Read, Write, and Talk

Thursday and Friday another founding Esperanza Board member, Carmen Thompson, and I had the opportunity to attend the 3rd Annual BYU (Brigham Young University) ELL (English Language Learning Symposium in Provo, Utah. The theme for the conference this year was Family, School and Community Collaboration: Assuring the Future through Student Achievement. The symposium was excellent! Not only did we learn lots but we also made some great connections for implementing a Community Learning School Model at Esperanza.

I have also been reading a book called Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning by Michael Schmoker. Although he is talking about improving student learning the principles apply to educators as well. He talks about the need to read, write, and talk about a topic after hearing a lecture about it. Otherwise our knowledge of the topic will be very superficial and the chance of any changes is minimal. Therefore, this morning I ordered four books on the topic of family, school, and community collaboration (including one by Mavis Sanders, one of the Symposium's keynote presenters) that we can read and study and then use as a basis for training on family and community involvement. We will then write about the topic in our Esperanza binder.

Learning this way will help us to become the school we want to be.