One of the most significant gifts I’ve ever received came in the form of an invitation to be the principal of Denali Elementary School in Fairbanks, Alaska. I look back at my time there as special because I was able to be my true self and because I learned many important life lessons while there. This is the story about I how I learned the subtle difference between the notion of parents merely “participating” in the life of a school and actually encouraging parents to feel at home in their child’s school.

When I arrived at Denali, a downtown school with a proud tradition of parental involvement, there had always been an active PTA, and parents were always engaged in a variety of teacher-parent programs and school-based parent education offerings. However, early on during my tenure there, I found the lack of Alaska Native parental involvement in school activities to be very puzzling.  Alaska Native children, making up approximately 20% of the school population, were fully engrossed in the on-going life of the school but where were their parents? I just didn’t get it. I just couldn’t figure it out. So, I decided to ask one of our Alaska Native teachers for her opinion: “Kathleen, why aren’t the Alaska Native parents ever present here at school?”

Kathleen asked me if I had time to “get the big picture.” Once I said that I’d like to hear everything she had to say, she talked passionately for about a half hour. She told me that most likely most of our Alaska Native parents hated their school experiences in the villages where they were born. In many of the village schools, their teachers were white (non-native) and often their teachers were bringing with them a culture alien to that of the village; that is, non-native used ways in the classroom that excluded the familiar and the customary. In extreme situations, the teachers dismissed – consciously or unconsciously – what the Alaska Native students had known and valued in favor of the curriculum and styles of interaction brought in by those non-native teachers and administrators. “At many school sites,” Kathleen told me, “there was no room for learning about each child; the teaching was all about one way to learn, and that was the non-native, white way.”

So I asked Kathleen, in light of these circumstances, how are we going to invite the Alaska Native parents into this school community? She expressed her opinions using these sometimes emotionally-charged words: “Newsletters sent home with the children with invitations for involvement won’t cut it; telephone calls from the teachers are often seen as intimidating; and PTA parent-to-parent notes are sent to the trash almost immediately. Almost everything that the school sends home is discarded.” I became really discouraged listening to what Kathleen had to say. “What are we to do?” I asked. “We aren’t going to do anything,” she said. “It’s what you are going to do:

“You are going to have to walk them home.”

Kathleen also invited me to take a walk with her during this after-school time. We walked out two blocks, four blocks, until finally we were six blocks away from the school. “This is it,” Kathleen declared, “this is the edge of their safety zone. This is as close as the Alaska Native parents are willing to get to the school. From here, they simply say good-bye to their children and after a few minutes of community chitchat, they make their way home. David, this is where you should be tomorrow morning.”

And so, that’s where I was the next morning. I was six blocks away from the school, at 8:30am. The clutch of about eightparents was quite surprised to see me. Many of them kept their eyes looking towards the ground; not one parent spoke to me. They motioned their children towards school. I accompanied the children to our main door.

I was out there the next day, and the next, and the next. On the second day, a parent spoke to me, saying: “It’s good to see you, Mr. Principal.” However, all during that first week of what I was calling my “parent home visits,” there was no movement towards the school whatsoever. But, there was a slight increase in eye contact!

In fact, this walk was a real “slow go.” In the three months of what the teachers were calling “David’s 8:30 stroll,” our progress per week could have been measured in inches, not feet.  (However, more parents came to join the group, perhaps out of curiosity.) And yet, as we inched forward, day after day, I learned a lot. “This is where Peter and Clare live,” one parent would tell me. “This is where we lived when we first came to Fairbanks from Fort Yukon,” another would say. And, on December 1^st, there was a chorus of “Oh look, there’s our kids’ school.”

On December 14^th, twenty-four parents walked through our main entrance and into the school. They were met by Kathleen, and two other teachers, in this case non-native, and were given hot chocolate and cookies. The parents were greeted with: “Welcome to Denali School. We’re so happy you’re here.”

Over the following winter and spring, these and other Alaska Native parents were often at school. The original group of parents told other Alaska Native families about the welcoming atmosphere they felt in the school.   They visited their children’s classrooms, came to PTA meetings, and frequently participated in after-school activities. Their participation in life of the school became very similar to the degree of involvement by the entire parent and neighborhood community. All of us—teachers and families—were so very pleased with the way that our school community had changed. We had become complete.

Over time, there was a truly dramatic change. Where there had been virtually no adult Alaska Native involvement in the school before our morning walks together, in the months that followed, Alaska Native elders came to participate in a variety of teaching activities; indeed, one wing of the school was dedicated to Alaska Native teaching, ways of learning and knowing, such as understanding science through learning winter survival skills.  Alaska Native arts and crafts were also an integral part of the school’s offering, also made available in after-school classes to the entire Fairbanks community.

I sensed that the Alaska Native families and community elders were more comfortable in the school.  But, I felt ever so pleased and grateful when the first parent who spoke to me out on that sidewalk months ago came up to me in the school hallway one afternoon and declared: “Mr. Principal, thanks for walking me home. I’ve always wanted to be in a school like this.”

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How about you? When were you directed to embark on a course of action that seemed highly impossible at the outset, only to discover that the way turned out to be not only possible, but in the doing, was very significant and life-changing?