School Partnership: Turning Parents into Ambassadors

Last week, the first –out of campus– Educator Sharing Network (ESN) was held successfully with a collaborative effort between SFTI and SDN 012 Bendungan Hilir Jakarta. The venue was SDN 012 itself. There were no obvious differences in the look of the school except its green plants and cleanliness! SDN 012 Benhil is one of the Adiwiyata Schools since 2006, where environmental awareness and culture really flows in their blood, body and soul!

 

The organizer welcome and let us (the participants – the guesses) walk around to see the school premise before the event starts. The school really captivates us, not only by its looks, by their ‘green’ environment, but also by their students. They were sweeping their school floor and ground, feeding the fish, picking up dead leaves and putting all trashes in the classified trash bins (organic-paper-plastic), and all of those activities happened with minimum supervision from their teachers. With all those tremendous scenes, couple basic questions pops up into my mind, how could they build this culture? How could they initiate and maintain it?

 

The session started with students’ performance. They sung couple of environmental songs and SDN 012 Benhil song. The principal told us the history of them became a ‘green’ school. One part of her speech was really stood up as the core in running the school. She said that all these wonderful things happen because of 40% policy and leadership, 30% curriculum, 20% participation and collective efforts, 10% funds and facilities. Simply, the leaders walk the talk! The other successful story is how the school and their parents working together sharing their vision and enhance students learning experiences. Their parents become ambassadors for the school. They invite organizations that could become part and play a role as an extension of the school campus where students usually learn. Proactive attitude of the school and their parents were shown clearly throughout their historical saga.

 

The partnership should be a true synergy — one where both partners were enriched by the interaction. Too often, school-community partnerships fail because they are viewed not as a true partnership, but as a hand out or a public relations moment. With this in mind, as a founding blueprint, Chris Lehmann (the Principal of Science Leadership Academy) framed partnership in three ways: Shared Public Vision; Shared Pedagogical Vision and The Interaction of the Two Communities.

 

Shared Public Vision

Initially, this was something that was much more beneficial to the school than it was to their partners. Their partners were able to open doors for the school that would have otherwise. The parents as the school ambassadors were instrumental parts in these equations.

 

Shared Pedagogical Vision

Lehmann said that the shared vision of how we teach and learn means the work of the two institutions can have a connection that penetrates deeper than the subject matter. The school took the challenge in becoming a ‘green’ school. They were committed and consistent to the vision. They have integrated the environmental issues and knowledge in their curriculum and in every subject. They also have an Environment Lesson as their local content lesson apart from the integrated ones. The school invites partners that have shared belief in what environment education can be, such as ‘GreenPeace’, ‘GE Electric’, Komite Pelestarian Alam Indonesia (KPAI), etc.

 

The Interaction of the Two Communities

Lehmann saw this as the most visible and arguably most important part of the partnership. How the leader connects the two communities are a significant element. Not only on how the school’s partners could help the school’s achieving school’s mission but also in other way around that the partnerships also facilitate students to help the partners achieving their mission. Therefore, this relationship should become dynamic where each side looks for new ways to expand the collaboration.

 

Finally, this is one good example of collaboration between school and their parents. Parents really are the school’s resources. In many times, schools only look parents as their ‘bank’ where they could propose for money. But when the school has bold vision and focuses on their students’ learning they could propose a far better role for parents, a new set of paradigm…simply to become the school’s ambassadors!

 

Aditya Dharma, Jakarta, 23 April 2009.

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