I’ve always wanted to go back to my daughter’s second-grade teacher, Mrs. Pearson, and ask her what made her do home visits. I know why I said yes. I said yes because, as a parent and a woman, I was entering into a place in my life where I was standing in my truth, and it was messy! And I didn’t care. If I’d been asked a year earlier, I wouldn’t have wanted to do it. I probably would have said no.

And I would have missed out on the experiences that allowed me to blossom and really open up, and move into a different mindset to where I could really help my daughter achieve. So that’s why I said yes. First of all, it was free, and it was for my baby. I wanted anything that I could get to help her, and make her better.

Kirinda and her daughter Aubrey

I’m sure I was one of the “easy” families that educators would pick to start their home visits. I was always at the school. I was at Back to Science Night. I was there every Thursday. My daughter Aubrey would leave school and go to the rec center next door. Extended learning was also a place where she lived and thrived. She became part of who she is in that building. I looked at everyone there as family. I trusted everyone there with my daughter. I was born and raised in St. Paul, but I didn’t feel that connection when I was growing up.

I always wondered what would have happened without that visit. My daughter, of course, would have continued going to school, but now she had Mrs. Pearson who was rooting for her. It made such a difference. I remember one of the lessons Aubrey struggled with was inferences in reading. I remember all the calls I had with Mrs. Pearson after that first visit. She would tell me Aubrey was “right there, but she keeps getting just that one thing wrong.” But they were encouraging calls, not cold, and I learned what I could do to help. Without that visit, I might not have even have understood exactly the skill set my daughter was working on, but I did because Mrs. Pearson and I had developed a relationship to help Aubrey succeed.

Now I have all these new skills sets for interacting with the school system that I didn’t have before. And I pass that knowledge on to my sisters. I tell them, “Talk to this person.” “Go into the building and talk with that teacher.” “Write that email.” “Follow up.” I forced them out of their comfort zone. I told them it’s their right to build a relationship with the person who’s going to have the opportunity to build an 8+-hour relationship with your child. You deserve to have that relationship, too. That’s how you find that human connection.

Then that finding that connection blossomed into me rooting for all the kids in my daughter’s class. I wanted them all to learn. There’s one young man who’s been in class with Aubrey since kindergarten. His name is Daniel, and they’re in high school together now. Every time I see Dan, Dan The Man, I call him, I run up and give him a hug and talk to him about all kinds of stuff. It all started with just a little bit of expansion with a home visit. Later, it was APTT, and then partnering on various initiatives within the school, and then leaning in and learning the politics behind education at the local, state, and national levels. I became a champion for public schools. As a black woman, my mother knew none of that. She didn’t have any of that knowledge. I don’t recall sitting in rooms with any of my girlfriends and hearing them talk about education like this. It’s not shared information, in our community, at least.

I knew my daughter was very bright, and she would be a force in life. I think she’s been here before. I knew I had to keep her busy and be intentional about crafting a good childhood for her. We didn’t talk much about education in my house when I was growing up. My dad went to the eighth grade and dropped out. My mother finished high school, and she tried to go to college. She was trying to show my dad what was possible, but he did what a lot of men back then would do. He just wanted her to simmer down. In the second grade, I missed a lot of school that year. We had a lot of stuff we were dealing with in our household. My dad was addicted to crack, and he was verbally and physically abusive to my mom. She was doing the best she could with the tools she had. We were on welfare, and we started moving around a lot, and we became very transient. I think I switched schools two or three times, but I always loved school. I am a curious person, and school provided structure for me. I enjoyed being there. I didn’t feel afraid there. Sometimes I felt afraid at home. I remember this one teacher—I don’t remember her name. I don’t even remember which school it was. I just remember her saying to my mom that at the rate I was going, I wasn’t going to graduate. I didn’t internalize it at all until I heard my mom repeating it. She would just say, I hope you graduate. I did. Barely. But I did.

I think back on how my mom didn’t feel empowered enough to come into school and doing any of the things she needed to do to advocate for me. I know my mother, and I know what she could have done. I think she felt repressed as a woman in that time. I want to be just like her in all of her strong ways and all her positivity, but I also want to make sure I do her proud and do all the things for my child that she didn’t dare to dream to do. When I had Aubrey, and she entered school, I knew: I can do this.

When the option for a home visit was presented to me, I said yes. And one yes leads to another yes. I didn’t know where all those yeses were going to lead me and my daughter, but I knew that doors were going to open. I knew behind those doors were experiences that were going to enrich my daughter’s life and my life. So I’m going to continue to say yes, as long as I can say yes. What I wanted was for saying yes to opportunity to become second nature to my daughter. I wanted her to never be afraid and to know that she could do whatever she put her mind to.

I had just moved out of my apartment. Bombshell after bombshell after bombshell was being dropped in my lap. I didn’t have a car. My parents were driving me to work. I was trying to get away from an abusive situation, and I was going into hiding at my parents’ house. My dad’s health was poor. He’s a diabetic. He had an accident, which ultimately caused him to lose his other leg. My mother was giving my dad this IV drug three times a day, and she was afraid she was going to pop his heart because air bubbles could get into a certain area. I needed a place to go, and she needed me there to help. My sister had been there to help when my dad lost his first leg, and so it was my turn. I had to give up my place because I couldn’t keep up with it all, for safety and financial reasons. I was in a time when I was pulling and sucking from everywhere just trying to keep going, and I get this call when I was sitting in my parents’ kitchen. I’d been trying to make my grumpy dad eat, and the teacher is on the phone telling me she wanted to visit.

I looked around our place, and I thought, of course. Of course, they would want to visit at a time like this, when I don’t have my own space. I’m living out of a duffle bag. I’m sleeping with my baby in my arms on my parents’ couch. Of course they want a visit now.

And I said yes.

I knew my dad wouldn’t give me any pushback because it was for Aubrey. He would do anything for her. All he said was that we needed to clean the house and put the cat away. Aubrey was outside riding her bike when Mrs. Pearson came. The first thing we talked about when she came in was how active Aubrey was, and how much we both loved that about her. And like every home visit, Mrs. Pearson eventually asked me about my hopes and dreams for Aubrey. No one had ever asked me that. And that question planted a seed. It made me think deeply about what I wanted for her, and what our family wanted for her. I just wanted her to have good social interactions with the other girls at school. It was that tiny. And it was because Aubrey had been telling me about a girl at school, the alpha girl she was having a verbal spat with every day. So I asked Mrs. Pearson to look out for that, to separate them, and give them tools to handle conflict. Then we talked about doing conferences differently, and doing APTT, and coming to back-to-school night.

But the seed had been planted. From a seed so much grows. Aubrey was exposed to so much after that. When I take a step back and look at her educational journey, I can see that home visit is why she is where she is now that she’s in high school. I remind her constantly to build relationships with her teachers, and she comes home telling me all kinds of things she’s learned about them. I remind her to find ways to connect, and that sometimes leads to new opportunities and lifetime friendships.

Now that I am a PTHV trainer, I know that I was one of those parents on the low-impact side of family engagement. I was doing all the stuff—the fundraisers, the potlucks, the back-to-school nights. I was there. I got such a rush out of doing that stuff because I felt like my daughter and I were connecting to her school community. And we were, and that low-impact stuff was the entire paradigm for how parents and teachers thought of family engagement. I was doing all those things, though, and my daughter was not reading on grade level. I was doing all those things but didn’t know how to connect them to her education. I didn’t even know who to ask. You don’t get a manual.

I became a PTHV trainer because I knew there were so many parents like me. They were right there, but they needed to be invited in. I needed to get the megaphone and call them over and open the door. I know there are families who want the connection to the school. Whatever you need them to do, they are ready to do. Whatever you want them to know, they want that information. I wanted to let teachers know not to forget about those kinds of families. The ones that are right outside. I talk to them every day when I’m out and about. If I meet someone who has kids, I tell them about home visits.

Home visits have opened so many opportunities for me. I have trained all over the country and get to talk to so many teachers and open their minds to a new way of relating to parents. My hope and dream for the next 25 years of Parent Teacher Home Visits are for it to become a standard everywhere. At some point during a child’s 13 years in public education, they should get a home visit. That experience is also for the child’s caregiver and teacher. I believe it would help so much in terms of the way they see each other. We’re all trying to be seen as human.