Entry #18: Even at Disney's model school,
middle school involvement is lacking

Orlando, Florida -- Whew!! We are escaping Central Florida in the nick of time. The fast pace is about to consume us. For some reason, our activity level has increased gradually to imitate that of the permanent residents. This week I crammed four school visits with 13 separate meetings and activities into three days. With the traffic that I have already mentioned, they were LONG days.

Among the many findings, some were pleasant surprises, others disappointments. I guess that is the way most days are when working with kids and schools.

At both Jackson Heights and Southwest Middle Schools, I found the same evidence that I have in most collaborative schools -- strong, active PTSA's and numerous business partners. At Jackson, for instance, the membership for the parent organization surpasses the number of students. This is uncommon and encouraging. Still, at the board meeting I attended, the topic of next year's president brought forth no willing candidates, while the Families Networking Together meeting I hoped to attend was canceled due to no one signing up.

One aspect of the Family Network program involves putting together a school directory by student name for parents to use for contacting each other as their kids spend time together. Despite lots of positive response, publicity and effort, there were only 100 forms returned out of a possible 1,200. Shelly Helmbrecht of Winter Park Health Foundation, a key figure in beginning the program, is still hopeful that the school will make it their personal project to connect more parents together.

I also stumbled into an unusual community named Celebration. Actually, since we are studying community involvement, I was told to go check it out. After an afternoon of strolling and driving the streets of this Disney-planned city, ALL four of us decided we could live there. All homes have 1940's style front porches. With lots of parks and open spaces, wide sidewalks connecting all parts of the city allowing kids to roller blade or bike to any part of the town, this place seemed perfect. After being told that most of the 2,500 current residents volunteer in some way, I decided that Celebration School must also be something amazing as well.

It is and it isn't. The structure of the buildings and layout of classrooms does allow much integration and collaboration for the teachers and students of this K-12 public school. But I found much lower parent participation and community involvement than expected. Yes, they have business "partners" like Disney and Apple, but most of the partnerships center around gifts of technology to the school and not time given in collaboration, in the classroom or shadowing.

While the designers set aside space for parents use to encourage involvement, according to Ginger LaVoie, parent liaison, the involvement drops off at the middle school level and above. She is trying to get parents to "transcend their comfort zone" and spend time in the classrooms with those teachers that are willing.

I found one teacher up at Southwest Middle that is more than willing and figured out how much help a parent can be. Georgetta Massie, a veteran eighth grade math teacher was approached by a parent two years ago who had to stay near campus every Wednesday due to car pooling and the early dismissal on those days. One thing led to another and she entered scores, put up classroom decorations, and worked with kids in class. Georgetta especially enjoyed the parents trying to follow along with the lesson, asking questions, then assisting the kids during work time. Now, she would like a parent in every class, every day. Unfortunately, that's just not happening.

Another unusual find was at a meeting of community folks in Tangelo Park, a community south of Universal Studios. It seems that some time ago, they had had enough of drugs and violence in this low income area and some key people banded together for change. The elementary, middle and high schools, YMCA, Baptist Church, and Civic Association formed an advisory board and a wealthy resident became the treasurer.

As I sat next to Harris Rosen, he didn't seem like the multi-millionaire owner of Tamar Inns, Inc. and employer of thousands. He was genuinely concerned about the family that was burned out of their home and the parent "graduates" of the leadership class. It seems that he attends all meetings, offering input and ideas along with resources to accomplish them. He has gone so far as to guarantee every high school graduate from this neighborhood an all expense paid college education. Many have already taken him up on the offer.

Finally, I would like to close with another pleasant surprise. Do you remember my mentioning the millions of retired seniors populating Florida and spending their time playing bingo and watching tv? Well, I found one retired D.C. teacher at Jackson M.S. leading both the boy's and girl's varsity teams through practices. In fact, according to the team captain, the gals are finishing up undefeated. Seems that 63-year old Carl Green , a 32 year classroom veteran, has his "second wind" as he called it. Last year, he volunteered and this time around receives a small stipend. He says he would do it for free and gets much satisfaction from his time with the kids.

Now if we can only find some "Carl's" for all of our schools.

On to St. Bernard, Louisiana and P.G.T Beauregard Middle School.


Read next week's diary entry >>>

<<< Read last week's diary entry

Comment on this diary entry


Read some background about Darrell Lee

Back to Darrell's Diary Index