In a portfolio of Zoom portraits, stakeholders in an upended education system reflect on how they are making it work during a time of nearly unprecedented upheaval. Overcoming challenges is a team effort and families are key to achieving lasting improvements
Making education work better for everyone is a team effort — especially during a time when teachers, schools, students, and parents have experienced firsthand during the pandemic how they must work together to overcome challenges. Families — and the Corporation grantees who work closely with them — are key to helping achieve lasting improvements through stronger home-school connections.
This portfolio of specially commissioned Zoom portraits, taken in January 2021, captures the conditions of a particular moment, providing personal glimpses of how participants in our education system are trying to make it work during a time of nearly unprecedented upheaval. Represented are leaders and practitioners of a selection of Corporation grantees who focus on family engagement strategies: EdNavigator, TalkingPoints, Springboard Collaborative, PowerMyLearning, and Family Engagement Lab. Also included are parents, an after-school supervisor, a curriculum specialist, a teacher, and two senior district leaders who offer windows into what life has been like for them this past year. In the words of Elisabeth Stock, chief executive officer and cofounder of PowerMyLearning, “I think we’ve all been amazed at what we’ve been able to accomplish under very, very difficult circumstances.”
Amid lockdowns and school closures, these photos and stories inspire and provide hope for a more united path forward. As parent Rameisha Johnson puts it, “All of us with kids who are learning virtually have been given a unique opportunity to get a daily glimpse into classroom life.” TalkingPoints’ Heejae Lim, for one, came out of 2020 feeling “cautious optimism” after witnessing the “incredible resilience and empathy being built between families, schools, and educators while learning under COVID.” These individuals are a microcosm of the many families, teachers, schools, and students who have become problem solvers, realists, and nothing if not optimistic. They believe — and they put their beliefs into practice day in, day out — that when families are empowered as true partners in their children’s education, students thrive, schools are stronger, and the whole community benefits.
Manager of Navigation Operations, EdNavigator, Helicopter Parent
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At EdNavigator we want schools to understand that we’re not there to be punitive. We’re not there to point fingers, but we are there to make sure our families are getting the information and the support that they need. We believe our parents are very knowledgeable about their children, and they know what is best for them. We try to make sure that they’re able to voice their concerns. We’re also there to prevent teachers and other school staff from talking over them.
I always said I was a helicopter parent who became a drone — and this pandemic almost turned me back into a helicopter parent. All of us with kids who are learning virtually have been given a unique opportunity to get a daily glimpse into classroom life. I learned that my daughter needs a very different learning cycle than other kids. When we were in school, and a teacher had to talk to you, they said ‘Hey Ramie, could you stay with me after school for five minutes?’ I don’t see that happening for my daughter. So, I’m hovering a little more closely over her work, maybe peeking into her Google classroom and saying, ‘Hey, Mr. Johnson, I noticed that she didn’t get feedback on this.’ I haven’t figured out if that’s a positive or a negative thing, but I want her — just like I want all families — to be able to get a robust and rigorous education even though she’s learning at home.
EdNavigator Parent, Photo Wall Enthusiast
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When I had meetings with the school it was often because Ramie noticed something in my daughter’s report card that I hadn’t noticed. This was very helpful. At that time, I was working 16-hour days, and her mother was working a lot of hours too. We didn’t look at her grades unless the teachers said something — and sometimes they didn’t.
In 2018, my daughter was making all Cs, but then she had a final test — and she got an A on it. Ramie looked at that and said, ‘This seems suspect.’ So, we dived into it. Turned out, it was almost like ‘busy work,’ and it brought my daughter’s grade up. That made me upset, and we expressed that to the teacher. We didn’t want my daughter’s success falsified. Ramie helped me pick out what the real work was versus the busy work. She helped me understand when schools kind of … finesse the system to just pass your child along. That hurts her in the long term. Before I trusted that the school was giving her proper feedback, telling us if something was wrong. But that wasn’t always the case. Now I’m more focused on her work and her grades. We communicate with her teacher more. Now that she’s remote, at times I’m in the room listening to the teacher, and I think, ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ Or I push my daughter to answer a question if I think she’s being quiet. This experience has got me more focused on what the school system is actually doing.
Korean born, U.K./U.S. educated, Founder and CEO, TalkingPoints
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When I was eight, my family moved to England from Korea. I attended a local public elementary school outside of London in a very Korean immigrant-heavy suburb. My mom became kind of the de facto parent leader in the school, despite the fact that she was extremely shy. Parents crowded around her when she came to pick up my sister and me from school. They asked all sorts of questions. ‘When is homework due?’ ‘Where are they going on the field trip?’ ‘Is there anything that I can do to support my child at home?’ All of that had a great impression on me growing up. In fact, my personal experience is borne out by academic research that family engagement has a huge impact on student success. That is my mission with TalkingPoints: to duplicate what I learned — by watching my mom as a kid — across millions of underresourced multilingual students in the U.S.
When COVID-19 hit, we made sure that educators and school systems that needed us could get to us. We opened up our TalkingPoints platform for Title One schools and districts at no cost — and between March and December of last year, we grew from serving about half a million to more than three million families in the U.S. I came out of 2020 with a cautious optimism. I witnessed incredible resilience and empathy being built between families, schools, and educators while learning under COVID. Every parent had to become a teacher in one way or another. And teachers who are parents had to play a double role. Above all, this year reinforced my belief that a parent or family member’s love for their children is such an incredible — although often untapped — resource.
Director of Translation & Interpretation, Boston Public Schools
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I am always hyperfocused on language as it relates to family engagement. As far as I’m concerned, they’re one and the same, and as a district we’ve sort of merged the two. So, when we communicate out, we communicate out in multiple languages. TalkingPoints allows us to communicate more authentically.
How did I get here? My father always said, ‘Put your money where your mouth is.’ My parents were heavily involved in my education, and I think that has contributed to my success in life. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m doing the work that I’m doing currently. The majority of my life has been in corporate America. I made the transition into education about 10 years ago. I had colleagues who said, ‘What?’ It was time for me to give back some of what my parents imparted to me to some of the young folk. My parents were so heavily involved, you would think they had worked at the school. I remember sitting at the table a lot of times doing homework, and then my mom would slide other things to me. She had her own curriculum, if you will. I had regular homework and ‘mom’s homework.’ And I think that more or less supported my growth and this mindset of ‘You have to dictate your fate.’ That’s some of what I’ve learned and what I’m imparting to these students now. Oftentimes students are in classrooms and feel that others are dictating to them. But you have to dictate yourself.
Chief of Student, Family & Community Advancement, Boston Public Schools
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Families are always their child’s first teachers. TalkingPoints serves as a tool to allow them to easily engage and interact with their child’s classroom teacher. They don’t have to go to the school. They don’t have to worry about not being able to communicate in English or having to ask for an interpreter. They can — right from the comfort of their home — ask the questions that they need to ask the educators. We connect with families in ways that are respectful, dissolving some of the angst and concern they have about why we are engaging with them. This sort of outreach is powerful.
What you see behind me is a reflection of my travels. Everywhere I go, I like to collect artwork. Some are metal pieces that my father made. He used to work in a foundry, very creative. He did not go to college but was very invested in our education, and my mom was as well — which is part of why I’m in the field. My mom was the mom who would nag — the principals and everyone else. The pieces from my dad reflect the diversity of who we are and that we don’t need to be put in one box. I credit a lot of where I am to my parents.
Founder and CEO, Springboard Collaborative
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Growing up in a home with little money, but lots of love, taught me that parents’ love for their children is the single greatest, most underutilized natural resource in education. After Harvard, I became a first-grade teacher in North Philly in a Puerto Rican neighborhood — where I easily saw myself in my students, and I saw my parents in their parents.
But pretty quickly, I became frustrated that my school was approaching parents like mine as liabilities, rather than as assets. In the COVID era, lots of kids are spending 100 percent of their waking hours outside of the classroom. If we don’t find a way to bring parents into the teaching process and capture instructional value from the time that kids are spending at home, then how are we ever going to close the achievement gap — let alone the opportunity gap? There are a lot of folks who look at me — and they see a storyteller. They don’t see an entrepreneur. And similarly, when it comes to the families in our education system, I think they’ve been left out because all too often, people don’t recognize parents’ potential.
Kindergarten and Springboard Teacher, Ben Painter Elementary, San Jose, CA
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Communicating with parents is not just about giving them one way for their child to improve or learn but suggesting the best way for that child to learn. Parents need to be given the tools to help their children succeed throughout their entire life. I’m with my students for such a short portion of their time, so I want to give parents as much as possible. You kind of get addicted to helping parents, to wanting that light bulb to go off — not just for the child but for the parents too. Because then they’ll realize they really can help their kids’ brains grow — continually.
Springboard Parent and After-School Supervisor, San Jose, CA
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I use Springboard with my students after school, as well as with my own daughter. The day-to-day of parenting has changed tremendously. It takes a lot of patience. I’m my daughter’s teacher/mom throughout the day. It’s hard working from home and working with her, but it’s gotten to the point where it’s now the norm and it’s become a little easier. Helping your child at home is all a matter of trial and error — and knowing your kid. We try one thing – it doesn’t work? OK, let’s move on to the next thing. Springboard has given me a lot of patience. It’s given me more respect for teachers. Nothing compares to a teacher. When it comes to homework, if I have to, I always throw in, ‘Your teacher said to do this.’
For her Zoom portrait, Inez Acevedo posed with her daughter, Tatiana Brown.
CEO and Cofounder, PowerMyLearning
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What we need to do as a country is take the line and bend it down and connect the bottom and get a nice, beautiful triangle — so that students, families, and teachers are all connected to one another around curriculum. We need to activate that triangle.
I had a call with a bunch of other nonprofit leaders in the K–12 space. And the question that we asked ourselves was, ‘If you could pick one indicator that would have predicted how well schools would fare with the building closures, what would that indicator be?’ And all of us said, ‘relationships.’ We can’t think of this as just a checkbox, we can’t think of this as something that comes after everything else. How much of our energies are we spending on strengthening those relationships and those ties with parents, with students? It has to be first and foremost.
One of the things we learned during the pandemic is that you can do much more online than people thought you could do. And in fact, some of these online methods work better. Schools have actually seen an increase in family engagement because they’re able to meet families where they are. Another thing we learned is just how resilient families are. Families bring so many assets to the table. We’ve been blown away by how much families can do. None of us thought we could do this when the lockdowns happened, and I think we’ve all been amazed at what we’ve been able to accomplish under very, very difficult circumstances.
Student and Family Services Coordinator, Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, Los Angeles, CA
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How have we pivoted with COVID? Definitely online family workshops with PowerMyLearning have been essential, especially with the pandemic and school closures. And we’re still in remote learning. We tell parents that they are now the online facilitator at home for learning.
My role is to be the liaison between school and home. I ensure that family engagement practices are programmed at our school, that these connections are being made, yearly, daily, weekly. I make sure that our parents have the resources they need. I used to think families were hesitant or afraid to begin accessing different tools online. Now, I think that they’re ready to learn. Parents want to learn. Our family engagement numbers have actually doubled.
A value that’s important for us at Camino Nuevo Charter Academy is serving the whole child. So if there’s something happening at home that will affect the student’s success at school, we make sure that those needs and resources are met
and then we provide those tools for our families.
Now more than ever, communication is super important. Teachers are communicating constantly — and parents can respond back. We’re letting parents know: ‘We’re here to help. We’re your partners, you’re not in this alone.’
It takes a village.
Cofounder and CEO, Family Engagement Lab
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What we need to do as a country is take the line and bend it down and connect the bottom and get a nice, beautiful triangle — so that students, families, and teachers are all connected to one another around curriculum. We need to activate that triangle.
Our vision of family engagement is based on the belief that an authentic family-school partnership is a critical foundation for a child’s successful learning journey. We help students achieve their full potential by catalyzing the partnerships between the most passionate advocates for children: teachers and family members. In order to achieve those partnerships, we have to overcome a lot of inequality around how families receive information and opportunities for collaboration with schools.
Our signature tool — the FASTalk app — addresses both objectives by helping educators send really engaging and inclusive messages via text that are aligned with classroom curriculum and reflect evidence-based practices that support student learning. All families are warmly invited to engage in their child’s learning.
Cofounder and Chief Impact Officer, Family Engagement Lab
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We know parents know their kids best. We’ll give them some ideas, share more about the topic or text that is being worked on in the classroom — and parents really run with it. It’s been great to hear how that’s sparked other types of ideas.
We’re modeling this really welcoming gratitude toward families. ‘Thank you for what you’re doing! You’re helping me in the classroom. Your support at home makes a really big difference.’ When those kinds of messages are going to families from their child’s teacher, we hear back from them that they feel more connected to the teacher, more connected to the school. Especially this year, we’ve been even more intentional about getting that feedback. You think this is a technology, but it’s building these trusting relationships.
For her Zoom portrait, Elisabeth O’Bryon posed with her son Scott Kessler.
Curriculum Specialist, Dalton Elementary – a Redesign School, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Family Engagement Lab Parent
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As a parent I’ve definitely changed as the result of my work with FASTalk. I get the text messages, and I’m like, ‘OK, tell me about what you read today. You read about a character today? What did you learn about this particular character? Tell me about it.’ That conversation is powerful. It’s changing the way we look at literacy. We are all way more engaged in reading, way more engaged in the curriculum.
For her Zoom portrait, Georgia Gross posed with her children.
TOP: (Credit: Filip Wolak Photography)
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