Liza Holland [00:00:02]:
Welcome to education perspectives. I am your host, Liza Holland. This is a podcast that explores the role of education in our society from a variety of lenses. Education needs to evolve to meet the needs of today and the future. Solving such huge issues requires understanding. Join me as we begin to explore the many perspectives of education. Brooke Gill is the vice president and director of Collaborative for Families and Schools at the Pritchard Committee. She has over 15 years of experience in managing and strategically forming relationships with family leaders, state agencies, local communities, and national work groups to ensure Kentucky is delivering family driven, strength based, and high impact services for families and children. Prior to joining the Pritchard committee in 2019, gill served as Kentucky Strengthening families. KYSF state Administrator Gill's. Professional development includes Harvard edx, family engagement, implicit bias and diversity leadership. Professional facilitation she also has a bachelor's from Murray State University and a master's in Public administration from Northern Kentucky University. We're so glad to have her here. Well, welcome Brooke Gill. We are so glad to have you on Education Perspectives today.
Brooke Gill [00:01:30]:
Excited to be here.
Liza Holland [00:01:32]:
So our first question to every guest is a little bit of a 30,000 foot question. Why, in your opinion, do we as a society invest in educating our citizens?
Brooke Gill [00:01:46]:
Yeah, to me it's education opens doors. It breaks generational poverty. It opens families and communities to new opportunities they might not have otherwise known about. And as we learned the hard way through COVID, school is really the social and emotional hub for many children and families. This is where they find community support, get basic needs met. I think we have to realize that school can be an unwelcoming space for many of our families and students. It doesn't feel like a safe space or a place where they get resources and the experiences that they need. But school really can be and is best positioned to be that place where all community resources can come together, where families and children can get the support and the communities that they need. So for me, education itself is important. I have my master's degree, which has opened up so many doors for me, and I've seen folks in my family sort of struggle with not having a degree and the doors that that closes for them. So I think education is vitally important and really helps us move in our careers. But for me, it's more about kind of what you get in that school building experience and the community that you find inside schools.
Liza Holland [00:03:05]:
Great answer. Education is such a big, some would say bureaucracy, but there's so many tangential supports and whatnot for our education system. And you and the Pritchard Committee are definitely providing some of those great external support. So what drew you to this type of work? Why is it important to you to be involved in this space?
Brooke Gill [00:03:33]:
My career started in supporting families, overcome toxic stress in the adverse childhood experiences studies work. So I really came into the field when all of that was all shiny and new and everybody was blown away with these Ace scores that we were learning about with kiddos. And what struck me in doing that work for a number of years is what's somewhat like intuitive to social and emotional work, behavioral health, mental health, even some of the local health departments is that you have to go about it with a whole child, whole family approach. There's no other way to do it. You can't just section off this one thing you're trying to work on with a student. But I felt like when it came to trainings and conversations with educators, it wasn't as intuitive. And the system wasn't set up to think about whole child, whole family. In some ways, it's set up not to to have some kind of strong boundaries between this is the space for reading, writing and learning. This isn't social supports. This is kind of a sacred learning space. And while that I appreciate that and that's absolutely true, and our teachers are trying to be four different roles all the time, we also have to understand that if we don't have family engagement and if we aren't thinking about the whole child, we're not going to get anywhere with math scores in reading. We're not going to move literacy scores if our kiddos are hungry and have cavities. So I was really drawn to Pritchard committee because they were beginning to expand their family partnership work through the statewide Family Engagement Center grant at the US. Department of Education. And the challenge of the grant from US. Ed was create a system of family engagement so that family engagement is somewhat universally practiced as a way towards student academic achievement. So how does it become part of how we do school? And that was so interesting to me because I had seen that be such a barrier for educators to think about family engagement as the strategy it's oftentimes looked at. As I'll get to that when or it's hard for our educators because we've seen in studies only 10%, I think, of our Kentucky universities teach family engagement in educator program. So we're asking something of our teachers that we're not preparing them for. So it's really a systems breakdown. Rather than teachers or families not caring to partner, the system is really not set up to teach them how to.
Liza Holland [00:06:12]:
That makes a lot of sense. And honestly, our system, unfortunately, was established a long time ago, and the needs and desires for what our society needs today are not necessarily aligned with those systems that have been put together. And it makes a tremendous amount of sense to me to bring in the community I. E. Pritchard committee to be able to help, to move forward some of that education. Can you tell me a little bit about maybe what you love about what you do with that it sounds like there's some challenges involved in getting educators to come on board, but maybe there's some AHA, moments that have been really striking for you.
Brooke Gill [00:06:54]:
Yeah, for me, what's unique too about Pritchard Committee that you say like bringing the community in is we were really founded on this idea of communities and families and educators want to partner and they do care. In 1983, Pritchard Committee was founded because we were the bottom in national standings for everything, which a lot of folks know that in the education world, especially, thank God for Mississippi, because if we weren't bottom, they were. And so Ed Pritchard said if Kentuckians knew about this, they wouldn't stand for it. And so how can we get this information into the hands of families and community members and our classroom teachers? And they'll have the solutions, they'll have the voice, they'll have the solutions. And that led to community conversations, town hall meetings, folks digging into the data. This is we're not doing this, what can we do together? Which went into the Kentucky Education Reform Act and that moved us to the middle of all states across the nation with that was Family Resource youth Service centers baked into that act, school based decision making boards. So not only some of our standardized testing, which is what a lot of people kind of hang on to with Kara, but there were other processes baked in so we could have this shared leadership. And so I think it's important to realize that our community worked together at one point. And that's really what we're looking at now as we start to slide back towards the bottom of all the states. How can we rally once again and understand that families and community members have something to offer and need to be at work in our schools? And I don't remember what your question was, but I just wanted to reiterate.
Liza Holland [00:08:39]:
It was talking about what you love, about what you do. But you know something, it was incredibly insightful as far as an answer anyway, so no worries.
Brooke Gill [00:08:49]:
But here's what I love. I love that what we're trying to do at the heart of our family engagement work is talk to families. Just talk to them, ask them what they want. And so it's really fun to work with educators and school administrators who are just like beating their head against the wall. They're like, we host all of these things and no one shows up. And we're like, that's great. What did they say they wanted? And they're like, what do you mean? Well, you had your coffees with Dads every Friday and the dads aren't showing up to it. Which is a great idea. But what does the dad say that they wanted? They're like, well shoot, I don't know. We haven't asked them. And so it's just coming in and saying, let's ask them. Let's ask the dads what they want to do and having those real conversations and you just see light bulbs go off for families and educators as they start to just get real with each other. And they're like, you know what? I really need help with? One of those examples through our Friskies was laundry days. They were like, I don't have time to come to anything at the school if you want to talk to me. A lot of us get together at the laundry mat. And so the Frisk started going to the laundry mat, and while they were all doing their laundry, they brought detergent. So they used programming money to buy detergent rather than coffees and pizzas. And they did literacy activities with the families. And so that was just in asking the families, why aren't you showing up? And they're like, we don't have time. So it's when do you have downtime that we could come help you with your kids reading? You want to come to the laundry mat? You're welcome to. Okay, see you there. So I just love that the answers are simple, and it's just getting to just that real human to human interaction.
Liza Holland [00:10:29]:
That is so brilliant. I came to education pretty much through the very involved parent route as know, president of the PTA everywhere and all that kind of thing. And the number of conversations that I had with educators just kind of spitballing ideas. And the answer was a cocked head going with a confused look, going, you mean volunteers would do that? And I was I mean and we had somewhat of a solution. Middle school teachers really were pressed for time, and they needed some support to be able to free up their time. So we created a parents copy club, and every Friday they could get all of their copies made by these parents. And then it opened up a dialogue time for them to be able to go back and forth and be able to tell each other what it is that they want and need. And so I love that thinking out of the box. The laundry is fabulous. That is so cool. So that's a good segue. What does it look like to have meaningful family and community engagement in the schools?
Brooke Gill [00:11:40]:
What we try to stress to folks is, unfortunately, our system over time has made it so that we're counting how many folks we get through the front door. And so how many people can you get to show up for this event? What's your show rate for parent teacher conferences? And so what gets measured gets done. And so we're all kind of marching in this direction of quantity over quality. So our big message is think about ways that you can have meaningful and positive interactions with families, period. Don't even worry about the academic teaching transfer of knowledge. Just worry about how many positive interactions have I had with this family. Because if you start that, the other stuff just naturally follows because then the parent trusts you. And they want what's best for their kids. So they're going to have questions, and then you're going to have answers. We just encourage folks to dial it back, make it simple. One of the best practices is try to reach out to each family with one positive interaction within the first couple of months of school. Every teacher, every family. So you just call, hey, this is Brooke. I'm Scott's math teacher. I'm really looking forward to getting to know you this year. I've only had him in class once so far, but he just seems like a really bright and curious fella. That's it. And then they say, oh, okay. It's like, well, I just wanted to call and reach out and say hi, and that's it. And it's so simple for the teacher and it's such high impact for the family that one conversation can mean so much more than the huge event on the football field that takes months and months to coordinate and is really expensive. And teachers don't want to be there after school and parents don't want to be there after work. One of our national Ta people says, let's stop throwing parties nobody wants to come to, even the host. So let's get out of this trap of hosting these events that aren't really fun for anyone and they're so labor intensive. Now, there are some events that families like, and when those come about naturally and organically, then they're wonderful. There's a lot of successful movie nights a lot of schools have fallen into where they kind of put up like a drive in theater, blankets and picnic and all of that, and those are wildly successful. But we just kind of are stuck in this routine of hosting the same thing over and over again. And if we would just stop and do just the simple little bucket fillers in relationships, it goes so much further than the complicated stuff we're busying ourselves with right now.
Liza Holland [00:14:20]:
That is really insightful. And I find that in not only the relationships with families, but also teachers relationships with students, if you can develop that actual relationship where there is some trust building, that is the foundation upon which learning can happen. And unfortunately, there are a lot of families out there who have not had a really positive interaction with school in their past. So to me, that example of going out to the Laundromat was really brilliant because sometimes you have to reach further on your end educators just to be able to overcome a lot of negative impressions that happened before you ever even got into this realm.
Brooke Gill [00:15:07]:
Yep, absolutely.
Liza Holland [00:15:09]:
Very cool. So I know that Pritchard has recently gotten a number of new grants and are doing some massive hiring and all that kind of stuff. Can you talk to us a little bit about the resources that you're going to be able to bring to bear as a result of that?
Brooke Gill [00:15:26]:
Yes. So in December, maybe a week before christmas, we found out that we were awarded a statewide scaling grant for full service community schools. This is the first time the US. Department of Education has offered a statewide scaling grant. Opportunity Kentucky received two of the three statewide scaling grants. The third went to Puerto Rico. So. All eyes on Kentucky. We've got to step it up. And Pritchard got one of those two statewide scaling grants and then Eastern Kentucky Partners for Rural Impact received one as well. And what we're looking at through this grant is the Friskies, which I talked about a minute ago with Kara, the Family Resource Use Service Center. They've been around for 30 years and really shoulder a lot of our community resourcing for our schools. So if families are in need of anything that's presenting a non academic barrier, that's brisk. As you can imagine, sometimes that turns into a person with almost a 500 student caseload trying to manage the family and student needs. And when you're in a high poverty or just a high need area, that can be really daunting for our Family Resource Use Service Center Coordinators. So what this grant allows us to do is look at the framework of Frisc and see how we can create stronger ecosystems around these individuals so that they're not just like this one man shop running around with their heads cut off. And some of our Frisc have already created these ecosystems just through kind of understanding what they need and building some teams around them. So we're going to be looking at what's happening in our world of Frisk out there, like what's working really well, that we can replicate to other Frisk, what is just kind of a common issue. Barriers pinch points for the program, and how can we as a system rally around that? And then how do we just coordinate better? So community schools is not about programming. It's about coordination. So the idea that everything's there, we're just not utilizing it. So we've got schools that have needs and we've got organizations offering programming that no one's showing up to. So how do we take these programs that no one's coming to back to? We were saying earlier, talk to the families, ask them why? Why are you not showing up for this? We know that you really want your GED, that you struggle to get it. Why are you not showing up to this free night class that's hosted at the school? Like, what's the barrier? And you ask families these questions and you find stuff out. Like a lot of our families don't speak English. So all of this stuff we're pushing out there just as simple as it's not translated or I don't know if an interpreter is going to be there. So I was nervous to show up or I didn't know that was for me. We just find out things that it could just be simple as messaging. So our role is to increase coordination and break down just some of these really simple barriers that we don't know because honestly, nobody has time to have conversations to find those things out. So that digging takes time. It takes like coffee at people's houses, home visits, going to the laundry mat, having conversations, standing in pickup and drop off line and asking questions. So we're going to be doing a lot of town hall community conversations throughout Kentucky, trying to learn about different barriers and assets. Also what is happening in our communities that we're not plugging into. So where there might be high poverty, there's also high know a lot of high poverty. Communities know how to work together. They know how to build on the infrastructure and social connections within their communities. How are we tapping into that? So if we need a math tutor, why are we bringing in some national math tutor? What about the retired math teacher that lives right next to the school that everyone trusts? Why don't we bring her in? And so that's what we're excited about working on is really hosting and it's really back to the roots of Pritchard committee going out, talking to folks and believing that the solutions are there. We just need to coordinate. So we will have 40 districts, 40 schools, 20 districts to be our high intensity proof points. And then we'll have statewide scaling efforts. The spillover effect since Frisk is statewide, that is wonderful.
Liza Holland [00:19:51]:
It kind of brings me back to one of the reasons I started this podcast is the number of conversations that I had where people didn't realize what types of resources were even available and how they could plug into it. Because education, by its nature, is very siloed and finding ways to be able to cross those barriers both within the system and without the system, into the communities. And whatnot I think is a huge key to finally being able to transform our education system into the type of supports that we really need today. I love the fact that there's so much energy towards a portrait of a learner in each of the communities. And I think that this initiative that you're bringing to the table will really strengthen that. If we can start getting out there, finding out what families want, what communities want, what employers want, what students want, what a concept, we're really going to move a lot forward. We talked a little bit about systems earlier and they can be really challenging. What types of obstacles and challenges are you facing in moving forward with this work?
Brooke Gill [00:21:08]:
I think the challenge is having the conversations because our system doesn't really function like that and we're just so driven toward programming and not process. So the first thing folks want to do is have it done by next month. So okay, let's get our program together. Let's get our budget together. We'll onboard our staff. On August 1, everyone will know the thing. By August 30, we'll hit the ground running by september 1. And it's like, that's how we work. We program, we budget, we train, and then we launch. And here we go. And we've even fallen into that where we don't know what the programs are going to be because we haven't talked to the communities yet. And that's a really uncomfortable way to run an organization and an initiative because we don't know yet. And we have to be open to the fact that ideas are going to come that we don't even expect. I'll give you an example of a community school in another state. They started their community conversations, and they had chronic absenteeism was through the roof and climbing. And they asked the families, what's going on? Why are kids not showing up? And it was a safety issue. It was mainly a walking community school, and there was a certain section of town where it was just really dangerous, and kids were getting bullied, and there had been a couple folks that had been killed, and so they were just not risking it, and that's what they said. Okay, so that section of town had been a little bar that was run by some community, not licensed bar happening in the backyard. And the community goes to them and says, we need your help. We need you to keep this space safe for our kids in the morning and until 04:00 p.m.. This needs to be a safe space for walking. Can you guys do that for us? And can you open your bar at 04:00 instead of 10:00 a.m. And it was this really great success story where a lot of community members who you would think don't have anything to give or don't have anything to offer, they never had been asked. And so they had this opportunity to protect the kids and be a contributing member of the community. And it was wildly successful. Absenteeism started to see a lot more kids going. These guys got totally into it and created this safe passage and a lot of walking school bus initiatives. Not quite that kind of drastic of a cool story. I love that story. But walking school buses are something that have sprung from community school efforts because they don't feel safe walking. And so they make these big I don't know if you've seen them, the big cut out school buses and families and community members will go pick up door to door kiddos and walk them to school. And you don't think of that stuff. How are you going to program for that before you have a conversation? So being open to the fact that things might look a little different, you don't think about the local bar being your school escorts. You don't think about laundry mats being the place where you're doing your math programming, but you have to wait until you have the conversations. And I think that that's hard for.
Liza Holland [00:24:26]:
Us, and I think it comes back to your commentary earlier about what you measure. We're in a very high measurement organization and backing off from I've had this many programs and we had this many attendees, et cetera, et cetera. We need to get into some more relevant types of data. And we had the conversation and we identified these several needs and those sorts of things. Tell me a little bit about I know that accountability is a big, huge buzzword within the education establishment. How are you kind of adapting to that and trying to change the status quo, as it were, as to how schools are measuring their community engagement, one.
Brooke Gill [00:25:17]:
Of the things we recommend is to, again, go from quantity to quality. So how many processes do you have in place that ensure two way communication and relationship building? So not how many folks attended, but we do our welcoming phone calls, we have our community conversations, we do even the copying group that you mentioned, those are three different examples of how we're having two way conversations with our families. That's more important than the fact that you had 100 people come to one event. That was one way information giving. So asking, how many processes do you have in place that encourage relationship building and two way communication? A parent survey that we recommend is sending out a survey. Can you name one caring adult in our school by name? Can you say the name of one person in our school that cares about you and your child and see what your return rate is on that? 90% of our families said that they can name someone in this school that cares about them. 50% of our families said that they look at that number of how many of our families and watch that rise. We also think about the evidence based four C's. So every programming should go towards building connection among families to families. So you can ask, did you meet a new family member through this program that you didn't know otherwise? Or did you establish a relationship with a teacher you didn't otherwise have one with? Did you build a new skill to support your child's learning at home? So I think what we don't count, which is more important is what families are doing at home. So don't let me not count on your radar until I show up to the school, because if you're sending things home and I'm doing learning at home activities, I'm doing the everyday strategies, which is super common now, like have this conversation with your kid over dinner or point these things out in the car while you're driving. Ask me if I'm doing those things and then count me somewhere. So 90% of our families say that they're using our learning at home strategies to encourage more conversation about math at home. Wow, that tells you so much more than the percentage of folks that showed up. Parent teacher conference.
Liza Holland [00:27:37]:
Absolutely.
Brooke Gill [00:27:38]:
Connections. We talk about skill building. So are you building skills at home shifts in beliefs. So asking families, do you believe that you can help your kid in their educational journey? Yes. No. Watch that number climb. We want families to believe in themselves as the advocates for their kiddos. Do you believe the teacher is invested in you as a partner? Teachers, do you believe parents are vital to educational outcomes? So checking for that belief to move and then just confidence. So teachers, how confident are you in working with families? It's the number one fear factor of teachers coming out of teacher prep. That is the number one thing. What do you feel like you're not prepared to do? Number one answer talk to families. In this climate right now, it's harsher than it's been in thinking about a new teacher coming into this environment. Is nervous that they're going to tick a parent off.
Liza Holland [00:28:36]:
Absolutely.
Brooke Gill [00:28:37]:
And they're just not going to talk to families. They're going to say, it's better to say nothing than to say the wrong thing. And that's what we're seeing out of our rising teachers, is they're saying, I don't want to go there. And we can't have that. We cannot have teachers that are nervous to talk to families.
Liza Holland [00:28:55]:
That is consistent with my lived experience. It takes some time and some relationship building with teachers to have them trust that you're there to be a partner. And so I would recommend that to parents as well. Is that know that know that teachers are scared and teachers don't fall back into Ed. You speak that the parents don't understand because nobody likes to feel stupid. But I'm so excited about the work that you're doing and the fact that there are funders that are investing in it and that kind of thing, because that's definitely a part of where we need to go in education. So my last question is a little bit about decision makers. Obviously, the way our school systems and whatnot are set up, it's really legislators and regulators that set all these benchmarks and put all these types of things in. What would you like for decision makers to know to help to move this type of work forward?
Brooke Gill [00:29:59]:
Ask your educators. Just like we say, ask the families. Ask the students. Ask what do you think is an accurate measure for how we should track family engagement? What do you think is an accurate measure to track how well your students are doing in this? And teachers have the answers. I think sometimes we're all just sitting around a table scratching our heads, but the people who have the answers aren't at the table. And so for me to sit here and suggest I know the answers, I would be guessing. And so I can speak to my experiences with family and community engagement. I've definitely heard a lot of teachers talking on both sides of the accountability and what's working and what's not and what they wish was tracked better and celebrated. More. So, of course, there's a million different ways that people feel like they can solve that. But teachers have really great ideas of how they think that they could be tracking success better for all aspects of what's happening in their classroom. And when it comes to family engagement, you ask for families and educators in the thick of that students, are you prepared to go out in the world? Ask the students. Ask the employers who are receiving these students. Are these folks ready? And I think that's happening a lot. I do think that we've gotten to a breaking point where everyone is kind of at the drawing board saying, what does this need to look like? Because this isn't working. And there are a lot of great conversations. The Kentucky United we learn council. I'm grateful to be a member of that. That's what we're exploring. We're talking about what does Portrait of a Learner look like? And things like the challenge with some of the playing around, with the accountability system to make it more real and talk to some of these durable skills and things is the transferring of districts that becomes an issue in that you want to make it highly tailored to your community. But then when you have families kind of moving community to community, how do you standardize it enough to where we don't have confusion among districts, but how do you personalize it enough to where our students are really learning what they want to be learning for the community that they're in? So it's not as cut and dry as you want it to be. There's some really challenging conversations. There's huge equity issues when you start shifting and moving things around, well, what does this mean? What does speaking, having a final report that requires you to do a public speaking message that's kind of getting at some of these communication qualities that we want to see in our graduates for a child with autism or deaf of hard of hearing, so what does their final test look like? And you just get into a lot of the nitty gritty when you start shaking it up. So it's a hard question to answer, but I do double down on having the right people at the table to have the conversation.
Liza Holland [00:33:02]:
Amen. Boy. Yes. That is so incredibly true. And you need to have people who are open minded enough to think out of the box and to expand their definition of what a defensive learning looks.
Brooke Gill [00:33:17]:
Yeah.
Liza Holland [00:33:19]:
Well, Brooke, it has been so delightful to speak with you today, and I really appreciate your time and all of the great work that you're doing. If there are families out there that want to make sure that they plug into your town halls and whatnot, is there a resource that they could go to to know what you've got going on right now?
Brooke Gill [00:33:38]:
So we're still onboarding staff and getting our district directors going. We haven't even identified all 20 districts. So we'll be doing an application for the 20 districts beginning July 15. We only have four of our 20 identified, so right now it's probably best just to go to the Pritchard.org web page. There's an interest form connected to Kentucky Community schools. If you plug your email in there, that way we know all the folks that kind of want to stay tuned to the work as it grows.
Liza Holland [00:34:08]:
Perfect. Well, thank you again for being a part of Education Perspectives, and we'll have to have you back in a year or two to track the progress of all this. Great work.
Brooke Gill [00:34:17]:
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Liza Holland [00:34:19]:
Take care. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Education Perspectives. Feel free to share your thoughts on our Facebook page. Let us know which Education Perspectives you would like to hear or share. Please subscribe five and share with your friends.