Parent Teacher Home Visits: Big News For Saskatchewan
This fall, I am collaborating with some incredibly passionate and talented professionals in an initiative that is enormously important to me. With the support of the Saskatchewan Schools Boards Association (SSBA) and a committed Advisory Committee of provincial stakeholders, Dr. Ted Amendt and I have begun a relational home visit initiative here in Saskatchewan, funded by the Ministry of Education. I want to specifically thank our Minister of Education, the Honorable Dustin Duncan, for his belief in the possibility this initiative holds for the future of education in our province of Saskatchewan.
We are working with five school divisions this year on a pilot project with the support of the Parent Teacher Home Visit (PTHV) program out of Sacramento, CA. PTHV has never worked in Canada before and so we are thrilled to work together with them to launch a relational home visits pilot project in Saskatchewan. Training for administrators and senior staff from the school divisions kicked off on Monday, August 23, followed by a training session with teachers and staff on Thursday, September 9. Educators are busy now communicating with their families about the home visit initiative and setting up those first home visits!
This is incredible progress in the space of parent engagement and I am pleased with the way the pilot is unfolding. I’d love to share more with you about home visits and the intended outcomes of this project.
Home Visits: Background
The Parent Teacher Home Visit Project (www.pthvp.org) has been in existence in the U.S.A. since 1998. Their mission is to increase student and school success by building and sustaining a national network of partners who effectively implement and advance their relationship-based home-visit model of family and teacher engagement. This initiative is in 700 schools across 28 States, and they are interested in implementing the model in Canada.
Home visits are a high-impact strategy for family engagement. A study by Johns Hopkins University in 2019 found that schools that systematically implemented PTHV experienced decreased rates of student chronic absenteeism and increased rates of student English Language Arts and math proficiency.
Home visits also interrupt bias and judgment, and have demonstrated benefits for teachers, parents/families, as well as students.
Through this project, we are aiming to foster connections and relationships between educators, students, and their families. Further, we are striving to create inclusive, safe, and welcoming school environments. The pillars of connections and relationships drive the goals through which students learn what they need for their future, feel safe and supported, belong, are valued, and can be themselves.
How Home Visits Work
Parent Teacher Home Visits connect the expertise of the family on their child with the classroom expertise of the teachers. The visit is not a “drop-in,” but rather an appointment set between two willing parties in a setting outside of the school. The student’s home provides the most opportunity for learning and sharing, but teachers also may meet families at the library, a park or a coffee shop if needed. While the model is adapted in a wide variety of settings, the following are five non-negotiable core practices:
Visits are always voluntary for educators and families, and arranged in advance.
Teachers are trained, and compensated for visits outside their school day.
Focus of the first visit is relationship-building; key focus is a discussion of hopes and dreams.
No targeting – visit all or a cross-section of students so there is no stigma.
Educators conduct visits in pairs, and after the visit, reflect with their partner.
PTHV is a two-visits model.
1st Home Visit – Summer or Fall - Educators focus on getting to know the student and the family. The educators and the family members share their experiences, their hopes and dreams for their child, and their expectations of each other. The conversation naturally leads to the educator and the family identifying how they will help the child with their goals.
Follow-up - Now that there is an ongoing relationship, family members and educators may share resources and continue their communication. Teachers may use what they learned from the family to improve the child’s experience in the classroom, and enjoy a stronger relationship with the child. Families may find new or additional ways to be involved with the school.
2nd Home Visit – Winter or Spring - Educators meet with the family again, with the focus on how to support their child academically. Sometimes schools offer Academic Parent Teacher Teams or other ways parents can get up to speed on grade-level standards and specific strategies to help their child learn.
For our specific Parent Teacher Home Visits Initiative, roles and responsibilities are divided into three groups of stakeholders: Central Office, Site Coordinator/Principal, and Participating Staff. The three groups of stakeholders work together to own different facets of the initiative while also supporting one another and holding each other accountable.
For this project, we are intending to learn enough tangible data to move to a systematic province-wide plan for home visits in Saskatchewan. James McNinch is our researcher, Professor Emeritus from the University of Regina.
If you’d like more information on the history of home visits in Saskatchewan and why we think now is the time to launch this initiative, keep reading.
Home Visits In Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan has a long, rich history in community education philosophy and practice, dating at least back to 1980 and the introduction of the Community Schools program. In 1999, Saskatchewan Education released the document Parent and Community Partnerships in Education - Policy Framework. This policy framework set an expectation for the provincial education system to build partnerships with parents and community as a way of schooling to support students. In 1999, the Government of Saskatchewan set up a 12-person Task Force to study the role of the school in Saskatchewan. After conducting a variety of consultations and visiting schools around the province, in 2001 they released, SchoolPLUS – A Vision for Children and Youth – Final Report to the Minister of Education, Government of Saskatchewan. Their number one recommendation was “that a Community Schools philosophy be adopted for all public schools in the province.” In 2002, SchoolPLUS was officially launched in Saskatchewan, with a pillar of community education and engagement for all schools in the province.
It is of note that many Saskatchewan schools had robust home-visit programs between educators and families leading up to the launch of SchoolPLUS, and beyond that. In at least one Saskatchewan school, the sharing of report cards with families was done entirely through home visits by school staff (in pairs) to the homes of families. Similar home visits/outreach initiatives were well underway in the province in the late 1990s, resulting in the release of, Aboriginal Elders and Community Workers in Schools - A Guide for School Divisions and Their Partners, by Saskatchewan Learning in 2001. These visits, however, were often situated in a deficit approach focused on behaviour or attendance matters. Further, these home visits most often occurred in Community School settings and systemic approaches throughout all school divisions did not occur.
For a variety of reasons, community education practices in schools in Saskatchewan have been diminished over the past decade or more. Recent Saskatchewan interest in the work of Dr. Debbie Pushor (University of Saskatchewan), and Kevin Cameron (North American Center for Threat Assessment and Trauma Response) focused on parent engagement, and building connections, as well as the importance of connections and relationships identified through community consultation sessions by boards of education (SSBA Connections Report, 2019), is re-focusing Saskatchewan’s educator sector to this important area.
This has culminated in connections and relationships being identified as a pillar in the new Provincial Education Plan Framework. Finally, recent discussions in Saskatchewan’s Pre-K-12 education sector have centered on post-pandemic responses in the system to support student achievement. Building connections through parent and community engagement via home visits is an evidence-based high-impact practice and a relatively easy strategy to implement to respond to this challenge.