Parent Teacher Home Visits is celebrating 25 years of building trusting relationships between schools and families. To commemorate our Silver Anniversary, we are sharing the stories of close friends, partners, and allies who have helped make PTHV what it is today. Watch this space regularly to see more “impact stories.” In this post, read about Amy Schutsky (nee Tyburski), a teacher at Garrison Elementary in Washington, DC, who shares how PTHV has affected her student community and the impact it has had on her.

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Amy Schutsky experienced firsthand the remarkable impact of the Parent Teacher Home Visits initiative and how it helped build stronger bonds between teachers and families, improving student performance and creating an enabling environment for success in the classroom and beyond.

It started when she transitioned to Garrison Elementary, a DC public school. She was scheduled for an interview with Garrison, and of course, the first thing she did was Google the school. She read several disturbing headlines saying that Garrison was about to shut its doors because student enrollments were at an all-time low, and test scores were dishearteningly low. However, the parent-teacher organization was firmly against the decision and pushed for Garrison to remain open. It was evident to Amy that parents and teachers would play an active role in keeping Garrison Elementary open. The school had a deep commitment to family engagement, and “I knew that I wanted to be a part of it.”

Even in the face of negative headlines about the school, Amy described that first year of teaching as one marked by enthusiasm and optimistic thinking.

“Whenever I told anyone I was a first-year teacher at the school, they gave me a look and made that weird, plaintive ‘ah…oooh’ noise. Then, they’d say something along the lines of ‘you’ll be fine,’ she said.

That first year also came with a lot of responsibilities.

“On top of everything that the principal said we were going to be doing, he also said we’re doing home visits. So you can imagine my stress level. Here I am, a new teacher coming into a new school. I’m new to the community, and now I also have to go visit all these families—in their homes.”

She persevered and visited about half of the families in her classroom, and says she saw an immediate impact. “And with my new, shiny bright second-year teacher attitude, I decided I was going to make sure that I met all of my families during the next school year.

That summer, she was at an event called Popsicles with the Principal, and a parent came sprinting toward her. She nearly panicked, thinking, “Did I screw up already?” But the parent smiled and gushed, “My son is going to be in third grade. I was wondering if he could be in your class. I heard you’re a great teacher, and I need him to be in your class.” And then the mom asked if Amy could do a home visit with her.

What a pleasant surprise that was, considering during that first school year, she had been reaching out to parents repeatedly and either not getting responses or being told no. Now here was a parent seeking her out and asking for a home visit.

“I went to the family’s home. We talked about football, and I met the entire family. There were seven kids, so I got to know all of them.”

When she asked the mom what her hopes and dreams were for the student, she said that her son was reading below grade level. And she wanted to make sure that that year, he ended reading above grade level.

“She said, ‘I do not know how to support him.’ So I knew we were going to have to work together to make sure that he was going to succeed academically, and that was going to be my goal for that family that year.”

And they did it. Together. “Through the work that I did with this parent all year that started with our one home visit, he ended the year reading above grade level, which was amazing.”

Amy jokes that she has attachment issues so she kept that same class the next school year. The student maintained his reading achievements, and then she began teaching his two younger sisters. The connection didn’t stop there. The mom became a parent support at the school, and she and Amy continue to text each other and check in from time to time. Three years after their first home visit, for example, the mom texted Amy asking to bring her laminator by so she could help Amy prepare her APTT activities.

“Not only was she helping the school out, she’s a friend,” Amy said. “She was someone I knew would always have my back.”

Seeing the impact she had with that family propelled Amy to want to extend her influence further and take her passion for family engagement to more people beyond her classroom. She began working on the family engagement leadership team at Garrison, supporting teachers with the implementation of home visits, ongoing communication, and academic partnering.

“I had teachers now coming up to me and asking, like, ‘Hey, I really want to meet with this family, but I haven’t been able to reach them. Do you think you can give me some support?’ I had teachers texting me throughout the day screenshots of conversations that families were having with them. And to see the excitement that I was able to build in my entire building made me realize the impact that home visits had not just at a classroom level, but then at an entire school level as well.”

She took it a step further and became a home visit trainer with the Flamboyan Foundation, which used the Parent Teacher Home Visits model. That began an incredible experience of teaching other teachers in the district how to do home visits so that they could take that same spirit and excitement about family engagement that was at Garrison to their own schools. Her favorite part was working with teachers who were part of alternative certification programs because they were so excited about anything extra that they could bring to their classrooms to help them along with their new teaching journies.

“To know that they were now thinking more deeply about family engagement, without even going through a traditional program was so exciting for me. And to know that my influence started with just 50% of my families saying yes and then extended to hundreds of teachers across the district delighted me.”

She recently shared a full-circle moment that happened outside of school. She was at the gym, and she noticed a young woman staring at her. She decided to ignore it, but then the woman started walking up toward her. Amy suddenly recognized her once she saw her face up close. The woman in the gym was a teacher she’d trained.

“She said to me, ‘You probably don’t remember me, but I was in your training, and I was so moved hearing your story with family engagement and home visits. I was very reluctant at first, but I wanted to tell you that I’ve done five visits with my students, and I’m going to try and meet with all of them this year.'”

“It was such an honor to be out and about and have someone notice me and say I made a difference. Parent Teacher Home Visits helped me be an influence at the student level in my classroom, then to the whole school, and now to the city of Washington, DC. Seeing what it has done for students, families, and teachers makes home visits that much more important to me. So thank you.”