Nationwide — Urban schools across the country continue to confront an urgent combination of challenges: too many students are not reading at grade level, teachers need more time and opportunity for substantive classroom instruction, and schools continue to search for effective ways to engage parents and families. Bolanle Ambonisye, Founder and Director of U&I-RISE, a St. Louis-based education organization that develops adults to intentionally create, strengthen, and protect the conditions that are in Black children’s best interests, believes these challenges should not always be treated as separate problems. Its approach begins with the adults.
Before simply asking parents to participate more, U&I-RISE asks schools and families to look more closely at the relationship between the adults and the conditions we adults are creating around teaching, learning, and development. U&I-RISE developed Healthy School-Home Connection™ (HSHC), a parent partnership framework designed to help educators and families develop the shared language, understanding, expectations, and responsibility necessary to work together in the best interests of children, especially when we disagree.
“Parent engagement is often measured by whether parents attend meetings, respond to school requests, or participate in school activities,” said Bolanle. “Those things can matter, but participation alone does not tell us whether Home and School are actually working together. We have to look closer at the relationship between the adults who share responsibility for the child.”
A central principle of the work is simple: Children do not create the conditions in which they develop. Adults do.
For U&I-RISE, strengthening parent engagement is not separate from improving educational outcomes. It is part of strengthening the adult conditions surrounding teaching and learning. HSHC asks adults to examine those conditions and what both Home and School can do to strengthen them.
Why the School-Home Connection Matters in Urban Schools
U&I-RISE’s focus on urban schools is intentional. Schools serving urban and under-resourced communities are frequently asked to address significant academic needs while educators, families, and children simultaneously navigate conditions that can make strong school-home partnership more difficult to establish and maintain. Communication can become primarily problem-driven, expectations can be misunderstood, and frustration can turn Home and School into opposing sides even when both remain deeply concerned about the same children.
U&I-RISE does not approach these conditions as evidence that urban parents do not care or that educators are not trying. Instead, HSHC asks: Do Home and School understand one another? Do they have shared language? Do they know what they need from one another? Are they communicating honestly? Can they remain connected through disagreement? Are both willing to adjust their own actions when what they are doing is not working?
These questions become especially important when schools are working to improve reading and other academic outcomes. Classroom conditions affect how much time and opportunity teachers have to actually teach. HSHC therefore addresses parent engagement as adult relationship, alignment, and capacity factors that impact the conditions surrounding children’s learning.
Moving Beyond Parent Participation
U&I-RISE describes its approach as Reconnecting Home and School™. HSHC focuses on strengthening four conditions that help adults function as partners: Trust, Relationship, Alignment, and Capacity. Together, they address whether educators and families view one another as credible and committed to children’s best interests; are willing to remain connected through difficulty; understand what children need and what Home and School need from one another; and have practical ways to communicate, solve problems, adjust their approaches, and sustain partnership.
The goal is not to make parents and educators identical in their thinking or responsibilities. It is to help them become better equipped to work together on behalf of children despite difficulty.
Bringing the Work Into the Classroom Community
U&I-RISE has developed a concentrated classroom implementation of Healthy School-Home Connection™. Rather than immediately introducing HSHC schoolwide, a school can concentrate the experience within one or two classrooms. The aim is to create a classroom community in which the teacher and a substantial majority of families share the HSHC experience and can apply that shared learning together. The model expands parent engagement beyond the relationship between one family and one teacher. Parents are also part of a classroom community, where the actions of adults and children can strengthen or weaken conditions experienced by other students and by the teacher responsible for teaching them.
Following HSHC completion, participating teachers and families participate in a structured school-home conversation focused on sharing what they have learned and understand, what students need, and document Home’s and School’s willingness to be co-accountable for providing the conditions the classroom needs to thrive. U&I-RISE will document changes in school-home connection, adult trust, relationships, alignment and capacity, as well as classroom conditions that may affect teachers’ opportunity to provide substantive instruction. The organization is deliberately distinguishing those measures from claims of immediate academic causation.
“We want schools to be able to look beyond whether parents showed up,” Ambonisye said. “We want to know: Did Home and School become more connected? Do we adults understand one another better? Are we better able to work through concerns? Are we clearer about what we need from one another? And ultimately, are we strengthening the conditions that allow teachers to teach and children to learn?”
About
U&I-RISE (Unapparencies & Intra-Racial Insight Sensitivity Education, LLC) is a St. Louis-based education organization that develops adults to intentionally create, strengthen, and protect the conditions that are in Black children’s best interests. Black-led and rooted, U&I-RISE’s work recognizes and respects the unique educational experiences and conditions affecting Black children, families, and communities while developing frameworks with broader application wherever adults share responsibility for children. Through its work with schools, educators, parents and communities, U&I-RISE addresses the adult relationships, practices and conditions that influence Black children’s development and educational experiences. Healthy School-Home Connection™ is the organization’s framework for strengthening parent partnership and reconnecting Home and School around their shared responsibility for children. Learn more at UandIRise.com
For press inquiries, contact bolanle@uandirise.com