I learned of Parent Teacher Home Visits through a colleague of mine. It was 2014, and I was working as a social worker in a middle school up in Duluth, Minnesota. As a staff, we were working on ways to engage our families in our community. We had an approximately 10-12 percent attendance rate at parent-teacher conferences. There was not a whole lot of family engagement. When kids would get in trouble or get suspended or have academic difficulties, we found it challenging getting parents to come up.

We were sitting around brainstorming. This coworker, Katie Oliver, presented me with this article that Nick Faber wrote about how they do home visits and how effective it has been in St. Paul. We read the article, and said that’s exactly what we want to start doing. We shared it with every one of our staff and said if anyone’s interested let’s sit down and figure out how we can make this happen. Katie and I got a very significant grant from the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation to help address the opportunity gap between students, and with that grant, we contacted Parent Teacher Home Visits to get started. I’ve been hooked ever since.

It wasn’t blind faith that sold me on home visits. I have been a social worker going on 30 years. I was a child protection investigator before, so I’m used to working with really difficult situations. In spite of the type of work I do, I always believed that if you could connect on a personal level, even with people that had been accused of committing horrendous acts, those are still people that you can build relationships with—to get the information you need to make the best decision possible for what to do in the future, but also to give them the help or consequences that they need. If you had a genuine connection with them, that made all the difference, even in that difficult of a field.

I carried that same approach when I came into the schools. In a lot of ways, I do school social work in a pretty unique way, which is to engage families in the community. When I went to work in the school district, I chose a school that was in a community where I had worked before, because I felt connected to that community. It was a low-income community with a lot of generational abuse concerns. I felt that’s where I can make the most impact as a social worker. So, on finding a program that connected teachers with families, it was an automatic yes. This is it. This is exactly what everyone should be doing because it is about basic human connection and relationships and putting a child’s best interests first. I knew it would work. I never had a doubt.

Now, as a social worker, I’ve been doing home visits for 30 years but I always have to explain there are different types of home visits. As a social worker, many home visits happen after you identify a student having behavioral issues, or maybe a student who was truant, or there was some significant family event that we were concerned about. I would approach families in a social work role. But my first home visit under the Parent Teacher Home Visit program, was somewhat similar, but also very different. I love the idea of going out and not having any papers with you, not having an agenda, and not having preconceived notions of what you are going to discuss. We go out and ask a simple, profound question: what are your hopes and dreams for your student?

I remember my first visit. I remember that first family being caught off guard and taken aback by the hopes and dreams question. They were surprised and not sure how to answer it. They seemed to even have a bit of skepticism about why we were asking. Once they understood that we were on the same plane and we wanted the exact same thing as they did, you could just see that whole power imbalance—perceived or real—balance out. I knew right then and there that every teacher in our school needed to do this, or at least make an attempt at it because it shifted the whole dynamic when it came to engaging families with education. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t done this before. It’s hard to describe what happens in that moment when you see it work. It’s something you have to experience. What a difference it made in families feeling they had more say or more power and that we were there to support them.

I try not to hang my hat on one thing, but this is the one thing that I think makes a significant difference. I once even said to our school board I’ll stake my career on this and say that if we implement Parent Teacher Home Visits with fidelity, there should not be a student who ever fails a class again, or does not earn a passing grade. Because we are engaging the family in conversation, and when those difficulties arise, the relationship is already there to work it out. PTHV is about as close to a silver bullet as I think there is. I’m realistic and know there are situations where the situation and results may be different. But when you do this with the right intentions, which is to go out and be open and willing to learn as educators and be willing to hear maybe even some harsh criticism about our school and how we do things, we’ll be okay. We have a really good chance of success. Because of the voluntary nature of this practice, there are these built-in mechanisms to make you successful. In all the years I’ve done Parent Teacher Home Visits, I’ve never heard a teacher say it was a waste of their time or they wish they hadn’t done it. It always reaps benefits.

I have many fond memories of home visits over the years. There was one time when I was up in Duluth with two teachers and the American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was in town. They came out and videotaped the visit. We had two teachers in this very tiny apartment. It was basically a room in a house. The mom was there and she felt embarrassed because she didn’t have seating for anyone. It was basically a bedroom and then a small sitting area, and a little kitchenette. To watch the teachers go in there and not even hesitate was a moment I’ll never forget. When someone asked, well, can we just sit here and talk? They conducted the entire visit on a mattress on the floor. It showed that teachers are willing to go out anywhere to connect with families. The mom was relieved, and the kid was there with all the adults. That was huge for me. In any other circumstance, those conditions might be a barrier for some people to agree to a visit. That mom had a ton of courage for saying yes, even knowing that a camera was recording it. That just showed me how meaningful it is for families, and how if we just try, families will open their doors.

Simply put: if you can do it, do it. I’m in a new community. Now, over the last few years I’ve been waiting to implement PTHV here. It’s been a process, and then we’ve had to deal with a pandemic. We’re gauging whether the community is ready for it. We’ve been doing a lot of education and we’re getting there. It takes that kind of commitment. It takes someone to get behind it and believe in it wholeheartedly and do all the steps to make sure it’s implemented properly. I don’t say this lightly: I’ve never believed in anything more than this. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve seen it all, and I know this is my legacy. I’m getting to the tail end of my career. If I can leave anything behind in this community, it’s going to be this. I want people to talk about this. I want it embedded in our community and in our school. I’m going to do everything possible to make that happen.