Shannon Nickinson
Cassandra Smith measures progress one after-school function at a time.
One family literacy night, one book club meeting, one school program after the next.
Smith is in her second year as principal at Lincoln Park Primary School in Pensacola, which serves slightly less than 200 students from preschool through third grade.
The school was on the brink of closing. School district administration split the fourth and fifth graders off to other schools. As the new principal, Smith “walked into a shaky situation.”
Setting out to win over her parents, Smith drew on both her personal and professional experience to connect with them.
As a teacher, she worked at inner-city schools including Brownsville Middle, Montclair Elementary and Warrington Middle.
“I think throughout my career I’ve always been really good with the parents,” Smith said. “And one of the reasons is I started out as a part-time clerk typist in the district. I was a single parent. I’ve lived all those things that a lot of our parents experience.”
She keeps an open-door policy. She answers her direct telephone line. She teaches a student reading group and held a book club for parents.
“I don’t get any work done here,” Smith said. “I work at home at night.”
Smith said she wants parents “to own what we’re doing here at the school, and I’m blessed to have teachers who connect with parents.”
One teacher had a new student with a history of absenteeism at his previous school who started to show the same trend at Lincoln Park. In a meeting, the teacher took out her cell phone and asked for the student’s home number: “I’ll call you every morning to make sure you’re awake,” the teacher said.
That includes teachers such as C.C. Lambert, who Smith worked with at other schools and whose wife teaches third grade at Lincoln Park.
Lambert, a special education support facilitation teacher, works in small groups with students who need extra help. Smith said Discovery Education testing shows more than 50 percent of third graders are proficient in reading and 75 percent are proficient in math.
“We’ve seen tremendous progress, which I’ve always known was possible,” Smith said. “People always say, ‘You know those kids can’t learn,’ but it really isn’t students. If we are passionate about what we do and we do a good job, you’re going to see the growth in the students.”
About 30 percent of the staff at Lincoln Park turned over this year from last year. Smith continues to work with her teachers to build their camaraderie – and extend that spirit to the parents of their students.
“I know that many times parents won’t speak up and they won’t become involved because they feel inferior,” Smith said. “And that is something I am working very hard with my staff on, is to make sure my staff understands that we have to treat the parents with the utmost respect, even if they come in here and they’re very upset.
“Even though it may seem that you’re bending and giving in, these are their children and it’s not us versus them,” Smith said. “We have to be in this together.”
Being in it together is something Lambert takes especially to heart.
“For me being a male, one of the things I try to is reach out to the fathers,” he said. “And some of the comments I will get are, ‘I want to be involved. I don’t know how. If you just show me how to be involved, I’ll be involved.’ That is common.”
What Lambert calls “opening the door to parents” seems to be working. A book study he held about Marcia Tate’s book Parenting Your Child to Success included fathers who told Lambert they were taking time from work to attend a session held 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on April 30.
“Those types of things get us excited, because we’re recognizing that our parents do care,” Lambert said. “We’ve just got to open the door to give them the opportunity to be a part of something. And to know that it’s OK to be involved.”
Lambert believes enough in the school’s path that he persuaded his niece to enroll her preschool-age son in Lincoln Park for voluntary prekindergarten this year.
“She sees the results, academic-wise and just in the socialization of him, because he’s an only child,” Lambert said. “As family we’re helping her out in getting him and we are happy with the decision we made.”
Bringing parents into the fold comes in lots of forms.
Smith said a book club she hosted for some parents focused on a Terry McMillan book. It was, she said, about a woman — whose daughter was on drugs and a son who was in prison — who was left raising her grandchildren, much like families in impoverished neighborhoods.
“Some of the characters could probably be defined in our families, but we didn’t have to talk about our business. We could talk about the characters in the book,” she said. “If I have young mothers out here and I’m the age I am, I’m supposed to be able to tell them something good. And they trust us.”
She addresses the thought that “some” parents from “those” neighborhoods don’t care about their children’s progress.
“What you have here were generations in this community, mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers who are still living here in this community, who went to this school,” Smith said.
“They really do care. We have to give them a reason to.”
That means making parent involvement fun, educational, open to the entire family and complete with dinner.
“Not that that’s the only reason why they come. I had to tell my teachers that. They come because I say we’re going to feed you, bring the whole family. Because when you’re somewhere until 7 p.m. and then you have to go home and cook, that’s a big problem.”
What Lambert said he sees at those family nights – families are eating together, talking – is a beautiful picture to see.
“It’s our hope that the things that they see, we are encouraging them to do at home. I can call and say, ‘Your child is struggling in reading’ and your answer should be, ‘Mr. Lambert, I know because I had him reading last night. I know what you’re saying, can you give me some more strategies?’ That’s the kind of presence we want to see our parents have.
“It’s not a surprise when a teacher calls, it’s a welcomed call and it’s a connection between the parents and the teachers.”
Shannon Nickinson is the editor of PensacolaToday.com, a news and commentary site in Pensacola. Follow her on Twitter @snickinson.
