Digital parent-school chat groups

Organization: Escola Municipal Professor Waldir Garcia
Country: Brazil
Education level: Primary
Organization type: Government
Family engagement type: Building Parent Knowledge and Advocacy Skills

Overview

Escola Municipal Professor Waldir Garcia is a primary school located in Amazonas, the capital of one of Brazil’s poorest states with some of the nation’s highest dropout and failure rates. Students at this school faced many barriers to learning, with a student passage rate below 70 percent. On many occasions, students were absent from school to work to support their families. The school’s climate was rigid and formal, with each day beginning with a structured reading of the academic plan, and students were led between classes in absolute silence. Students were dismissed from classes for making noise or showing up late. Many new students were recent Haitian and Venezuelan refugees who struggled to learn due to language barriers.

The school’s principal sought to reimage a welcoming and inclusive school climate, improve student learning outcomes, and reduce grade repetition. To this end, the school principal invited national and international experts with ministerial support to the school community to build a new educational experience from the ground up. The principal convened with a regional group of parents and teachers known as the Collective Family School of Amazonas who were interested in investing in transforming local education (Professor Waldir Garcia Municipal School, n.d.). Over the course of just a few months, she convened parents, staff members, and students for weekly visioning sessions to rewrite the school’s education plan. This produced four guiding developmental goals for the entire community: empathy, creativity, teamwork, and leadership. Grounding these is a crosscutting commitment to inclusion, a mission of community embeddedness, and a fundamental belief that everyone has potential (L. C. Santos, personal communication, June 14, 2021).

An in-depth look at the curriculum and school operations shows that Waldir operates on a full-time education model, a type of Brazilian schooling that extends and widens the curriculum of the traditional four-hour school day. Students flexibly attend classes from 7:10 a.m. to 4:10 p.m. The day includes interactive whole-class instruction provided in age-based classrooms with students grouped at circular tables of diverse ability levels. These classes engage in “territorial learning,” or educational activities that bring students out of the classroom and into the broader community. This includes everything from trips to study Indigenous farming practices to school cleanup activities.

For much of the day, students attend cross-disciplinary workshops or follow personalized study guides that focus on individual interests and allow them to flexibly participate in teachers’ whole-group lessons. Study guide development occurs in partnership with individual tutors who are members of the school or broader community. These tutors facilitate weekly sessions where students reflect on their life path, journalize about their personal development, and devise weekly projects to help them grow. But these tutorials are not limited to students. Each staff member works with a community tutor to reflect on their personal and professional development. In addition to serving as tutors, parents regularly share their skills and knowledge through in-class activities or new workshops. These respond to both students’ interests and parents’ talents. For example, if a student wants to learn about the rainforest, a call may go out to ask parents with Indigenous roots to share their experiences with forestry and conservation.

A variety of programs complement individual and whole-class learning. Weekly assemblies in each classroom provide space for student reflection on classroom attitudes and behaviors, as well as broader challenges facing the school. Students might discuss difficulties learning in a loud space, for example, and propose solutions that the broader community can vote on at a whole-school assembly. Additionally, during a daily open period, teachers host workshops covering eight themes: theater, dance, sports, philosophy, science, literature, English, and mathematics. Rather than following a prescribed curriculum, teachers dream up dynamic and cross-disciplinary approaches to each subject. For example, a natural science teacher excited about botany developed a school garden that also functions as an open-air laboratory. In partnership with the state university, she hosts virtual visits with researchers, who teach students about sustainable gardening practices.

Each year, the community builds a curricular mandala, displayed as a set of concentric circles. Circular layers display learning dimensions such as skills, knowledge, and pedagogical approaches—for example, self-assessment, oration, and cultural heritage. At the heart of the mandala is a human figure, showing that people are at the heart of schooling. The mandala guides students and staff in designing learning opportunities. The community can spin the wheels to show the various ways to nurture the school’s five developmental domains: intellectual, cultural, emotional, social, and physical (L. C. Santos, personal communication, June 14, 2021).

How does it work?

With a hope to improve learning and development, while redefining the purpose of school for society, teachers and administrators establish digital parent-school communication channels, largely through WhatsApp and Facebook. These groups are divided by theme or class to create opportunities for smaller, targeted conversations. Families and staff use these groups to share needs, disseminate information, and plan activities. A teacher might, for example, alert the class WhatsApp group that he needs a volunteer to cover his classroom while he attends a professional development seminar. Parents would then coordinate coverage.

Please refer to other strategies organized by Escola Municipal Professor Waldir Garcia to build meaningful family, school, and community engagement, which include:

• Open door policy
• Annual collaborative revision of the school’s guiding document
• Parents as community teachers
• Weekly feedback on innovation implementation
• Weekly democratic assemblies and discussion board
• Community member tutors
• Community visioning workshops

What makes it work?

Democratic participation is at the heart of Waldir’s successful transformation. The school counts on students, parents, and staff as designers and implementers. Children and parents come together to discuss and vote on educational change. Families regularly lead activities at school, which has bred a culture of collective responsibility and ownership. In this way, every member of the community is both invested in and accountable for the school’s educational activities. When parents design their own workshops, for example, they have a direct stake in—and become champions of—the school’s democratic mission. Participation also extends the school’s capacity for transformative experiments by crowding in community members and their many talents. This is rooted in a central motto: “living and valuing plurality.” Escola Municipal Professor Waldir Garcia succeeds by ensuring each member of the school community feels valued as a learner, teacher, and individual. Parents, who are explicitly told that their skills and knowledge are worth sharing, become increasingly motivated to contribute. Children, seeing their parents participate as teachers, become increasingly committed to growth and learning.

Of course, democratic dialogue did not always lead to smooth sailing. At the start of the reforms, the school experienced massive resistance. Parents saw the changes as creating an undisciplined, chaotic mess. In fact, one parent lodged a formal complaint with the municipal secretary. Long-held trust between parents and the administration helped bridge this divide. The principal, long involved in the wider community as an advocate for children’s rights, was able to use her past successes as evidence to convince families that this experiment was worth trying. The school’s culture of flexibility and message that it must mold itself to serve the community further assuaged families’ fears. By showing willingness to open the school at different hours and to quickly tackle community-requested services such as weekend food service, Waldir secured trust for bigger projects.

Issues of planning and codification further hampered change efforts. Initially, Waldir shifted its curriculum without clearly spelling out its full pedagogical approach. This led to clear divisions in the school day, with traditional activities in the morning and dynamic approaches in the afternoon. Parents perceived this separation as demonstrating that innovative learning was less valuable than traditional pedagogies and began removing students before the afternoon. The school overcame this by consistently articulating and embedding its pedagogical rationale in all aspects of schooling. School leaders circulated a “political pedagogical project” document clarifying the values behind their approach, such as democratic participation and multidimensionality. They explained, for example, that a child has the power to decide if she wants to spend the entire day in the garden. Additionally, Waldir demonstrated evidence that its new approach worked. Beyond hosting meetings to discuss pedagogical theory and other model schools, they highlighted real-time student transformations. Parents, seeing their children growing and enjoying school, could not help but champion Waldir’s approach.

What is the impact?

Today, the school is a welcoming, democratic, and flexible space serving the entire local community—with special focus on engaging families as partners. Everyone is valued as an educator and a learner. Parents come to share skills and knowledge, from Haitian baking secrets to the mathematics of construction. Each student and staff member has a dedicated mentor, often a parent or community member, with whom they meet at least monthly to reflect on their personal development. Instead of presenting a rigid timetable, the school opens in accord with parent and student needs. Children are welcomed in for early-morning self-study, for example, if their parents need to get to work. Equally, students can choose to complete their studies at home or in the garden, if they prefer. Parents are also always welcome, with many bringing their kids into school on weekends for movies or family learning activities.

This adaptability proved especially valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic as the school became a regional referral center for community support. The school remained open to provide food and shelter for community members and leveraged teacher familiarity with flexible learning to design and monitor students’ remote learning. All of this has led to incredible growth on national assessments: The school’s education index rose from 3.9 out of 10 before the reforms to over 7.5—a full two points higher than the state average. Waldir serves roughly 250 students annually, one-fourth of whom are immigrants. Additionally, it trains schools across the state—and, in partnership with UNICEF, Ashoka, and other institutions across the globe—on community-centered, democratic, and inclusive education transformation (L. C. Santos, personal communication, June 14, 2021).

Roles

School staff: 

• Teachers regularly communicate with families via flexible parent drop-in visits, WhatsApp groups, and community meetings.
• Administrators coordinate weekly assemblies for parents, students, and staff to discuss and resolve community challenges.

Families:

• Parents flexibly decide when to participate in schoolwide activities and assemblies, which are offered multiple times each week.
• Parents identify and create opportunities for in-school volunteering.
• Students facilitate discussions between families and school staff at weekly meetings.

Resources required

People:

• 16 full-time teachers
• 15 administrators and support staff

Spaces:

• School equipped with library, computer lab, community garden, sports field, and 9 classrooms

Financial:

• Regular support from government funding schemes

Technology:

• Mobile phones for optional WhatsApp and Facebook group discussions

References

Professor Waldir Garcia Municipal School (AM). (n.d.). Escolas Transformadoras. https://escolastransformadoras.com.br/escola/escola-municipal-professor-waldir-garcia/

Related strategies

Digital communication strategies are widely used across the globe in a variety of ways. Some utilize two-way communication systems between families and schools, while others provide one-way channels of information or learning support. For other examples of how different organizations leverage digital communication to improve family engagement, see:

Strengthening learning at home and caregiving:

• Ministerio de Educación de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires – Helpline to support remote learning
• Youth Impact – Weekly SMSs to students and calls with families to strengthen learning at home
• Nord Anglia – Remote learning resources
• Inclusive Education – WhatsApp Helpline for Families of Children with Disabilities
• Family Engagement Lab – Native language text messages to strengthen learning at home
• Rocket Learning – Digital Parent Learning Communities

Providing information:

• School District 48: Sea to Sky – Regular communication on district activities and opportunities

For more strategies from Escola Municipal Professor Waldir Garcia, see:

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