Building Partnerships: Communities and Schools

Hands, C. (2005). It ’ s Who You Know and What You Know : Process of Creating Partnerships Between Schools and Communities, 63–84.

The journal article, It’s Who You Know “and” What You Know: The Process of Creating Partnerships between Schools and Communities by Catherine Hands is a guide to research in forming school partnerships with its community. Two schools were examined for their success in forming partnerships. The perspective of community members, teachers, parents and principals were collected and discussed. Hands explains the necessary components of forming a partnership and the pitfalls that may challenge a partnership from becoming successful. There are many benefits to be had by both the school and the community member which is fully discussed. Furthermore, Hands goes on to describe some of the unintended benefits. Throughout the article parallels are made that relate the elements of ecology to elements of forming a partnership and how they are each interdependent. Hands organization is excellent. She makes use of bold and headings to lead the reader sequentially through the steps of forming a partnership. Beginning with the introduction she describes how the need for her research is adjoined to the needs of schools that “are finding it increasingly difficult to create educational programs to address the diverse needs of the students” (Hands, 2005, p.64). In my own experience I see a greater need for change because of the rapidly expanding and diverse population. Schools are working on a paradigm designed over a hundred years ago for a population one quarter the size and even less diverse. Simply stated, schools today are not equipped to effectively engage students or supply their needs required to be successful in the world. Next, Hands outlines the problem and poses questions to the reader. This technique of using questions gives the reader a purpose to focus on as he/she reads. The questions also highlight what is important in the article. Finally, it supplies the opportunity for repetition of concepts. Hands continues by defining essential terms and ideas, followed by describing the framework of the partnering process. The reader is never left to figure out what she means. This topic is identical to what I intend to research. I don’t know whether to be happy someone else has thought of it or if I should be sad because my idea is not as original as I thought. The upside is that I plan to take it a step or two further. I want to investigate how the community partnership affects the school community and student achievement. Currently I notice “students see many academic tasks in terms of short-term learning necessary to secure a grad and do not grasp the learning’s utility in the real world beyond the classroom.” (Willems & Gonzalez-DeHass, 2012, p.10). Hands research is easy to read because of how organizes it visually and through her use of anecdotes. She takes two pages to discuss her methodology. She makes use of an easy to read graphic organizer. She reiterates the goals of her research and then discusses her findings and more data collection. The article is so well organized; I compare it to following a street map. Hands makes use of repetition which is a valuable tool to help the reader digest the material without having to go back to recall a concept. During a recent class, our guest speaker from ASU, Dr. Audrey Amrein-Beardsley just briefly mentioned qualitative versus quantitative research in her discussion. I understand what each of those two types of research mean but I work better when I have examples. I have some familiarity with quantitative research after having taken a statistics class where we worked with numbers and values to support our findings. Now this article offers an excellent example of qualitative research. I see how data collected by interviews and relationships that work or fail. Data is collected by the success of “feedback loops resulting from communication within the networks and resultant maintenance or changes made to the relationships” (Hands, 2005, p.66). Hands breaks down the components and mechanics of how to build partnerships” with another researcher’s theory on partnership, “the relationship between systems such as schools and communities. The theory posits that there is a flow of information and resources across the permeable boarders of open systems in a way that is not hierarchical; this flow is bi-directional across the borders” (Hands, 2005, p.66). The flow of information is the communication between the school and the community. The resources are the agreed upon services that will help to accomplish a certain goal. The goal agreed on between the school and the community was that “the needs of the students were the focus and the basis for all partnership efforts.” (Hands, 2005, p.70) The next component is initiating partnerships and the first question to be answered from the community would be “”Well, what’s in this for me?” So, rather than waste people’s time, you have to present it like, ‘This is a situation which will benefit us both.’ So, yeah, I think there has to be some reciprocation. And it has to be obvious”(Hands, 2005, p.71). The schools Hands interviewed made clear that forming partnerships required a measured and well thought out approach. Businesses, organizations and social services have time pressures just like teachers so it’s important to know the needs of the community. It’s a lot like sales. I plan on selling the community with the idea that, in the classroom teachers give grades as a measure of performance and students receive them as payment for work completed. However, the rewards will be much greater when students see the work from a partnership of community and school side by side. “Children learn through a variety of social and educational contexts, and the goals for student academic success are best achieved through the cooperation and support of schools, families, and communities” (Willems & Gonzalez-DeHass, 2012, p.9) My concern is that students do not have the role models or the exposure to the opportunities with-in and outside their communities. There are so many variables to consider in helping students to be college or career ready. Many students have not been outside of their neighborhood. In further study of how community partnership will benefit students I hope to describe how students explore career opportunities, how to involve parents in partnering with the school and community, how to encourage businesses to create scholarships or apprenticeships, and how schools can help businesses to grow.

References: Willems, P. P., & Gonzalez-dehass, A. R. (2012). School – Community Partnerships : Using Authentic Contexts to Academically Motivate Students, 22(2), 9–30.

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Jeffrey Cook

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