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Conferences. It’s one of the many things that all schools do, but all schools do differently. It is also a key moment in the school year for many things: collaborating on student academic effort, achievement, and behavior; creating trust between school and home; clarifying questions for the family; notifying caregivers if a student needs significant support and of what their student does well so they can receive affirmation at home. In the spring, risk of retention decisions are often shared. Conferences are big. The other thing about conferences, is that like it or not, it is when many of us start to solidify assessments about a students’ support system at home, and it is when as humans, we are really vulnerable to the confirmation bias: looking for information that confirms a belief or a opinion we already hold. This is particularly detrimental to the multilingual students and families we care for. If they don’t have equitable access to conferences, if they don’t sign up or attend in comparable numbers, it can lead some to solidify false beliefs: they don’t care about their child’s education, or they aren’t involved parents or I’m trying so hard, and they aren’t. In actuality, this is usually the farthest thing from the truth, but a staff member who hasn’t been in communication with a parent all year is unfortunately not unlikely to fall into this pit. It is a very very important time of year for our communication equity systems to work well, because it can shape opinions and beliefs of people in our school about our families, and therefore students, and therefore how they treat students and their expectations for them. Tip of the WeekMeasure multilingual parent-teacher conference attendance this season so you can not only know your rate of success, but you can show administration if there is a discrepancy between multilingual conference attendance and English-speaking conference attendance as a measure of the need for greater communication equity efforts. The StoryConference time was always a pain point for me in my role as Manager of ELL. It was plain to me every fall and spring that our conference system was failing students and families. Every cycle it was the same: I would roll out whatever system or set of expectations I had for granting conference access to multilingual families, and in the end, it would always end up the same way: chasing down teachers and administrators for the status of multilingual conferences so I could make sure an interpreter was present, not getting many responses, and in the end being unable to accept the possibility that our multilingual families wouldn’t have the opportunity to attend conferences, I would call them personally to schedule their conferences. Doing it this way was a problem for many reasons, including: lack of sustainability for me, lack of connection between classroom teachers and multilingual families, a lack of ownership over multilingual relationships outside the ELL department, inequitable access to this critical programming, it was hard for me to keep up with how each school did their conference sign-up. At one point in time, our schools switched to scheduling systems that meant I didn’t have visibility into their conference schedules anymore so I literally could not schedule families to attend conferences, because I didn’t know what time slots were free for which teachers. It was a nightmare, and every cycle I tried a new strategy to fix it, and to be honest, I saw almost no change. It always ended the same. It was also conferences that filled me with enough stubborn will and determination to finally crack the nut of communication equity at our district. One school had the expectation that each teacher would call each family assigned to them, to schedule their conference, and they tracked their attempts to call on a public tracker. I was checking this tracker, because I had not received an interpreter requests, and yet again, this was one strategy for chasing after the information I needed. In the course of checking for scheduled conference times, I noticed that more than on person had logged an attempt to call every single family on their assigned caseload except for the multilingual families … even though they had been trained on our telephonic interpreter service. Obviously, I had feelings about this. But what bothered me just as much is that it seemed that I was the only person noticing this, even though the admin team had presumably created this tracker for transparency and accountability purposes. The problem was, I was literally the only person looking at that tracker through the lens of multilingual equity. That was the moment I explicitly told myself, “This will not happen again. Next year will be different.” … and it was. There are many things I changed, most of which were system-wide changes and not just related to parent-teacher conferences. But it sure made parent-teacher conferences run more smoothly and more equitably for parents. Call to Action
Better TogetherSo many leaders know that their multilingual families aren't getting equitable access to information, programming, or people in their schools. But most get stuck when trying to fix it because they are over-tasked and under-staffed.
Anne Truran helps educational leaders in multilingual communities set up communication equity systems and practices so families can get what they need, feel a sense of community, and school staff can feel proud not only of what they do, but how they do it. To get support from Anne: 1) Schedule a free consultation. 2) Tell me about your school and community. 3) Get your plan for creating a better experience for multilingual families, and better results for kids.
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Learning a language is super contextual. What I mean by that is, the words you need and learn are entirely dependent on the situation in which you find yourself. Context is why you have to ask your doctor to explain terms she uses and doesn’t think twice about. It is why someone who is a 5-star chef is going to know different jargon from an printmaker, and a printmaker from an aerospace engineer. Context is the entire reason I felt insecure about my Spanish when I started teaching, even though many people had described me as “fluent” by that time. It is also the reason why I decided to agree to start teaching my co-workers Spanish, even though I balked at the idea in the beginning. Let me explain. Spanish TipStart noticing the things you say that are your own form of "educator jargon" that you likely don't notice because they are obvious to you in English ... but you wouldn't know the same "easy" terms in Spanish. The StoryI started taking Spanish in school, as many people do. Though I got good grades, no one would say that I “spoke Spanish”. I finally began speaking was when I started spending summers in Central America and Mexico, first as a volunteer and then as a staff member for the non-profit that changed my life trajectory. (More on that in a future email). I was given increasing levels of responsibility that correlated with my level of Spanish proficiency, and after college, I was hired to teach literacy and all the first grade subjects in Spanish (except Math was taught in English) to native Spanish-speakers at my school 12 miles north of the Texas-Mexico border. By this time, I was both proud of where my Spanish had gotten, and also terrified that someone would spot me as an imposter. My fear that I didn’t have strong enough Spanish to do the job I was hired to do intensified immediately when I started having parent conversations: on the phone, during conferences, etc. I recognized immediately what had happened: I had become really good at the vocabulary and using language in the context I needed to operate in that non-profit setting. I could buy a bus ticket, get off at the right bus stop in the middle of the countryside, set up host-families for volunteers, explain our meal rotation plan, and get to know people really well. I knew vocabulary that seemed advanced: “fundraiser,” “non-profit organization,” “youth leadership” and “counterpart”. But when I started working in a school, there was vocabulary that didn’t seem as advanced that I just didn’t know: “report card,” “field trip,” “dismissal” and even "bathroom break". I knew that this had nothing to do with how advanced or not advanced these words are. They are all just words, none more difficult than another. The thing is, they are used within specific contexts. Because I had lots of experience with the language of my non-profit, I had gained a lot of proficiency, and because I had not taught nor attended school in Spanish, there was a whole set of vocabulary I had never been exposed to before. Of course I didn’t know it! The thing is, I still didn’t know that what was happening to me was normal, and even inevitable when acquiring a second language. As a result, I was very self-conscious about asking for help from the plethora of people around me who were native Spanish speakers. What a missed opportunity! Six years later, when I found myself in Missouri, and multiple co-workers asked me to teach them Spanish, I was resistant to the idea. Again, I didn’t feel like I had earned the right – after all, I am still learning Spanish every single day! How could I be a Spanish teacher? But people kept asking. So I reflected on my own experience, and remembered how there was all of that specific vocabulary that was essential to my success speaking Spanish in a school that, as wonderful as my Spanish teachers were in school, no one ever taught me. It was then that I realized that I did have something to offer all those colleagues who were asking me. I could teach the Spanish that they needed in schools, that no one else teaches. That is when Spanish for Educators was born: first with a bunch of my own colleagues, in a rented basement. Then I began to specialize further when asked to teach a course for office professionals at a neighboring district. Spanish for Teachers, Spanish for Office Professionals, Spanish for Nurses and Counselors … and now, starting in January, Spanish for Relationship-Building. These are all classes you can either bring to your district for a private course or, when available, you can join a public course. I quickly discovered that I love teaching Spanish to educators, because I am able to see people, even if they have never taken Spanish before, start to have meaningful conversations at school and feel good about what they are able to do. Relationships start to happen, and people’s eyes open to what they are capable of when they have the right words and the right practice. That is amazing. Call to ActionAs you go about your work each day, write down specific things you want to learn how to say. In fact, if you would add yours here, I will refer back to it when making micro-lesson videos in the future. I promise, just writing them down will help. You might not know how to learn how to say them immediately, but you will start to notice trends, you will start to pick things up around you that you normally missed, and you will become more conscious of your goals, which will make you a more effective student of whatever approach you take to learning Spanish. And sometimes, you’ll be able to simply look up a word and call it a quick win. Better TogetherIf you have Spanish-speaking families at your school or district, but not a lot of Spanish-speakers on staff, and you would like staff to be able to welcome and include families with more grace and joy, Spanish for Educators is the answer.
Classes include Spanish for Office Professionals, Spanish for Teachers, Spanish for Nurses & Counselors as well as Spanish for Relationship-Building, which is suitable for staff in any number of roles. You can enroll staff members the September cohort of Spanish for Relationship-Building a public course for all roles in schools, no matter where you work, to help you build relationships with Spanish-speaking students and families. If you want to learn more about a private Spanish course for your district, just book a free no-pressure call to learn more. Un abrazo, Anne Between 2019 and 2022, I was stuck. All-caps bold STUCK. Gathering data to measure progress toward goals had been drilled into me all the way back from my teacher training and every year since. From grades that are percentage-based, to trackers that calculate percent mastery, to attendance measures, to me, goals and tracking progress were synonymous with percentage. Yet, I had no idea how to even begin doing that with measuring communication. Today, I want to share the breakthrough that got me out of my rut. Tip of the Week*** This tip is much longer than usual, but I promise it is worth your attention. *** Don’t measure translation and interpretation usage as a percent of a total. Set a discrete goal using the number of students combined with anticipated activities. Below is a list to show you what I mean. Goal for phone calls placed with an interpreter: Consider the number of students in combination with the calls expected that quarter
Goal for in-person or virtual interpretation: Consider the number of students and activities anticipated that quarter
Goal for documents translated: Number of documents expected to go home
*Goal for texts and emails translated: I highly encourage you to figure out how to get this automated, if it isn’t already, so that you do not have to track this goal. Often times, these metrics are not even transparent inside digital platforms, so automation is the best way forward here. The StoryThe problem for me, being stuck on measuring progress in terms of percent, is that there are so so very many communications going out to families all the time, from so many campuses, initiated by so many individuals, through so many methods, many of them not trackable, I had no idea how to set our goals and measure progress toward them. Texts and emails are often completely opaque. It is impossible to know how many teachers sent home a half-sheet on any given day, much less quarter. And even school administration itself might be sending things home that you have no idea about unless a parent flags it for you. Even if staff are supposed to log their parent calls … they probably aren’t (as a teacher, I didn’t document calls unless it was about a sensitive subject). How do you know if you are 20% or 80% toward a goal if it is literally impossible to know what 100% even is? That is where I was stuck. One spring, I sent out an email on a massive email thread of all the ELL Coordinators for my region, asking for help. I got crickets … which I took to mean that others were in the same boat as I was. Except for one. Bless this woman, for being so generous with her time, to talk with me on the phone and discuss this problem. When I asked her how you are supposed to measure percent when you don’t know what the total is, she said, “You can’t.” Ha! This was the woman that I and my counterparts looked to as the be-all-end-all of ELL Coordinators, and she just confirmed my fears. But for her, it was not a dead end. She spoke of having the coordinators at her various campuses be in administrators' and teachers’ ears all the time to ask them, “Did you get that translated?” or “Have you requested interpreters for that event?” This was an incredibly freeing moment for me, and it allowed me to get creative. I wasn’t able to use the same strategy she was, because at the time, we were an ELL department of two, so we didn’t have ears in all the meetings or hallways to remind others when we overheard conversations. We could only be in so many places at once. She also described looking for discrepancies. If a campus had 200 multilingual students, but had only placed 3 calls with an interpreter recently, then something was off, and she could then bring it to the admin team. That got me thinking. I thought more in-depth about each thing I was trying to measure: phone calls with interpreters, in-person interpreters, and translations. Some of those correlate with student numbers, but not all and not entirely. I realized that if we cross-referenced multilingual students with the school calendar and what exactly was happening in a given quarter, that would allow us to set goals … and track our progress toward them. And guess what – when I implemented this method along with the many other pieces of the framework I teach:
The amount of information families could understand from the school increased tremendously, as did their personal touch points from a wide variety of staff. After all, ELL teachers are not the only adults who care for their children all day. Call to ActionDo an experiment. 1. Select one campus. 2. Get the number of students whose parents require a language other than English and get out their school calendar. 3. Look at the upcoming quarter, and attempt to set a goal in each of those categories: 1) phone interpretation, 2) in-person and virtual interpretation, and 3) document translation. 4. See how smoothly or roughly the process goes. Write down what worked and write down what you need to make it more effective. For example, maybe you prefer this to be a collaborative process with building admin in order to ensure you have the correct information when setting a goal (e.g. they may have made changes to events you don’t know about) and increase their buy-in (no one likes to be given a goal they had no say in). Faster TogetherSo many leaders know that their multilingual families aren't getting equitable access to information, programming, or people in their schools. But most get stuck, like I was, when trying to fix it because they are over-tasked and under-staffed. I spent years and dozens and dozens of hours in trial and error trying to fix this problem.
I help educational leaders in multilingual communities set up communication equity systems and practices so families can get what they need, feel a sense of community, and school staff can feel proud not only of what they do, but how they do it. Get support so you can skip all the trial and error and go straight to the part that works. It can look like coaching for full-service consulting. 1) Schedule a free consultation. 2) Tell me about your school and community. 3) Get your plan for creating a better experience for multilingual families, and better results for kids. Have you ever been in the grocery store, where they are playing music and all of a sudden a song from the top 40 station when you were in middle school comes on … and even though you haven’t heard this song in years, you find yourself moving and singing along to every word? Me, too. There is something about music that sticks with us. It can transport us to another time and place, a memory of who were were or what we were doing when we heard that song. Spanish TipBeing intentional when playing music is a great way to foster relationships with both students and families. By simply playing music dear to your students and/or their parents and caregivers, you can completely transform their experience in the moment. In some cases, it may even spark conversation – even if not immediately, then later. Imagine a scenario where a parent hears you playing one of their favorite family songs; they may not approach you in the moment, but it is pretty likely they will peg you in their mind as someone they can approach next time they need to talk to someone at school. The StoryEvery time I hear Mariposa traiconera by Maná, I immediately flash back to the many bus rides I took back and forth on the Panamerican highway through the mountains of Costa Rica when I was working for a non-profit during the summer of 2006. The radio station played that song what seemed like once out of every five songs, and forever more, that song marks that time, place, and feeling for me. It was a great summer! So even though I'm not a huge fan of the song, it brings up the feelings of friendship, adventure, and independence from that summer. When a person finds themselves permanently living in a place completely different from the one where we grew up, how powerful might music be in bringing up those comforting memories? One year, when I was interviewing parents about their experience at our schools, one mom shared that her daughter no longer wanted to listen to Mexican music. She was only interested in hip-hop. Our schools would often play R&B and hip-hop during arrival to start the day with joy and energy in a way that was familiar to 98% of our student population. But there were some students who were getting left out. This mom asked if we could sometimes play Mexican music at school; she thought it might help her daughter come to invite it back into her life. I texted all my multicultural parents and asked them for two songs that were family favorites and kid-appropriate. I then created a youtube and Spotify playlist and shared it with all our campuses and asked them to pull songs from it for any time they were building a music playlist, whether for arrival or a school event. Some of them did, including the campus where that particular student went to school. One year later, her mom reported back that her daughter was again enjoying Mexican music at home with her mom. I loved that. I have no idea if the school including Mexican songs in its playlists made the difference, but I can’t imagine it didn’t make a difference -- to her and others. It is something we should have been doing all along. Call to ActionPut together a playlist of school-appropriate Spanish language songs tailored to your age group and play it at some appropriate time. Maybe you create a calm one for a calm part of the day or an upbeat one when you want to bring the energy up.
Faster TogetherIf you would like to rapidly improve your Spanish so that you can make families feel welcome and wanted, foster trust and build a personal relationship with them, I have a virtual Spanish for Relationship-Building course coming up! The course is perfect for beginners or those who took Spanish back in high school but don't feel capable of conversational Spanish. Just stay tuned to these emails to know when it is open for enrollment!
For years I was stuck on how to measure usage of communication equity at our schools. I was training staff, but without a way to measure, I couldn’t hold people accountable in a very meaningful way. I mean, just saying, “Hey, you forgot to translate that permission slip” is okay … but if that’s all I could ever do, I would always be chasing my tail. Measuring communication equity has many pieces to it, but let’s start with one. If you use a telephonic interpreter service, they probably set you up with an account number and pin numbers (unless they collect the caller's name). When someone calls a parent with an interpreter, they call the service, enter the account number for their district, and then the pin for their campus or team. The trouble is there is no way to disaggregate when it is the ELL team calling or a non-ELL staff member calling, and that matters for the purpose of building a culture that all of our families are all of our families. Tip of the WeekSet up an ELL pin with your telephonic interpreter service so you can disaggregate ELL team calls from non-ELL team calls. (If your service collects the specific name of the staff member placing the call, you don't need to do this.) Why? This allows you to audit whether your entire school system is providing equitable communication to families. If there were 14 calls placed using Ralston Middle School’s pin in October, you know those calls were genuinely placed by Ralston MS staff and not by ELL staff. Bonus TipTo show your non-ELL staff that building relationships with multilingual families doesn't have to be intimidating or overwhelming, share with them my 4-week Multilingual Relationship-Building Challenge. They'll take simple steps each week that only take a matter of minutes to build relationships across language lines, gradually building up to a phone call. The StoryAfter adding the ELL pin to our telephonic interpreter service, in my very first quarterly check-in with one of our elementary campuses, I shared their multilingual communication metrics for the quarter. The purpose of this check-in was to see and strategize around was their staff providing in-person interpreters when appropriate? Were they calling multilingual families with interpreters? Were they providing translated documents? I was able to share with that admin team that while we had a goal for 13 calls to be placed to multilingual families that quarter, in fact 19 calls had been placed. They had surpassed their goal in their very first quarter! I was celebratory! But the admin team was quiet as crickets, looking at their screens with a little side-eye. I wasn’t sure if I had made it clear that this was a good thing when one of them asked, “Is this Ms. Muna calling?” (Ms. Muna was their campus ELL teacher.) and I said, “No, I am able to disaggregate calls that Ms. Muna makes versus calls that you and your staff are making with interpreters. So you can be confident that this truly is your staff calling families!” That’s when heads started to nod and people leaned forward in their seats. Nothing invests partners like some encouraging success! Conversely, I met with the admin team at another elementary campus. They had a different size multilingual population, so their goals were different. At our first quarterly check-in, I shared that while their goal was 3 calls to multilingual families that quarter, none had been made. This was an important metric for them to be aware of. We were not fulfilling our promise to all families. Despite having a very small and doable goal, their staff was not taking on that very light lift to make sure families had equitable access to information and programming. The crucial thing is, even though I had known that was the case the year prior, I had no evidence because calls that my team and I made to families at that campus were made using the campus pin. So when auditing calls, it may well have appeared that the campus had placed 10 calls home and had surpassed the goal when in reality, it was just the ELL team. After creating an ELL pin, I could confidently and clearly present data to campus leadership. Instead, we wanted classroom teachers, office staff, nurses, counselors, and admin to all be connecting with all families … not just the ones that speak English. In short, adding in that ELL pin was a game changer. It brought me clarity and confidence when partnering with administrators, and it gave administrators clarity and confidence on when they needed to make changes and when they had real cause to celebrate and appreciate their staff’s efforts! Call to Action1. Contact your telephonic interpreter service. Ask them to set up a new pin. This one will be just for your ELL team. 2. Instruct your ELL team to use the ELL pin always. Even if they are calling a family at Ralston Middle School, they should not use the pin for Ralston Middle School … they should use the pin for the ELL team. This will make audits of communication and conversation with your school partners far far more effective. Faster TogetherSo many leaders know that their multilingual families aren't getting equitable access to information, programming, or people in their schools. But most get stuck when trying to fix it because they are over-tasked and under-staffed. I help educational leaders in multilingual communities set up communication equity systems and practices so families can get what they need, feel a sense of community, and school staff can feel proud not only of what they do, but how they do it.
To get support, just schedule a free consultation, tell me about your school, and get your plan for improving the experience of multilingual families and results for kids. P.S. Want your team to build relationships with multilingual families without feeling intimidated? Whether they are experienced in working with multilingual families or you want them to start, have your team or colleagues participate in my Multilingual Relationship-Building Challenge. |
Anne TruranI taught, coached, taught again, founded an ELL program and taught and coached some more. From the border to central Texas to the Midwest. Now I work with schools to improve communication and connection with multilingual families. Archives
May 2024
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