Home › Improve Your School › Volunteering & Fundraising
How One Mom Helped Get Others Involved
Getting Involved: Tanyit Arellanos organized volunteers to help supervise students and encouraged Latino parents to become involved at school.
By GreatSchools Staff
Tanyit Arellanos is the mom of two children. Her daughter, Elizabeth, was a sixth-grader at James Lick Middle School when Tanyit became involved at the school. Tanyit has been a childcare provider for many years.
The Problem:
When her daughter started middle school at James Lick in 2005, Tanyit noticed two problems right away. First, students arrived at school early in the morning and would hang around unsupervised waiting for school to start. There were often scuffles between students during this time, and it did not feel like a safe environment to Tanyit. Second, although over 60% of the students at the school are Latino, the Latino parents were not involved in the school. When Tanyit attended the first PTA meeting of the year, no other Latino parents showed up.
Making a Change:
Tanyit began coming to school with her daughter early each morning to help supervise the students.
She put on a name tag that said "Parent Volunteer" and mingled with the students. At the same time, she talked with other Latino parents she met at the school and tried to recruit them to help her with supervision. "I'm very friendly and I say hi to everyone," she said. "I would just ask them, 'Can you help me? Can you help for even 15 or 20 minutes? Don't be afraid'!" There were four parents she frequently saw watching the kids from the window. She asked them to help, and they said no, so she kept on asking until they said yes. Tanyit eventually recruited 12 other parents to help supervise kids in the morning. Some stand near the front door; others supervise the yard or the cafeteria.
The parent liaison at James Lick noted that as these parents began to help at the school, they became more involved in other ways, too. They started attending meetings and working in the cafeteria, and they are now a presence at the school. Tanyit also joined a larger effort at her school to get Latino parents involved. Another parent, Daisy Hernandez, was working with the San Francisco Chapter of Parents for Public Schools to start a club for Latino parents. The club is intended to increase communication between parents and provide a way parents can help each other navigate the school. Parents who speak both Spanish and English can translate flyers sent home in English, help make phone calls and attend meetings with Spanish-speaking parents.
Tanyit supported the idea of the club and believes that getting parents together to talk informally will also help them overcome their fears of being involved at school. At club meetings parents can tell each other about school experiences so they seem less threatening. Tanyit was instrumental in recruiting parents to come to the club's first meeting. She told everyone she could about the meeting, calling some parents on the phone and telling others about it when they dropped their kids off for school. Fifty parents showed up for the first meeting.
Getting Other Parents Involved:
Tanyit believes many parents are intimidated by school because they do not speak English well or they did not get much schooling themselves. When she was recruiting parents for yard duty help, she was persistent in asking for help and she emphasized to parents how important it was to be involved with their kids. The new Latino parent club at James Lick makes it easier for parents to be involved in the school because they have the support and help of other parents.
