In a first-grade classroom, teachers hand out alphabet letters printed on yellow paper and call out a word for everyone to spell.
“Your first word is ‘any,’ ” a teacher announces.
Scrambled piles of letters are dumped onto desks, and fingers sift through them. The teacher tells everyone to write a sentence using the word. Start with a capital letter and end with a punctuation mark.
The school day ended hours ago. The people learning to play this game aren’t students, they’re parents.
VIDEO: ‘Together we can and together we will’
Parent engagement is a key driver of student success, and in schools with many poor families such as Harper-Archer Elementary, it’s a priority that requires removing barriers and changing mindsets. The school offers extra services to parents, teaches them how to help their children at home and emphasizes the importance of learning.
“We’ve got to make them value education as much as we do, and a lot of them don’t because (they’re) in survival mode,” said LaJuana Ezzard, the partnerships and programs director who works to increase family engagement.
She needs parents to know that education gives children a way out of poverty.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Parents are responsible for making sure their child comes to school. They set behavior expectations at home that carry over to the classroom. Because instructional time in school is only about 12% of students’ year, parents can greatly help their academic progress by reading books at home and playing educational games like the one they learned at that January parent night.
Principal Dione Simon Taylor calls parent engagement an Achilles heel for Harper-Archer: Research shows that without it, school turnaround will be almost impossible.
Numerous obstacles make it difficult. Some parents work multiple jobs or night shifts that keep them from after-school events and homework coaching. Many are busy single parents or grandparents raising grandkids. They don’t all have transportation.
Some parents mistrust teachers and schools because of their children’s previous bad experiences. Some may feel lost in the shuffle amid Atlanta’s many school closures and mergers.
Some don’t have the education themselves to help their child with school work.
Harper-Archer is trying hard in its first year to make it easier for parents to participate in their child’s academic life.
A parent center just inside the school’s front entrance offers help with everything from job searches to using the online system that tracks students’ grades and attendance.
At parent nights, staffers served pizza and salad. The school provided child care and a Spanish-language interpreter. Teachers gave out educational activities and demonstrated how to play them. They explained data, set student goals and encouraged parents to turn daily events into learning opportunities. A trip to the grocery store? Sound out the labels. Driving down the street? Look at license plate letters and numbers. Playing dominoes? Make it a mini-math lesson.
The approach, trying to build a partnership between parents and teachers, goes far beyond traditional parent-teacher conferences. Harper-Archer started with kindergarten and first grade classes. By the time those children reach third grade and start taking state tests, Taylor hopes the school will see positive results of the effort.
Staff said they try to win trust and to connect in ways that work for parents.
When the mother of a first grader who struggled to read contacted a teacher to explain she couldn’t help her child because she hadn’t finished school, the teacher recorded a video showing how to review sight words. The teacher sent the video to the mom and said the student began to catch up.
When parents call or text with questions, fifth-grade teacher Alecia Westbrooks answers, even if it’s the weekend. You have to prove yourself to them, she said.
Teachers tell parents: We’re not asking you to take over as your child’s teacher, but we need you to be our partner, and here’s how.
Credit: Bob Andres
Credit: Bob Andres
Encouraging involvement
Taylor Robinson had never joined a Parent Teacher Association before she was elected as the Harper-Archer group’s first president.
It’s a small PTA, and Robinson, a mother of three, knows growing participation will be tough. She’s starting with a modest goal to sign up 5% of parents.
“A lot of times,” she said, “the school’s as good as the parents.”
The association’s rules require a minimum of 25 members to organize. At the first meeting in December, officials kept checking to see if they’d hit the magic number.
Several staff and parents trickled in wearing Santa hats or reindeer antlers as the count inched up. Finally, enough people had paid the $5 dues, and the officers were sworn in.
Amid cheers, someone exclaimed: “Hallelujah, 25!”
Thirty people joined that night, a tally that included many school employees and two officials from the state and Atlanta PTA who came to help run the meeting.
When the group met again in February, however, the first votes were to replace three officers who had stepped aside or weren't involved.
Robinson is thinking up ways to reach more parents, such as livestreaming meetings or holding them at different times so it’s convenient for parents who work night shifts.
She’s planning events with food — always a draw. She wants to persuade parents who would rather be doing something else to get involved in their child’s education.
For some, school isn’t a priority.
“Find that same energy … you found to get up at 1 o’clock in the morning to go to the club before they closed, find that same energy to say, ‘Hey, let’s read a book before you go to bed tonight,’ ” she said.
Harper-Archer staff know parents have limited time and money. But in some cases, Ezzard said parents have to make the decision to be involved in their children's education.
“[I’ve] just got to get you to choose differently, make a different choice for you and your family,” she said.
She said it’s about showing children and their families, some of whom have lived in poverty for generations, that education has the power to break that cycle.
“It’s up to you: What do you want? What do you want? And if you don’t want it, can I give it to your child?” she said.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Adapting tactics
Ezzard, known as “Ms. E” to everyone at Harper-Archer, is constantly dreaming up ways to reach families and changing her approach if they don’t work.
The school threw one of its first big events in early September. Several dozen visitors met in the media center for Grandparents Day. Joan Francis, the parent liaison, discussed the services available — counseling, therapy and a social worker who helps families find resources to meet basic needs, like housing and food.
Francis stressed the importance of student attendance. “If a child is out for any period of time, that affects their learning, correct?” she said. “We’re a family. We’re here to support you and get them back into the classroom.”
At the end of the event, grandparents visited classrooms, and Ezzard invited everyone to return in a few weeks to join the school’s new Growing Grandparents Club.
“Not only do we want to help your grandchild, we also want you to know we’re here for you as part of this community. So whatever we can do to assist you, that’s what we want to do,” she told them.
Credit: Bob Andres
Credit: Bob Andres
On the morning of the club’s first meeting, a bright tablecloth covered a library table, and beverages and snacks were ready to be served.
Ezzard had promoted the event for about a month. She brought in an expert to lead an exercise class and planned to combine health education for grandparents with information about how they can help improve their students’ learning.
But the room was empty, and the sign-in sheet was blank.
She refused to be upset as she packed up: “This is one disappointment. I’ve had many of these disappointments.” She’d made the effort, now it was time to think about what she could do differently.
Because she knows parents and families will come out to see their child perform or receive an award, the school hosts events with a dual purpose.
In late February, a couple hundred people showed up to the school’s Black History Month celebration. Parents cheered the step teams and stood for the choir’s rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” At a vendor fair before the event, parents picked up information about health insurance, finances and legal services. Robinson greeted people from behind a PTA table, and Girl Scouts sold boxes of Thin Mints.
“What I’ve learned is that I have got to create a climate where they feel comfortable enough to just come up at any time whether their child is on stage or not,” Ezzard said.
Teachers said many parents are responsive when they reach out with concerns or updates. Just because a parent doesn’t show up to an event, that doesn’t mean they are disconnected from their child’s education.
But maintaining open communication is key. Teachers need to know what’s going on at home in order to solve problems that crop up in the classroom.
At a family night in November, Westbrooks huddled in her classroom with a handful of fifth grade parents. She explained she’s not being nosy when she asks about their children’s challenges and personal interests.
“You know them better than I do,” she said. “So the more that you can tell me about them the more that I can help them.”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
School staff knocks on doors when phone calls and standard communication isn’t enough.
Taylor grew concerned about student attendance over the autumn months. Like other Atlanta schools, Harper-Archer struggles with absenteeism. Some days, more than 40 children were gone. Other days, more than 60, or nearly 10% of the school’s 698 students.
The principal told her teachers to start calling parents of absent children daily, a task previously assigned to the front-office clerk. Hearing directly from the teacher would underscore the importance of coming to school and give teachers a chance to ask if there are any problems they can solve. The school also sends robo-calls, so parents should be contacted twice when a child is absent.
Fewer kids show up if it’s cold or rainy. When one child is out of school, siblings often are missing too. Sometimes the school finds out a family has moved or there’s been an emergency.
After teachers began calling, attendance initially began to improve. But when it started to slip again Taylor went deeper. Taylor dispatched teams to go door-to-door after the holiday break. They visited the homes of chronically absent students to ask how they can help. The school can’t solve every problem, but staffers stress the importance of coming to school.
“This is killing me. I don’t understand why we have so many kids who are not coming to school because when I talk to children they say they love school,” she said in January.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
School like a family
Some days, it takes an extraordinary effort for Pearl Lilly to get her two grandsons to school.
She’s raised the boys since they were infants, becoming their caregiver because of her daughter’s mental health issues.
Lilly, 49, is used to working, but said she hasn’t been able to lately because of a heart condition. Government aid and support from a foster grandparent program help her squeak by.
Last summer, she moved into a two-story apartment off Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, about a mile from Harper-Archer. If it weren’t for her grandchildren, Lilly said she would have considered living in her car. But she needed an affordable, stable place for them and the houseful of relatives who are frequently there. She can just barely cover the $1,287 monthly rent for the sparse apartment where water seeps in after heavy rains.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
She didn’t know what to expect from the newly opened school. Her fears melted away when Harper-Archer staff welcomed her warmly: “It was like a community, a family.”
The school has been especially good for her grandson with autism and behavioral and mental health problems.
Mornings are tough for him. Sometimes he’s so upset he won’t board the bus. On bad days, they drive to school, and teachers and staff coax him inside.
“It’s like I don’t have worries anymore as far as his education. I know that they have him, and they support us,” Lilly said.
School is a respite. At the apartment, she frets about neighborhood crime and what her grandchildren might see if they look out the window facing the parking lot. For a while, she nailed up a large green sheet to block the view. There’s been prostitution and violence, she said.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
In 2019, there were 318 police calls from her roughly 120-unit apartment complex, according to Atlanta police records. Fights prompted about a quarter of those calls; more than a dozen were reports of shots fired.
When her grandson hears shooting at night, he asks his grandmother if they’re going to be OK.
She’s concerned her apartment might be one reason the family has been sick so frequently this year. The sharp smell of bleach lingers, a testament to her daily battle to keep the place clean. She’s received letters from nurses stressing the need for her second-grade grandson, who has severe chronic asthma, to live in a mold and allergen-free home.
Despite the struggles, she holds onto encouragement passed down from her grandfather: Keep striving. She knows education can open up more opportunities, so she’s continuing hers by pursuing a doctorate degree in human services. When the boys return from school, they do homework together at their round dining room table.
On a winter afternoon, her grandsons tumble in the door with big grins. They toss a ball around the living room, pull out a basketball hoop and do headstands against the wall.
Their grandmother plays along and then says, “Let’s check backpacks.” They bring out snacks, go over sight words and read a book about frogs.
Lilly said Harper-Archer’s help makes hard days a little easier.
“Wrapping the arms around the child, giving the child a high-five, a smile it goes a long way,” she said. “I honestly think I wouldn’t be able to make it. Sometimes, I used to feel like just giving up. I’m thankful for them.”
