WEBVTT

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My name is Natalie Elder.

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I am the principal at Hardy Elementary School in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

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When I first came to Hardy as the principal,

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one of the things that was lacking was a strong relationship between the school and the parents.

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I had to think about, to be honest, was it our approach?

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Were we unapproachable to them?

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What was causing the conflict between us and the parents?

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Because we had a lot of irate parents come in, and I couldn't understand what was going on,

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but I realized something had to be done because I needed them to be on the team with me.

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The key thing to me was building strong relationships because they were angry.

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They were unapproachable.

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They talked about the community as a whole: "well, this school never had good test scores; well,

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they've never done this; they have had bad teachers."

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And I am listening to them, and this is what I am hearing,

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and I had to build that relationship with them, "trust us, trust us to do the right thing."

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My thing with them, I would say, "I promise you I am going to give you the best teacher

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because you are giving me the best child that you have.

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I need to give you the best teacher that I have."

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And I tried to make sure that the teachers understood that.

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It's one thing to understand, but I had to change the mindset even of the teachers because,

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again, if you think that you are dealing

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with "keep people off poverty," your expectations might be low.

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And I had to help them understand that's a socioeconomic issue.

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It has nothing to do with their ability to think.

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So you've got to get past an economic issue.

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That's all that is.

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Poverty is just about economics.

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It's not about a person's ability to think.

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We can help develop a brain by providing them the necessary skills to be successful.

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We have to teach them to hear the rules, that there are rules in your community, yes,

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but we have certain rules in school.

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We have to understand that people of poverty may speak on a casual level, not all of them,

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but a majority of them speak on casual register.

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We have to get them to formal register, to understand in school, we talk in complete sentences.

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And we have to understand also that some parents feel inferior

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because they feel they cannot express things to us.

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Another thing we had to do was change the way we set up meetings.

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It was a parent one time came in for a meeting,

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and I didn't look at it like that until she said it,

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and she told me she didn't feel comfortable.

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And I said, "Well, tell me what's the problem."

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And she said, "You've got your posse in here."

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Well it was just a team of teachers, but to her, that was a gang,

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there was a group-it was like a gang.

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And I said, "Oh, no, we are not trying to gang up on you.

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I just wanted everybody at the table so you can have an opportunity to hear everybody's voice."

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She said, "Well, I need to go get my people."

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And she didn't hear me.

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"Well, I just need to go get my people.

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You've got your people, I need to go get mine."

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And I looked at her and I thought no, that's not what I need to portray, and I realized, "Oh,

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we've got to change our way of doing business, even with our parents."

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So we had to create the setting where we will provide refreshments, or we'll say to them,

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"this person is here for this reason.

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Are you okay with that?"

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Because they needed to feel comfortable even talking to us.

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We had to think about our approach in how we delivered that information to them about their kids

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because that goes back to creating a relationship, and we were not good at that at first.

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I have to admit it, our teachers were not good at our approach.

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So, we had to look at ourselves and realize in order to first reach them,

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we have to be better at what we do, and we have to make the situation work on both sides.

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Now I grant you, not all parents were we able to move over to that side,

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to that line to cross over with us and be a part of our team,

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but it set the tone for the community.

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Because one thing I learned about the community, whatever's said here,

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it goes right into their community.

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So we had to be careful how we were doing business,

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and I needed them to see that we were really about educating their kids.

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This was an institution strictly for learning.

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I had to get that point over.

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So we started developing mini-workshops with our parents.

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We had family nights with our parents.

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We had literacy nights.

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We had publishers' night.

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We did writers' night.

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We put on plays.

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And our parents loved them.

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Those were some of the things that we have done to help our parents understand we are here

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to help our kids, and we want them to be the best that they could be,

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and we cannot do it without a strong relationship with them.

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We had to convince them this is a team effort.

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It takes everyone to be held accountable.

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It can't be just the teachers being held accountable.

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We have to hold the students accountable, and we have to hold parents accountable.

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But the key thing is that we are a team, and it has to be a team effort.