5/13/2024 0 Comments Teachers home visits![]() This will enable you to learn more about their character, qualifications, experience and teaching style, and you will be better able to assess whether they are a good fit for your child. Students saw without a doubt that the adults at school, not just classroom teachers, cared for even the most troubled student, and that being absent didn’t mean being invisible.If you are in the process of choosing a tutor for your child, then it is a good idea to organise an initial introductory call or meeting with them (face-to-face or online). While the visit clearly had a positive impact on the young man, this impact rippled throughout school, too. That very afternoon, three of his after-school mentors went together to his home and by the next day he was back in class. Students were starting to ask where he was and why none of his teachers knew the answer. An email chain revealed that no one had been able to reach the family to find out why he had been away. I saw the power of home visits again this year when one of our most challenging students had missed several weeks of school. In my own experience, visiting my student Diego at his house when he had been out of school for several weeks is what got him to come back to school, albeit briefly. It certainly did for Louise Rocha-McCarthy and Annie Huynh. I think meeting parents and guardians where they are most comfortable could make a big difference. Can you imagine if every ninth grader got a visit from his or her advisor, and if each family felt personally welcomed to the school? At my school, we've made time for on-campus parent conferences by modifying our schedules, but we haven't yet prioritized home visits. While I made it a personal policy to visit the homes of all my ninth grade advisees, I also recognized that the impact of home visits could have been multiplied had it been a school-wide practice. Home visits should also be considered when a student is new to a school due to a transfer. It's just about the quickest way to understand a student better. Whenever I coach new teachers, I encourage them to visit the homes of students as early as possible. If nothing else, the visit allowed me to empathize more clearly with Payton and his family. I imagined that as out of place as I felt in his mother's home, she must also feel the same way when visiting the school. I was glad to have had a glimpse at his home life, even though its reality made me feel more powerless than before. His mom told me about how three of Payton’s male role models had been killed in the last few years. At his house, I was formally welcomed but felt out of place as we sat in the living room and his numerous brothers clamored for his mother's attention. I had met her several times before the home visit because Payton was in trouble at school early and often. Once I visited the home of Payton, whose mom was volatile and even hostile in meetings. Of course, it didn't always go so idyllically. We were partners in her daughter's education. She felt accepted by me, and I felt respected by her. After that visit, despite the language gap (I am proficient but not fluent in Spanish), whenever I saw Angela's mom at school events or at on-campus parent conferences, it was more like seeing an old friend. One time, when I was visiting the home of soccer star Angela, her mom had prepared a full meal for me, and the visit lasted well into the evening when she invited me into the back yard to pick lemons for my own family. ![]() While I've heard the advice to conduct home visits with a partner teacher, I personally felt that going alone made it more comfortable for the family. I visited homes after school, in the evening, or on the weekend, whatever was best for the family. I always gave myself a full hour, but rarely needed it. In fact, some of my students' parents began to request home visits, and I happily obliged. Often the parents were relieved to hear that they didn't have to get off work early or find time to come to me. The student would check with their parent and find a good time for me to stop by. ![]() Once there was buy-in from the class, the home visits were relatively easy to set up. They'd say, "Yeah, she came to our house, too. The first year I did this, there was a lot of pushback from students who weren't used to having a teacher visit their home, but in the second year, the tenth graders were able to sell the idea for me. To make home visits manageable, I only visited the homes of the four to five ninth graders who were new to my advisory class.
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