My first visit to the home of two of my students—sisters who were one year, less one day, apart in age—occurred early in my teaching days. It was a poignant and powerful experience for me, one that remains a watershed moment. I was invited to the girls’ birthday party. As a young and inexperienced teacher, still uncertain about professional boundaries, a key topic in my teacher education program, I was unsure of whether to accept the invitation. Because it seemed so important to the girls that I attend, I decided to go.   

As I approached the family’s front door in their complex, a cat made its way out through a large hole in the window screen. The door flew open and the girls burst outside beaming, welcoming me in. As I entered their home, in that tiny entrance, I saw the broken closet door hanging off its hinges and the piles of items jammed in behind it—shoes, backpacks, newspapers, discarded toys. To my left, I saw that an ashtray had been knocked off the coffee table and left there. To my right, I entered the cramped kitchen where I was invited by the girls’ mom to sit down. Across the table from me sat one other birthday guest, an elderly woman. The girls were so excited by their surprise! I quickly learned that no children were coming to the party. The party guests included only me and the children’s grandma—a woman who had ridden a bus across two provinces, through a day and a night, to be there for her granddaughters’ birthday party.

As the afternoon unfolded, we played board games together. We ate cake. They shared family stories, and so did I. I became part of the laughter and the teasing, part of the ties that bound us together in that special moment.

When I entered their home earlier in the day, I was taken aback by the signs of poverty and the poor living conditions. As the birthday party unfolded, I learned that this was not their whole story. When I left their home a couple of hours later, my heart was filled with the love I witnessed, the commitment to family, and the family’s commitment to their children. I was changed as a human being through that experience. I was changed as a teacher. It was like a mirror had been held up to my face. I realized how many stereotypes, judgments, and assumptions I carried—and how naïve they were.

I did not know the homes in which the children in my school neighborhood resided. I did not know their lives and stories. While I was privileged to have been invited to this birthday party, as a stranger, an outsider, I realized it was not their job to invite me in, to teach me who they were; it was my job to learn about them. Walking back to school, I promised myself that I would spend time with every family, get to know the story they wanted to tell of themselves, and work with them out of the place of their story. I became a home visit convert that day, and I never looked back.

To this day, I believe passionately that one home visit can change your life. Over the many years of my career, and in various roles as consultant, principal, school division leader, or teacher educator, I promoted home visits. I shared my stories and used my experiences in mentoring others, and the questions came pouring in:

• What is a home visit?
• What do I do on a home visit?
• What if the family doesn’t want me to come to their home?
• What if it’s unsafe?

I realized I needed to further my learning about home visits. Captivated by the work of Parent Teacher Home Visits, I reached out to the national office to see if I could visit. In January 2018, I spent an amazing two days with this group of passionate and articulate leaders. Gina Martinez-Keddy, Yesenia Ramirez, Gretchen Viglione, and I talked for hours. I learned their story, became knowledgeable about PTHV home visit practices and non-negotiables, participated in a training, and visited a university site where they train preservice teachers. I grew so much from their teachings and left Sacramento, not just a convert to home visits but a convert to the PTHV home visits model.

Fast forward to 2021. I was a member of the Saskatchewan Provincial Education Council, tasked by the Minister of Education to provide strategic guidance to the development, implementation, governance, and renewal of the province’s PreK-12 education plan for the next 10-year period. Our work was to reflect four focal areas foregrounded through extensive public consultation: skills and knowledge; mental health and well-being; connections and relationships; and inclusive, safe, and welcoming learning environments.

During one meeting, I was speaking about how integral it would be to embed parent and family engagement outcomes in all aspects of the plan. Another member of the Council looked at me and said, “But Debbie, what would parents be engaged in?” Unlike literacy, as an example, a concept that evokes many images in the minds of educators, it was at that moment that I realized many educators did not yet have a picture of what family engagement is, what it looks like, or what concrete strategies could facilitate it.

Wanting to create a vivid picture for them, as well as a tangible strategy for the engagement of parents and families in their children’s teaching and learning, I partnered with the Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA) to design and implement a home visits pilot project in Saskatchewan. Led by the SSBA and funded by the Ministry of Education, we began our pilot in the 2021-2022 school year. We engaged five school divisions, representative of our geographic and demographic diversity: one large rural, one large urban, one Catholic, one large Northern with a high Indigenous population, and one small Northern with a primarily Métis population. Home visit training and support were provided to individuals engaged in the project by PTHV. Adopting the non-negotiables of PTHV, all individuals who engaged in home visits did so voluntarily. An advisory committee, comprised of a superintendent, principal, teacher, consultant, parent, teachers’ federation representative, and Ministry of Education representation, further guided the work. An independent researcher was hired to study the process and the outcomes.

Our results, while hampered by a resurgence of the COVID Omicron variant, were overwhelmingly positive. Educators, staff, and parents spoke about their inspiring experiences, the trust and relationship building that occurred, their increased knowledge of home and school, and the impact of acting on that knowledge. The interruption of biases, stereotypes, and judgments with those engaged with home visits was also key. As educators met with parents in their homes and on their terms, barriers were broken down by new understandings.

We learned many lessons as well. It became evident that effective and engaged leadership was a critical factor in the successful implementation of home visits. Another important conversation arose about how to ensure teacher workload was not intensified. Within this topic, rich discussions ensued about what we can give up in our old practices to make room for a new and highly impactful practice such as home visits.

With renewed funding from the Ministry for a second year, we are excited to pursue an expansion of the home visits in the five school divisions, to look deeper into effective leadership practices, and to learn from new practices such as using home visits in lieu of more traditional parent teacher conferences. Engagement in home visits is providing many individuals with an embodied sense of the value of parent and family engagement and is moving us forward on our journey as a provincial education system to explore more systematically the benefits that are realized for children, families, and educators when we engage meaningfully and authentically with one another.