RBERNing Questions

Supporting our ELLs: A Parent’s Perspective with Adelina Blanco-Harvey

• Yasmeen Coaxum • Season 3 • Episode 5

Share episode

Episode Summary:

In this eye-opening conversation, we engage and learn from a parent who has put 4 of her children through the Uniondale school system; all success stories who have graduated. Adelina Blanco-Harvey herself is an ELL, and in her role as a board trustee, she has a hand in creating policies that truly serve her community of students. As a parental resource, she ensures that parents understand how they can best support their children within the school system, from advice on proper testing to other services pertinent to their success as students. As an advocate for all students, she advises highlighting your children’s multilingualism as a strength, and stresses the importance of presence as a parent of ELLs, regardless of potential language barriers. Finally, she emphasizes the ways that communication can serve as a key component to maintaining relationships between parents and school administrations. 

RBERNing Questions for this Episode:

1- What is the best way a school can keep parents engaged in their children's education?

2- You have 4 children who have gone through the Uniondale school system & graduated…What do you think is the role of the parents in supporting their ELLs?

3- What advice do you have for teachers who want to strengthen the ties with parents in the community?

Bio:

Ms. Adelina Blanco-Harvey, Trustee, affectionately known as Addie, is a Board of Education Trustee for the Uniondale Union Free School District. She began her tenure on the board in July 2019. She is a product of the Uniondale school system, having lived in the district for over 40 years. Four of her and her husband’s children are proud graduates of Uniondale High School. She believes that a well-rounded education incorporates developing academic skills along with nurturing aptitude in critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, and other enrichments within the curriculum. She was elected Board President by the board during the 2021-2022 academic year, making her the first Latina to be elected as President of the board in the Uniondale School District. She was re-elected as board trustee for a second term in May 2022.

Accomplishments:
· Serves and advocates for the educational needs of children for over 3 decades
· Served on PTA, PTSA, and PTA Council for over 2 decades
· Career mentor for students of Uniondale for over 15 years
· Resource for parents
· Community advocate
· Served as member of Comité Civico Salvadoreño for over a decade serving the Salvadoran community of Long Island
·NYSMP (New York State Mentoring Program) Latina Mentoring Program 2022

Mrs. Blanco-Harvey is the Regional Manager at Premier Endodontics of Long Island with oversight of five offices. She started her career with Premier Endodontics of Long Island 19 years ago as a dental assistant. She worked her way up through the ranks ascending to numerous roles first as Public Relations Coordinator, then being promoted to Manager subsequently Regional Manager.  She is a graduate of Nassau Community College and received her Bachelor's Degree in Childhood Elementary Education with Bilingual and Special Education Extension from SUNY Old Westbury. She is passionate in her belief that a school board must be responsive, representative and receptive to parents, staff, and stakeholders of the community they serve. 

Resources:

Websites:

Uniondale Union Free School District

To find out more about Mid-State RBERN at OCM BOCES' services, listen to season 1 of the show with host Collette Farone-Goodwin, or to receive CTLE credit for listening to episodes, click here: https://midstaterbern.org/


Adelina:

One of the things that I think worked really well for my husband and myself is being on PTA, being a class parent, even if you don't speak the language, being present. It's important for students and children to know that someone is there advocating for them, and I was, we were always very involved. I was in PTA for 24 years.

Yasmeen:

Welcome to RBERNing Questions, a professional learning podcast where we answer your most compelling questions about teaching, serving, and supporting multilingual learners. I'm your host, Yasmeen Coaxum, and through our talks, I look forward to bringing the methods, philosophies, and stories behind teaching multilingual learners to light. Let's get into the show. Ms. Adelina Blanco Harvey, affectionately known as Adi, is a Board of Education Trustee for the Uniondale Union Free School District. She began her tenure on the Board in July of 2019 and is a product of the Uniondale school system, having lived in the district for over 40 years. She was elected Board President during the 2021 2022 academic year, making her the first Latina to be elected as president of the board in the Uniondale School District. She was re-elected as board trustee for a second term in May 2022. She is passionate in her belief that a school board must be responsive, representative, and receptive to parents, staff, and stakeholders of the community they serve. She and her husband are honored that their children thrived, graduated from Uniondale High School, and are pursuing their college degrees. They also look forward to their younger children graduating from Uniondale High School. If you have burning questions with regard to how to maintain relationships within your students' communities, she surely can answer them on today's episode. Adelina Blanco Harvey, we're so happy that you have joined us here today to talk to our educators from the perspective of a parent of ELLs. Now, before we get into your current role, et cetera, I want to say that me and Adelina have been communicating via, email in order to set this up, right? So when I look at someone's email, I read everything, including what's in their signature. And she had these really awesome quotes on her signature, so one of them is from Nelson Mandela,"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." And then she has another one, which is super beautiful in Spanish, which I'm going to attempt to say. And then, Adelina, you can go ahead and translate it for our listeners who may not know Spanish."Aprender otra idioma no es solo aprender diferentes palabras para las mismas cosas, pero aprender otra manera de pensar." And this is from Flora Lewis. Would you like to translate that for our listeners?

Adelina:

Yes. first I have to say thank you so much for inviting me and having me today. So that quote is very meaningful to me because I am an ELL learner. So that quote means that learning another language is not just learning the same words in a different language, but also learning how to think in another language.

Yasmeen:

Exactly. Okay. And this is why it's so important that our educators take into account all of the resources that our students bring into the classroom and just realize how big of a role culture and the student as a holistic, person plays in terms of this other way of thinking. Okay. So I said, I'm going to have a blast talking to this woman because she has these powerful quotes. on her email signature. Okay. So Adi, you are affectionately known as Adi. So I am going to say Adi, can you please tell us about your current role in education as a Board of Ed Trustee?

Adelina:

Okay. I was elected Board Trustee in 2019 for my school district, Uniondale. And I've been sitting on the board since I am the first Latina to ever be elected president. And I did so in 2021 and 2022 proudly. And I was reelected to a second term as I ran uncontested in 2022 for another three years. So I have two more years left on the board, but I have to say, I actually love and enjoy being a board trustee, seeing it from a different perspective than just a parent. I actually am very involved and took a hands on approach to this new position as trustee and I'm trying to get as much done in the time that I have left as a trustee, to make sure that education is servicing all students in our school district, not just the ELL learners, but, every student that walks into a classroom in our school district is attended to and given and provided and afforded the education necessary so that they can become, you know, uh, educated adult once they leave our classrooms.

Yasmeen:

So can you tell me a little bit about maybe one or two of the duties that you have as a, as, are you president currently or, yeah, no, as a trustee on the board?

Adelina:

So currently I am a trustee. We have reorganization once a year. So at RE ORG, other trustees vote to who's going to be in place. As president and vice president, currently, one of the things that we're in charge of is creating policies for the school district policies that teachers have to follow policies that administrators have to follow, policies that students have to follow, and that's one of our charges, is to make sure that we're creating and updating the policies to make them relevant to what's going on in the United States, in our school district, in our community, so that we're servicing the students. Another thing that we are in charge of is making sure that we hire a superintendent that's working to service the students and meeting the needs of all of our students. So when I came in on the board in 2019, one of the things that. I thought about was not to say that the person that was there before wasn't doing a good job is the direction that we wanted the district to go into. We had a superintendent that was there for 17 years and sometimes things get stagnant. but ultimately it's not just my decision. It's a collective decision made by the board, by the majority of the board. And we hired a new superintendent in 2021 who is currently working with us and we're very happy in the direction that the district is heading.

Yasmeen:

Okay, great, and can you possibly share with us one of the policies?

Adelina:

Yes. So one of the policies that was updated when I was president was the allowance of people joining our meeting via zoom or live stream. So that is a policy that was updated. So we were using a policy that was. last updated in 2003, which didn't allow for participation unless you were in person. So when we, when COVID happens, we start working and saying, how can we improve this? One of the things that we did is we temporarily were just using what the governor has stated, which is you have to do things on Zoom, you have to allow people to participate under their guidance. But once the guidance was terminated, what, what happens then? I took the initiative and I spoke to the rest of the board and I said, we need to create an updated policy that's going to allow our community to have a say, whether they're in person or whether they're home, or whether they're in their car, they, we have to listen to them as well, and they have to be, able to participate. So that was one of the policies that we updated.

Yasmeen:

Great, and that's definitely, it speaks to accessibility, right? Just making everything accessible to people, no matter what their schedules, et cetera, right? So now you mentioned that for the year 2021-2022, you were the first Latina to be elected as president of the board. So tell us about the circumstances surrounding you winning that election. For example, how did you feel and were there any challenges that came as a result of being the first Latina? I

Adelina:

I was ecstatic for myself, for my community, currently Uniondale School District is the majority of the population is Hispanic. We're at 63%, a lot of students that look like me or sound like me, were very proud. My mom was extremely proud. Even my children were very proud of me. One of the, I w I want to say something difficult for me, was the fact that a lot of people thought,"Oh, she's Hispanic, so she's only going to be doing things for the Hispanic community. And it's not so, you know, I am a firm believer that a school district and a school board has to be representative of the population that they're serving. By me being the only Hispanic or only Latina to be on the board in a district that's predominantly Hispanic, we're falling, a little behind. So for me, I think one of the challenges that I've always had being Latina was that people assume that just because I am Latina, I'm only there, to represent the Hispanic community, which is not so. I'm there to be representative of everyone that's there. So I want to make sure that we're inclusive.

Yasmeen:

Right, and representation is such a big deal. And I don't think people really paid attention to that as much as they have lately, right, now that there's been so much attention brought to it because as I was listening to you, I was thinking, wow, 63 percent and you're the first Latina that was the president on the board. That's a little. It's a little crazy in my mind to imagine that is the case, but I'm aware of the reality, right? Which is, again, that this is something that people have just recently started to take strides towards remedying in terms of having this representation of the community. So you mentioned your children. I understand that you have four children who have gone through the Uniondale school system and graduated. So what do you think is the role of parents in supporting their ELLs, such as you have?

Adelina:

Okay, so I have to say I am unique that I am in, I have a blended family. So in total, we have nine children. Whoa. Four of them were able to graduate. We have two doctors already, one LSW and one physical therapist. I always say it's not easy for me, when my older children registered into the school district, they had a Hispanic last name. automatically, they were labeled ELL, even though English was their first language. So there's always a challenge there that we have to make sure that we're not labeling students just because of their last name. But I have to tell you that I am a firm believer that children should learn more than one language. So for me, it was important for my children to learn Spanish and English. And my oldest daughter actually learned French when she was in high school. So she's trilingual. I'm a, I like to say I'm a little trilingual too, because I also took up French when I was in college. And going back to the thinking, right? It wasn't until I became an adult that I learned that I has had this ability where I can think in Spanish and I can think in English. And it's amazing that I went through my entire school years without knowing that I can do that. And it wasn't until someone asked me, when you think, how do you think? And I said, Oh, I've never thought about that. But with my children, it's the same way, but they learned English first. So English was their first language. But when my oldest daughter came into the school district, we had an influx of Hispanic children. And because my daughter was bilingual, she was able to translate for the teacher. So she was a translator and all of my children have been translators. At some point in their going through school and educational experience, they've been able to do that. and I like that. I like that they're able to help other students. I like that they're able to help their teachers or even a community member by being their voice, because at some point in time, that's what you are when you're an ELL you're someone's voice because you're going to come across someone that doesn't speak English, or someone that doesn't speak Spanish. And, or doesn't speak Haitian Creole, and you have to find someone that's going to be that voice for them, or it's going to be that voice for you.

Yasmeen:

I really, I definitely think that thinking bilingually and being able to express yourself bi or even trilingually, in addition to thinking in this way, right? It's a strength that should definitely be highlighted, and for so long, it was not highlighted here in the States. It was looked at as a bit of a disability or a handicap, actually, in some cases when it really should have been thought about as a strength. So one of the ways that you, would recommend that parents support their ELLs is in their development of their ability to exhibit a strong bilingual, trilingual presence, I'm taking it? And then is there any other way that you think parents can be supportive of their ELLs?

Adelina:

Getting involved, a parent has, one of the things that I think worked really well for my husband and myself is being on PTA, being a class parent, even if you don't speak the language, being present. It's important for students and children to know that someone is there advocating for them. And I was, we were always very involved. I was in PTA for 24 years. Prior to me deciding to go be part of the board. So I was always very active and involved in the educational process of my children and other children in the district. I've, I'm a great believer of advocacy. When I wasn't advocating for my children, I was advocating for someone else's child.

Yasmeen:

So presence is definitely very important and can make people feel very supported, can make students feel very supported. So, I'm wondering if you can share a positive experience that you've had with a teacher or a member of a school's administration that really empowered you as a parent when you were present in these situations on the PTA, et cetera.

Adelina:

I'm blessed to say that I've had a lot of, very positive situations, positive outcomes, positive guidance when I was part of the PTA or even just as a parent. One of the things that I admired about some of the teachers in our school district is that they wanted to learn about my culture. They wanted to learn about my children's culture, and going back to the, blended family, my husband is Jamaican and I'm Salvadoran and, we have a unique way of calling our children, which is Salmakan, and what is that? Salvadoran, Jamaican and American, and in our school districts, we pride ourselves of being inclusive. And we have the Haitian Heritage Celebration, we have the Hispanic Heritage Celebration, we have the African American History Celebration. We actually implemented something when I became president again, and it was a soccer jamboree.

Yasmeen:

Oh, that sounds like fun. I don't know, soccer and jamboree together, that sounds really exciting. Okay.

Adelina:

Yeah, so we implemented a soccer jamboree And just the feedback from the teachers, that's a part of it, and the administrators, everyone was hands on. They said, we want to do this. We want to do this for the kids. And that had to do with how do we get our parents involved? How do we get the community to come to school functions? How do we do that? How do we get the Hispanic people to come? And I said, Hispanic people love soccer. Let's do something with soccer. Let's do like a soccer tournament, and we started throwing different words around, and someone said, let's do a jamboree. And I said, what's that? That sounds like a party to me.

Yasmeen:

Exactly. That's exactly what came, what I felt when you said this. Yes.

Adelina:

And so we've had it for three years now, and this coming year, it's going to be the fourth and every year it gets bigger and bigger that the buy in from the teachers, the buy in from the administrators, the buy in from the superintendent, that's a positive outcome, positive feedback. That's something that makes me feel good, like I had this little grain of salt, and I put it in here, and now we have a ton of salt coming,

Yasmeen:

So I have to understand what a soccer jamboree is though. So the soccer game gets played and then there's a huge party? I just want to make sure, okay.

Adelina:

It started with a little participation. So the first year we had it, we only had about a hundred in total parents and students and administrators and teachers that came out. Kids come and they learn how to play soccer. Parents come and we teach them how to go on Google classroom. We teach them how to go on the website to look up information. We teach them how to be involved. And then for our students, we're teaching them all about soccer, not just how to play it. What are the rules? There's some reading. There's some activities that they have to take part of, and that's all done in all day events. So we start about nine in the morning and it ends about two or three o'clock in the afternoon. There's dancing, there's performances. There's food, there's ice-cream, there's anything you can think of.

Yasmeen:

This sounds amazing. Wow, I'm really happy to hear about this as a positive experience. So now I'm going to switch gears just a little bit. So we said that the way that parents can support their ELLs is through basically highlighting their strengths in terms of language and also having involvement and having presence, right? So now I would like to know, in your opinion, what the best way is that a school can keep parents engaged in their children's education.

Adelina:

So you always have to, anytime you're, giving out information, you have to make sure that the information is going in the language that the parent speaks, right? So that if you are having, say, a soccer jamboree, you're sending that information in a packet or in a video or, in a paper format. And we're also creating QR codes, the parents go on the school website, they put the camera to the QR code and all of that information is given to the parent. We also have Remind in our school district. So the administration is always sending information in Haitian Creole, in Spanish and in English, because those are the predominant languages that are spoken in our school district. So communication is very important, so you want to make sure that the communication that you're sending out is in the language that is either spoken in the household or the language that the parents read or write or understand.

Yasmeen:

And so what do you think are maybe some mistakes or some detrimental ways of thinking by some school districts or administrations that might possibly damage relationships between ELLs and their communities?

Adelina:

When you make an assumption, if you're making an assumption that the parent automatically speaks English or a parent doesn't speak English, there's plenty of times that I've gotten negative feedback from a parent say that there was an assumption that the parents only spoke Spanish, so they got the flyer in Spanish, yet the parent didn't speak Spanish and didn't understand what the flyer read, so it's important that when you're sending information, you're not assuming that a parent speaks any particular language that they may not.

Yasmeen:

Alright, and any thing else that you might recommend against in order to help facilitate better relations between parents and school administrators?

Adelina:

I think you always have to keep like an open line of communication with the teachers and the parents. It's always important for the teacher to know a little bit of the background of the family so that they maintain that engagement. Giving material for the students, writing a note, making a phone call, sending an email, always making sure that the communication line is always open.

Yasmeen:

Okay. So now I'm going to just dive a little bit into a quote from your bio. It says,"She believes that a well-rounded education incorporates developing academic skills, along with nurturing aptitude and critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, and other enrichments within the curriculum." So my question is, have you tried to mirror these aspects at home, or how do you think parents can participate in these well-rounded aspects of education to support their children in the household, let's say?

Adelina:

So for me, a well-rounded education includes your child learning how to play an instrument, your child learning a sport because in learning a sport and learning an instrument, there's things that are taught through that, that you may not be able to teach a student through reading, um, you know, uh, an example, my oldest daughter played soccer, they, all of my children played a sport, whether it was track, soccer, softball, basketball. It taught them that they had to learn how to lose, which is very important in life. You don't always get what you want, so you have to learn how to cope with losing. It taught them to be punctual. If they wanted to make sure that they played on any particular game, they had to go to the, to the scrimmages, they had to go to the practices. They had to make sure they were there on time. My, my children had excellent coaches that said, if you don't have this grade point average, you will not be playing a game. So that taught them that in order for them to have the liberty to play a game that they wanted to play or play sports that they wanted to play, their academics had to be on point. They had to have this 75 or above in order to be able to play any given game. He also gave them an attendance sheet. That said, they were in class every day, they were on time every day. Those are the things that I think about when I say a well rounded child, because all of those things are teaching you what you're going to need when you become an adult and you have to have a job. When you have a job, you have to make sure you're on time. If you're not on time, and I say this from what I do for a living. I write my employees up. You were late three times. You get a verbal warning. That's what I mean. Critical thinking. What I think about critical thinking is processing information. The information that you're given, what are you using it for? How is it working for you? What would happen if you change the outcome of some, of a choice you made? All of those things come into play, even when they're learning how to play an instrument. In the beginning, they might listen with their ear and say, okay, I know what that sounds like, but now I have to translate it and what the written note looks like.

Yasmeen:

I think sports is actually, that's an excellent analogy for honing all of these skills, the idea of playing sports, right? Because in sports, you need all of those skills. Like you said, critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, you need all of that to be part of a sports team. So I think that's really great. I am going to now move on to some of your accomplishments here. There are quite a few. So you have served and advocated for the educational needs of children for over three decades. You are a career mentor for students of Uniondale. You have been doing that for over 15 years. You are also part of the New York State Mentoring Program, the Latina Mentoring Program. Or, you were part of this program for 2022, and you also serve as a resource for parents. So I would like to start with the mentoring program. Can you tell me about your role in this program?

Adelina:

Can I just say, I absolutely love that program. We're going to continue it. It was the first year that we started it, in Uniondale this past school year. So it was our largest group, New York Governor Hochul is the one that rolled out this program for Latinas. So it's the New York State Latina Mentoring Program and our school district was the first to sign up for it. We had the largest group of young women, that became mentors and young ladies that became mentees. And we did it for the 2022, 2023 school year. We are going to do it again. And it's going to start back up in September. It was amazing. It was educated women, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs that came together to mentor the students in grades 10, 11th, and 12th in our school district. We worked on a five year plan with them. We talked about putting in paper what you see your future as and just guiding them.

Yasmeen:

Okay. So now speaking of mentorship and careers, et cetera, your. actual career is as the regional manager at Premier Endodontics of Long Island with oversight of five offices. This is very impressive, and for the listeners, this is in the dental field in case you didn't know what endodontics is. However, I found it very interesting that you got your Bachelor's degree in childhood elementary education with bilingual and special education extension, from SUNY Old Westbury. So, how did the switchover occur from a degree in education to the dental field?

Adelina:

So I actually started in the dental field. I started as a dental assistant and while I was working as a dental assistant, I went back to earn my Bachelor's in education. and of course, being a bilingual person, I said, I think I'm going to do the bilingual thing, but throughout my employment for Premier Endodontics I have to say that I've worked for an awesome group of partners that pride themselves in education. And they put me through several programs that had to do with marketing, that had to do with management, that had to do with public relation, and they saw potential in me that I didn't see in myself in the beginning. And once they started that process for me, I said, wow, I think I like going to school. I like learning. I like expanding, and I always say they invested so much money and time into me that I am really appreciative of it, and my way of giving back was staying on. I was given the opportunity to decide whether I was going to stay or whether I was going to go into teaching and they did not make it easy for me, because as you see, I'm still here, never, I never regretted staying here because I honestly love working for the partners, Dr. Granger, Dr. Ashish and Dr. Gupta, they are the leading endodontists, I would say in the United States. It's just, we pride ourselves in the work that we do and the services that we provide for all of our patients and, oh, they're just great.

Yasmeen:

I really love that story because really that's all it takes is for someone to see and then act on your potential. So, um, I'm really curious about this, the resource for parents. Can you talk a little bit about how you serve as a parental resource?

Adelina:

I serve as a parental resource when parents have questions regarding the services that are being provided for their students, right? So if someone says, my child is not performing, do you think the school district is not doing what they're supposed to be doing? Because I went to school to be a special ed teacher as well, I've been able to guide a lot of parents in the process of making sure that the, student is given the correct testing so that if there's a need for an IEP, that student is provided with the IEP and given a guide guideline as to where they are, where they need to go and what services need to be provided for them in order for them to move on and get the education that they need or the services that they need, even if it's like an ELL I am a resource as far as translating paperwork for parents, being a translator for them, attending meetings in order for the educational need of the child, making sure that it's provided for them.

Yasmeen:

So what piece of maybe last advice do you have for teachers who want to strengthen the ties with parents in the community?

Adelina:

I would say one of the things that's very important is learning about the family, learning their background, getting to know them on a personal level, learning about their culture, sometimes what music they listen to, that helps. Coming from a Hispanic household, I have to tell you that there's sometimes a misconception that we don't want to learn another language, or we don't want to interact with other people, but sometimes you also don't know that maybe that person doesn't know how to read or write in their own language, and now you're expecting them to learn how to read and write in another language that's not the one that they learned, initially.

Yasmeen:

Okay, and so, I have two more questions for you because I know that you're, graciously taking out some time from your busy day at the office to speak with us today. Where can people find out more information about you, about the board, about what's happening in Uniondale, anything that you would like to share with our listeners in terms of that?

Adelina:

So for the Uniondale school district, you could go to the Uniondale school district website. Anything that you need to know is listed on the website. We have updates. we have calendar of events that are going on. If you want to learn about the board, you just have to click on the board of education tab and it will give you the information regarding the board. Now, I have to plug my employer. I work for Premier Endodontics of Long Island. We are an emergency based practice that does endodontics, which is root canal. So if you're ever in a need of a root canal, all you need to do is go to premierelongisland. com and you will see the information for every single office that we own um their phone numbers, addresses, and backgrounds of all of the endodontists that work for us, including our partners.

Yasmeen:

And that's definitely great. It's fine to, to plug your employer, because I think it's very important for, us, for the community, for teachers to understand about the professional backgrounds of people that are parents in the community as well. Why are people getting educated in the first place? Because they want to have successful careers. So that's great. Now, my final question is what burning question should today's educators consider in order to improve their service to the ELL community?

Adelina:

It's very important for teachers to emphasize on the importance of being bilingual or biliterate, right? I would encourage them to use English as, English is being used as a medium of instruction in the school force, right? So for teachers, I would say that something that's very important for them is to always keep the line of communication open with the parent, whether it's via text, whether it's via email, whether it's via using someone that speaks their language to communicate with them. So it's very important to learn as much of the family as you can. Teachers play a very important role in the educational process of a student. They can see a student's behavior and know that there is maybe they're having an issue or they're not understanding. You have to remember that a student is spending a big portion of their day with a teacher, which is the same approach that I tell my employees here. I like to have a, an approach of family in my workplace because the majority of my time I'm spending it with my employees. So you have to create that bond with the parent, right? And I always feel like it's easier for elementary students and elementary parents to build that bond with, the elementary teacher. And then a student starts to get older. The bond starts to break because when you get to middle school, you're changing classrooms. So now you went from your student, having one teacher to a student having five or six teachers. So you can't repeat that bond because your child is only in that class for 45 minutes, but you should always strive to make sure that you have a great bond with your parents, with your students, to achieve a common goal. What's the common goal? That a student is successful.

Yasmeen:

Okay, so for our teachers out there listening, please ask yourselves,"How am I keeping the lines of communication open with the parents in my community?" Okay, so thank you so much for your time, for being here with us on RBERNing Questions, Mrs. Blanco Harvey. It has been a pleasure.

Adelina:

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to have this discussion with you and learn about what you do, and I hope that I've been a little help at least with anything I've said or anything I've done. I'm a firm believer that knowledge should be shared because knowledge in your brain is useless unless you're sharing it with someone else. Thank you for tuning in to RBERNing Questions, produced by Mid-State RBERN at OCM BOCES. If you would like to learn more about today's guest or any of the resources we discussed, please visit Mid-state RBERNs webpage at ocmboces.org. That's OCM boces.org. Join us next time where we hope to answer more of your burning questions.