school’s website? One of our schools in Colorado has a beautiful website for families, so that families can go to the website and look at the opportunities that are occurring for families, along with opportunities for families to get together.
• Bringing families together into a room from your school program to get direct input on how to involve parents for the benefit for the program. Maybe it’s opportunities for helping to provide peer to peer support for our kids, for families to get together, providing newsletter information or resources to families, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, collaborating in the community.
• What programs can parents help develop and implement at your school? Sometimes things like sign language classes, technology workshops.
• Give opportunities to families at professional development days. Sometimes there’s a little bit of resistance from professionals to include families,  saying “this is our one opportunity to come together and have our peers together”, but what we’ve seen when families can get more knowledge about the specific aspects of the d/hh experience from experts like people in this room or when you have workshops, things on language or literacy, that it really is a great opportunity to both have joint learning.

Parent involvement in language and literacy

I would like to share two things that happened in my life that made me have ownership of language and literacy in my daughter Sara’s education. One was a workshop that was created by parents by our Hands & Voices in Colorado where we had a teacher of the deaf and just spent an hour about language and literacy basic information. Sara was our third daughter, and I never really thought about how kids learned to read. It just wasn’t something I was instructed in. Just that one session helped open my eyes! Another opportunity came at our school. One summer we had a literacy event for the whole family. Every Wednesday night workshops, the kids would be in groups, and they would go over books they were reading, and all the parents would go to the library and it’s where I learned strategies like leapfrogging, how to stop and check for comprehension,  etc. I know there’s some good programs like the Clerc Center’s Shared Reading Project and other resources from The Hearing First website that really helps parents specifically for parents of deaf kids across the modality and language ranges.

Let’s think more about the home-school language and literacy connection and ideas that can help parents. For example:

• Preteaching and reteaching -when I got that concept, that was really helpful for me as a parent.
  • We used to check out all of Sara’s middle school curriculum books at the end of the summer, take them home with us for the next grade, throughout the summer we could just get some familiarity with some of the contexts of that.
  • In elementary school, sending home the books that they’re reading in class, we could work on that during our reading time.
• I remember in an IEP meeting when the teacher of the deaf was explaining to me what her role and job was, I remember thinking, I could do that, as well. And she was so good at sending that information home.
• At one point when Sara’s speech therapy was winding down, I really didn’t want to give up the SLP and our team, we started talking about other things she could do. One of the things she did was work on Sara’s spelling tests so that Sara could get to know the spelling words but then she could incorporate her SLP steps she did into the general curriculum.
• There’s some ways to help families stay connected through all about me books, daily journals, thinking about how the classroom is set up…
• Helping families connect with other families for support.

It’s amazing when you think about the parents of the students you serve, not as someone you just have to get to sign the IEP or just to make sure they’re not causing trouble, but how you can incorporate what you’re trying to do in school at home, because at the end of the day, those few precious hours in the school setting aren’t really going to be what’s going to bring success for our kids. It’s going to be in combination with what can happen at home.

What is ‘appropriate access’?

Parents need a clear understanding and the ability to advocate and partner for communication accessibility. I can remember an IEP meeting where there was a high school student at the meeting, and on the IEP documentation every year there was ‘captioning will be provided of all films or anything shown in the classroom.’ The mother of this student was getting really upset because it had been on the IEP for years and the student kept coming home and “we watched another movie today that wasn’t captioned.” The tension in the room was really high, everyone was really upset, and the teachers were trying to share about how only certain places in the building could get captioning or the films that the teachers showed didn’t have captioning, they couldn’t get the general ed. teachers to use the films with captioning, explanations that did not reduce the high level of frustration in the room. Finally, the student said, “okay, everybody stop, wait. You know what? Never mind, don’t worry about it. It’s all right. It’s okay. We don’t have to have captioning. But just so that all the students in the room have equal accessibility in the room when we do that, could you just go ahead and turn the volume all the way down?” We must partner together to bring clarity and understanding to all about what communication is, and that it is levelling the playing field for our kids.

We had a mom call us at the Hands & Voices office who had just come out of her IEP meeting in a rural area and she said, “I don’t know what to do, you tell me if this is okay. I just came out of my son’s IEP, he’s three-years-old, he’s been assessed — I have his assessments that show that his primary communication is sign language, he has a few spoken words, but the offer on the table from the school is preschool 4 days a week with somebody who has working knowledge of sign language coming in for 15 minutes a week. Is that okay?” No. It’s not okay. And I know these stories get gasps in the room, but this idea of the parent/professional partnership is particularly important to build family’s advocacy and skills about what is the baseline for communication accessibility for our kids in order for them to get a good education.

I always tell parents “you know, it’s easy sometimes to point at the systems that are failing us or to point at a school and get angry and upset, but in the end the true meaning of parent/ professional collaboration is that we take ownership and responsibility, as well.”

Parents of deaf kids are no different than you. You are overworked, you have life, family, community, stress, crises, emergencies. You know, parents of deaf kids are no different. But this is something that’s been added to our plates, and for me, I don’t begrudge that. I love that I have a daughter who’s deaf. That became a part of our journey, but let’s remember that any given day the opportunities for families sometimes to be really invested and involved can be difficult.

It’s all about our kids

I want to give a shout out to my daughter, Sara. When in high school at an IEP meeting, I was standing outside the door with Sara’s teacher of the deaf. It was the day before high school started. Our teacher of the deaf always worked really hard to get all the teachers into one room the day before school started because Sara’s IEP was in the spring, and we wanted to make sure the general education teachers had some basic information to support Sara in the classroom. As I stood outside the door with the Teacher of the Deaf, we had this little angst going on between us about who was going to present the information we wanted to get done that day at the meeting. We’d have 30 minutes with all the teachers, and what’s the most important stuff we needed to cover. She said “I’ll go over it with them.” I said, “No. I’ll go over it with them. We need to cover FM, interpreters, etc.”  Sara is with us, standing there, and as we walk in, as we’re sitting down, Sara says to the group, “I just want to thank all of you for coming today, I have a few things I want to go over with you about my FM system and my other needs.”  It was a strong moment for me to remember this was not about me, or her teacher. This was about Sara!  At the end of the day, it’s not about me as a parent or my advocacy ‘muscle’. There’s somebody watching us. It’s our kids. And as you as professionals work with your students in terms  of their own self advocacy skills, we as parents must learn advocacy in order to support our kids, but we have to learn over time to let go and let our kids lead their own lives. I know we’re all in this room on behalf of our children. I want to thank all of you for the work you’re doing.  ~