Reply to What should we PS3 Liberal Activist Gentrifiers do, and not do?

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, I was you last year. We are staying at our EOTP school.

A few words of advice:

- Be present when you can. Observe. Help. Get to know kids and parents.

- Realize people may resent or be skeptical of you. Even teachers. Be respectful, and disregard it as best you can.

- Do the PTA thing, but don't invest too much in it. Your kid is so young and sometimes PTA's aren't the way to change things. At our school, the PTA has well meaning members but it's not really a game changer. Our school has bigger issues than bake sales, and sometimes what you really need to do is talk to the principal or volunteer your time or ideas. That said, we attended meetings, and the public forum was a nice opportunity.

- Talk to everyone. I had the nicest little group of parents and grandparents that I "hung out" with at pick-up daily. We were incredibly diverse in ways that transcend ethnicity (age, jobs, life experience, relationship to the kid we were caring for), and after talking for 2-15 minutes daily for months, we realized we had a lot in common just by having similarly aged kids in our lives. We knew about each other's days and traffic tickets and families in a way that you don't get from car pool line. It created a nice sense of community. If there was a school issue (for example, we were all upset that there was little notice given for field trips) we could discuss it together and form an alliance to approach the school. That was nice.

- Don't expect things to change too much. Our school has poor testing scores and deals with a lot of organizational and fundamentally non-academic issues and isn't going to work for us for compulsory school (K and up). We hoped it might, but I just don't think it will. But we still are invested in being part of and improving the early education experience, because that's where change often starts with these DCPS schools. If the long term doesn't work out, don't be disheartened.

- Give money if you can. It helps. $200 takes the burden off of the preschool to worry about if everyone can go on a field trip and lets them focus on something else that's more important. I only suggest this because you said you're high SES and want to help. This helps. [/quote]

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