July/August 1997

Connecting Home and School

A Conversation with Catherine Snow

Catherine Snow discusses some of the lessons she has drawn from her work on the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy, and her earlier studies of how children develop literacy skills. Snow was interviewed for HEL by Leon Lynn.

HEL: What does a "language-rich" environment for young children look like, at home and in school?

Snow: In both places, a language-rich environment is one in which adults and children have extended conversations about interesting topics, using sophisticated vocabulary to convey complex messages. These conversations happen regularly, and the same topics can be visited on several different occasions.

HEL: Is it important that parents and teachers work together to help children develop literacy skills?

Snow: Yes. Parent-teacher relationships are very important for children's optimal progress in school. Considerable research demonstrates this. It's not really a question of whether parent involvement is good, but why. It could be that involved parents are also providing better language environments at home. Or it could be that parents who are involved learn useful things about the school culture that help them prepare their children better.

Parent-teacher involvement also can prevent miscommunications that could lead teachers to believe that parents aren't interested in their children's progress. One thing I have learned, not so much from the Home-School Study but in my earlier work on children and literacy with Jeanne Chall (at the Harvard Graduate School of Education), is that contact between parents and teachers is very positive for child outcomes. Parents get a more complete picture of what the children are doing. When teachers meet the parents, they are often impressed with how interested the parents are, and by their capacity to actually help their children. This often leads teachers to raise their expectations about what parents can offer, and to develop mechanisms for parents to help.

HEL: What should teachers be aware of when they approach parents?

Snow: Teachers have to keep in mind that if they invite the parents to the school and the parents don't come, that doesn't mean the parents don't care. Sometimes it's just too hard for parents to come in; they might be working during those hours, or they might have other problems apart from school that they need to deal with. If I were a school principal, I'd make it the teacher's responsibility to meet the parents.

Teachers also have to remember that in many cultures, parents give their children to the school, and they don't expect to have any say. With the increasing ethnic and cultural diversity of our schools, I think understanding this is all the more important. Or you might have parents who remember being in school themselves and getting Bs and Cs, and when they see their children doing the same they figure that's fine. Meanwhile, the teacher is saying, "I gave him a C to get the parents in here, but they didn't come, so I guess that proves they don't care.² And very quickly you have a downward spiral of miscommunication.

If the teachers assume that good parents are the ones who come to conferences, they are misrepresenting and misinterpreting the activities of a whole group of parents. In those cases, I think it's up to the teachers to go to the parents, to explicitly seek that connection.

HEL: A lot of teachers already feel overworked. Doesn't your suggestion raise questions of teacher burnout?

Snow: Yes, and that's an important point. And it also raises the issue of how the school should be supporting the teacher in doing those things. But the demonstrated positive effect is so great it's the kind of thing we have every right to expect. I think there are ways to make it less stressful. For example, you could rethink teaching as a year-round job. You could let teachers know in August who their students will be, a month before school begins, so they could get out and establish those contacts then.

HEL: Our schools are increasingly serving students who speak other languages, and whose families have little or no English skills. How does this relate to the kinds of learning opportunities that you describe as so important in your study?

Snow: It means you have to examine what you mean by literacy. The kinds of parental support that we're hoping children will benefit from are undermined from the start if you expect parents to provide that support in a language they don't speak, if the only literacy you consider to be OK is literacy in English. Switching to English in the home among families where English is a second language is likely to result in a less enriched language environment, with less opportunity for interesting conversation that incorporates a lot of sophisticated, rare vocabulary items. Clearly non-English-speaking parents are knowledgeable experts with resources to offer their children in their home language.

HEL: Is bilingual education affected by this notion as well?

Snow: Yes, and by some basic misconceptions. I think it's one of the places where academics are not doing a good job of connecting with public discourse. We're not doing a good job of getting the word out. One misconception is that young children pick up languages quickly and older children have more difficulty. That's simply not true. A year of studying a language at age 8 gets you the same result as a few weeks at age 14. But bilingual-education policy is still based on this notion that the sooner children learn English, the better.

The second myth is that when you begin teaching children English as a second language, there's no reason to worry about the first language. It doesn't occur to parents that sending their three-year-old children to Head Start in English threatens their Spanish. But often what happens is that the child won't continue to advance with Spanish in a way that generates real, high-level bilingualism.

We take the 15 or 20 percent of children who would be the best bilinguals, who have the best chance of developing real fluency in two languages, and we turn them into monolinguals. It's a terrible waste of resources. In many American school systems, Spanish-speaking children with speech or language disorders have to learn English before they can get therapy because there are no Spanish-speakers to work with them. The country needs well-educated, high-level bilinguals, both in domestic society and to function in international contexts. As the country grows more diverse over time, that kind of need is only going to grow. Maintaining the bilingualism of children who are learning English is crucial to meeting those needs.