Nothing About Me Without Me!
An American Tradition
The title of this blog was the slogan used by disability rights activists in the 1990s who wanted a say in their services.
According to Google, the phrase has its roots way back in European unrest in the 1500s, but America shouted the same message from the rooftops during the American Revolution with “No Taxation Without Representation!”
So it has become an American tradition.
I think leaders are missing a valuable resource if they don’t seek participant voice in decisions they make on a routine basis. Let me give you an example and then share about a place that has fully embraced the idea.
First, a real life example:
Last week, I was catching up over Zoom with a friend about how the school year was going for her autistic daughter. When I saw the face she made, I offered to listen if she wanted to complain. It turned out that last week was a nightmare.
The school district has a “parent conference week” tradition. During that week, the school days are adjusted so teachers can meet with families.
Here’s how it goes:
Monday – regular schedule
Tuesday – half day in the afternoon
Wednesday – half day in the afternoon
Thursday – half day in the morning
Friday – no school for students
Does your school have a week like this?
Well, my frustrated friend described the chaos this week created for her and her daughter. Forget regular morning routines that she has been reinforcing daily since school started.
What’s worse, she shared that her child’s teachers were equally upset with the practice. They found it nearly impossible to do any teaching. With classroom routines totally thrown off schedule, they had to focus their time and energy on soothing agitated students and just trying to survive.
How did this become a tradition?
What do you suppose could happen if the district asked for feedback?
I’m sure most would agree that parent conferences are valuable and worth scheduling, but I wonder what parents, teachers, and even students would say about the current approach? What are the chances that somebody could offer alternative ways to accomplish the same thing?
There is power in giving voice to those most affected!
Minneapolis Public Schools has a solution!!!
Maren Henderson and Amanda Dionne presented the approach used by Minneapolis Public Schools at the virtual Family and Community Engagement Summit in October. Wait until you hear what they did!
They started Youth Participatory Evaluation in 2015 and Parent Participatory Evaluation in 2018, using a combination of state/federal funding, grants and district funds.
They’ve made a commitment to empower youth and family voices, and they’ve put their money where their mouth is (pun intended).
They began with their beliefs that youth and families have expertise in their own experience. Further, schools should listen to those they are designed to serve and share power in the ongoing improvement of their educational system.
This graphic was created by one Youth Evaluator. He saw himself as the ear for many voices with the responsibility of advocating for them.
Since this was the FCE Summit, their presentation focused on the MPS system for collecting family voices.
I won’t do their hour long presentation justice to summarize, but here are a few key points:
MPS identified 5 populations of families whose voices might not otherwise have a platform and hired 10 members of each group to serve as paid parent evaluators.
MPS provided training opportunities for parent evaluators to expand their skills in relationship building, survey & interview skills, data collection & analysis, and reporting techniques.
MPS provided coaching from an engagement specialist and an evaluation specialist for each parent evaluator to empower them to tailor the listening structures to fit the population needs.
MPS prepared school and district leaders so they would be open and responsive to feedback shared by the parent evaluators within a long-term improvement context.
MPS coordinated strategic discussions at school and district levels about needed changes in policy and practices that would remove barriers to family partnership.
Learn more about the MPS Parent Participatory Evaluation and the MPS Youth Participatory Evaluation.
Of course, the MPS system isn’t the only approach for gathering youth and family feedback, but it’s working. Which of your stakeholders experience barriers to expressing their perspectives? How could you improve services if you knew about those barriers? What are the chances that your stakeholders have some ideas that are worth hearing? MPS also has systems for gathering faculty and staff perspectives.
When your school or district makes decisions about changing practices and policies, who do you listen to? Could it be that some of your stakeholders feel excluded?
Could it be that they think, “Nothing About Me Without Me!”
What if they knew their perspectives counted? What if their actions were aligned with your long term (and short term) goals?
If your school or district is doing a good job with this, please reply to this post with ideas we could all use!
