In 1999, California allocated money for home visits in the state budget, but the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project's Sacramento director, Lisa Levasseur, says that after funding was discontinued, a lot of districts stopped the visits, at least officially, though some teachers here and there kept doing them. Sacramento City Unified has managed to keep the project going for years, partly by using funds from Title I, which the federal government sends to school districts with large numbers of students from low-income families. It's now in more than 400 schools across the country. They began their project in eight schools in Sacramento. She and other parents started researching schools with better outcomes, and they noticed something: Those teachers had relationships with students and parents outside of school. Everybody was blaming everybody and meanwhile our kids were just falling through the cracks,' Gonzalez recalls. So as you can understand, the pain was enormous. 'Less than 1 percent of our students were reading at grade level. Gonzalez was compelled to help start the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project 17 years ago, when she says her daughter's school was in crisis. That's important because those assumptions can lead a teacher to expect less from students or discipline them too harshly. They’ll just sit with their assumptions, their fears, their what ifs.' ' ’Cause if we don’t talk about that, they won’t go out. 'We spend the biggest bulk of our three hours together talking about fears and barriers,' says Gonzalez. And that's kind of the point, says Parent Teacher Home Visit Project trainer Yesenia Gonzalez. In Sacramento, teachers visit neighborhoods they've never been to before and meet people from cultures they know little about. I was worried that I’d be misunderstood, that they would have fear of me coming in with other intentions, instead of just getting to know them. 'It’s not my environment, it’s their environment. 'I was terrified of when I first heard of them,' says Smith. Teacher Smith says at first she was nervous about home visits.

Home Visits Change Teachers' Attitudes, Too 'When you get to know that family member.you're working as a team to figure out, 'What can we do to help?' It’s more of a partnership: 'Let’s make our child successful.' If you don’t have that friendship or connection with the parent, I don’t think that can work or be successful.' 'A lot of families are not really comfortable with schooling or teaching or educators because of their past,' says Bautista. 'He totally changed, from having these outbursts to, 'OK, I feel like I’m part of the classroom and people actually do care about me and they go out of their way to show that,' ' she remembers.īautista said the boy's parents also became more involved. (Zaidee Stavely/KQED)īautista remembers a student she visited twice, once at home and then again at the hospital when he had to get his appendix out. Smith and Bautista say families now ask them for visits. The Hamilton family poses with teachers Stephanie Smith and Cristina Bautista during their home visit. There are fewer discipline issues, and parents are more involved. Kids who have had home visits attend class more and do better in school. When parent, teacher and student all feel appreciated by one another, the new relationship can make a big difference in the classroom. Parents are used to getting a phone call only when their kids behave badly in class, and they don't usually see the teacher outside school. That can feel revolutionary because it's so different from the typical relationship teachers often have with parents. 'We try to get to everyone in whatever way the family feels comfortable.'

We’ve done home visits at soccer games, or even on front porches,' she says. 'We do home visits at Taco Bell down the street, at the park. And that's kind of the point.Ī visit like this can fundamentally change the relationship with a family, as long as it's positive and it's on the parents' terms, says Stephanie Smith. Teachers visit neighborhoods they’ve never been to before and meet people from cultures they know little about. 'My goals, hopes and dreams are just for them to be successful in whatever they want to do and find their calling,' she says. Her mom, Alicia Smith, also opens up to the teachers. Neveah’s giggling - she's so excited her teachers are at her house. Then she's off to show the teachers her room. Wagner says you can't walk through the invisible walls,' says Nevaeh. 'Everything came straight from the garden,' adds Bautista.

Teachers home visits