March 2015
Advocacy

All Our Children: It Starts with a Story

From April through June in 2014 I joined six other volunteers from my congregation, Trinity Church Boston, to read with fourth graders at an overcrowded school in Dorchester, a large and diverse Boston neighborhood. I’d been reading with Sophia at a folding table outside the auditorium once a week for about six weeks when she hijacked one of our sessions.

I started with my usual, “How are you today?” but she didn’t answer by talking about one of her usual activities, like playing basketball with her older brother and his friends, or babysitting her younger cousins. Instead she started with an emphatic, “It’s so unfair!” She went on to tell me about mean teachers who were treating her with disrespect. She told me she’d received seven ‘green sheets’ already.

“What’s a green sheet?” I wanted to know.

It’s a note they give you if you do something they don’t like,” she replied, grudgingly.

“Like what?”

They wanted me to go to the library the other day, but I didn’t want to go. So I took off.”

“You took off,” I repeated in a neutral voice.

Yeah, I ran down the corridor in the other direction. They couldn’t catch me.”

“What happens when you get a green sheet?”

If you get eight you have to repeat your grade.”

My inner alarm bells all went off. Repeating a grade is one of the biggest predictors of school drop out.

Sophia was tenacious and curious. She was competitive with a fierce streak that I’m sure played well on the basketball court. What would be lost if this child – this precious brilliant girl -- didn’t complete school?

I listened as Sophia told me more, showing a keen sense of both dignity and fairness.

“When I look at you,” I told her, “I see someone who knows the difference between right and wrong and can make good choices for herself.” I wanted to bring to her mind people who could help her avoid green sheets. “Are there any teachers here you feel safe with?”

Oh yes,” her face relaxed. “Lots.”

That’s when my heart sank. I knew – but she apparently did not, yet -- that when she returned for fifth grade the following year, not one of those teachers would be there. I was worried that the following year no one would know that her restlessness came from boredom; that she needed a meaningful challenge, not a green sheet.

In October her school had learned it hadn’t met two state-mandated improvement targets and the commissioner of education chose an aggressive response - he gave management of the school to an outside non-profit that offered jobs to fewer than one-third of the teachers. None of whom accepted the offer to stay. They’d all be teaching elsewhere come the following September, taking their personal knowledge of students like Sophia with them. So none of those teachers Sophia knew and trusted would be back.

Nothing like this ever happened to me in school or to my children. Why do we let it happen to Sophia?

Things will be really different here next year,” she said on our last day together.

“Oh,” I said, wondering what she knew in June, “Like what?”

I’ll have to come to school much earlier,” she said.
I wished that were all.

Everyone who tutors a child in an under-resourced school knows a child like Sophia. Through our church’s partnership with Sophia’s school several of us are having these experiences regularly, and we can talk about the questions they raise for us.

Many of the Episcopalians I know are protected by their affluence and do not know what’s happening to the under-resourced schools in their cities. I believe the most effective and powerful form of advocacy is bearing witness, and to do that we need to be present, which means getting beyond doing FOR other people to doing WITH them.

All Our Children

All Our Children, www.allourchildren.org, is a network of congregations engaged in partnerships with under-resourced urban public schools. Our partnerships are diverse: they serve students, build community alliances, and seek to address root causes of educational inequity. Acting as advocate, resource, and convener All Our Children (AOC) nurtures and celebrates these church-school partnerships. We do this because our faith calls us to help every child reach their full potential by supporting their right to quality public education.

AOC started in 2007 as a joint initiative of Trinity Wall Street and the Episcopal Diocese of New York in response to educational inequality in New York City’s public schools. Trinity Wall Street (TWS) supported congregations starting one-on-one partnerships with local schools asking volunteers to give forty hours a year for five years to address a need identified by the school.

The first partnership was between TWS and Leadership and Public Service High School, and over the following five years TWS supported sixteen church-school partnerships in the Diocese of New York.

Seeing the positive impact on schools, communities, and congregations, Catherine Roskam, Suffragan Bishop of New York proposed a resolution to General Convention in 2009 expressing the church’s commitment to equitable education for all children and encouraging congregations to commit to their local schools. That resolution passed with support of deputies and bishops from across the Episcopal Church.

In June 2012 TWS invited me to join them in exploring how to expand the number and impact of church-school partnerships. In November we hosted a conference in Richmond for forty leaders from ten partnerships across the US.

Through this conference it became clear that these programs share a passion for serving children living in poverty. It also became clear they needed support and connection to help them learn and grow. Participants shared knowledge, resources, and ideas, and after two days of discussion and prayer they wanted to stay engaged with each other’s work. The foundation had been laid, and the AOC National Network was launched.

What we’ve observed:

Local church-school partnerships are as different as the congregations and neighborhoods that form them.

Each partnership emerges in the local context and from a grassroots community that seeks to respond to a missional opportunity in their neighborhood out of their hearts’ desire to care for children. Most partnerships emerged outside diocesan structures and very far outside denominational structures.

There is no one right way to do this.

So we do not need to be experts. This should give us hope!

Building a relationship is hard.

We need to be both patient and persistent. We accept that turnover in school leaders and teachers happens regularly. We show up over and over, and we don’t go away, nor do we arrive with pre-packaged solutions or quick fixes to the school’s challenges.

The system is the problem, but you can’t start there.

Schools are subject to enormous external pressure and regulation from the state, local leaders, and federal requirements. Partners focus on school-level issues, learn from those closest to the issue (students, parents, and teachers), and build coalitions with other community organizations and faith communities, so their understanding is based on diverse perspectives.

Partnerships grow toward complexity and impact over time.

Emerging partnerships focus on building trust by being consistently reliable. They often begin by responding to immediate student needs (food, supplies, tutoring) and supporting teachers (with appreciation lunches, at science fairs, and service days).

They focus on growing their volunteer corps in commitment, size, and awareness of issues. Sometimes they learn and pray together away from the school.

More mature partnerships have layers of complexity and depth. They employ local youth in the after-school programs; lobby for changes in rapid transit so parents can get to the good jobs; and collaborate in statewide campaigns to fund the renovation of outdated urban school buildings.

Try This: How is your neighborhood calling you right now? Are you interested in working with under resourced urban schools in your area? What could your congregation do to help every child reach their full potential by supporting their right to quality public education?

How do you get started?

  • Hold small group meetings and invite people to tell stories about their school experience.
  • Keep it personal - how does an issue or problem connect to them personally?
  • Seek out and get to know local community organizers.
What does that look like in the future?
  • What is your dream of what might be true if you can act effectively together?
  • What is the nightmare you seek to avoid by taking action?
  • Find resources and connect with people who are taking that next step.

How you can help:

  • Invite a teacher to tell her story to your church, help her feel supported and welcome.
  • Convene a conversation about quality public education in your deanery or diocese.
  • Talk to your bishops and General Convention deputies about why quality public education for all children is important to you.
  • As a network we’re only as useful and strong as our members, so connect with us, and join the conversation.
  • Join us www.allourchildren.org (see Resources below), share what we’re doing with friends & family & your local educators, and invite others to connect with us also.

Lallie Lloyd is a passionate social and educational justice advocate, an experienced business and development professional, and a life-long Episcopalian. She holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a master’s in theology from Episcopal Divinity School, where she received the Hall Prize for outstanding peace and justice work. Lallie has served The Episcopal Church on policy and ministry commissions at the local, regional, and national levels and is an active member of Trinity Church, Boston and their partnership with the Dever Elementary School.

Lallie deeply wants to be part of a church that matters in lives of children, schools, and communities and founded All Our Children National Network in 2012 to help connect others who feel the same. She has three adult children and lives in North Cambridge with her husband, David Miller.

Resources:


  • Black Lives Matter: A biennial fifty state report from the Schott Foundation that presents data on graduation and achievement rates for boys of color.
  • What about the separation of church and state? See what a major teachers’ union says about faith-based partners working in schools - http://www.nea.org/home/35800.htm

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10 Steps to School Partnership

This article is part of the March 2015 Vestry Papers issue on Advocacy