This year has welcomed two new staff members in a new role. Grey Pony Center Assistant Principal Heidi Klukas, AVID and Multilingual Language Arts teacher Andrea Schueler and Community Engagement Specialist Nelly Ross discussed the new Community Engagement Specialist position. These staff members aimed to assist families where English is a second language with barriers they may face between home and school, which helps their students feel more connected at school. Increasing communication, engagement and trust is an important role that each of them play which has helped out families tremendously.
Community Engagement Specialists helped connect families and bridge the gap between home and school. Some of the families that are connecting with the Community Engagement Specialists just need help with simple tasks due to a language barrier or other families may need stronger assistance depending on the issue they are trying to solve.
Some Hispanic families struggle to understand how to navigate the system and may not know who to ask for help, whether it is regarding attendance, a child’s illness, or communication with teachers Community Engagement Specialist Nelly Ross explained.
There are a minimum of 225 Hispanic families that identify as Hispanic and some may only speak Spanish at home. Although the Community Engagement Specialists do not only help Hispanic students, there was a need for these staff members to connect with our families.
“I’m responding to emails from different people in the school to resolve different situations. Basically, our position is like solving problems, little cases that you have to resolve in order to because of the language barrier,” Ross said.
For this reason, having Community Engagement Specialists support other bilingual teachers so they do not have to do as much since some families reach out to teachers if they speak their native language. Community Engagement Specialists can help alleviate the workload of these bilingual teachers by connecting with the families.
“I am also bilingual, so having Community Engagement Specialists means that I get less phone calls from parents who prefer to speak Spanish that I need to figure out how to handle,” Schueler said.
Students felt more accepted and included that they have someone that they are comfortable talking with who understands their culture and speaks their Native language. This increased self esteem and confidence and limited some communication problems. It also connected students and families with school and created a more positive relationship.
When asked how the Community Engagement Specialists have been helping so far, “The Community Engagement Specialists have made a huge difference to many of the students that I work with,” they help families navigate a large school Schueler said.
Designated prayer spaces for the Muslim students who needed to pray during the school day have not existed until now. Administration met with students to come up with a plan for prayer spaces.
“We just met with a group of students to work on prayer spaces for our Muslim community looking forward to Ramadan,” Klukas said.
Looking ahead, the impact of these Community Engagement Specialists will affect bilingual families and continue to connect all students between home and school.
The new specialists’ contributions will go further than just a home and school connection. They will do this by developing significant relationships with both students and parents.
