The Launch of Tribe Dinners

Room 18 Tribe Dinners

Something that I have always felt that I was fairly proficient at was connecting to my students.   I take pride in it and certainly make a conscience effort to do so.  All the time.  Not only do I try and connect to all kids, I also try and make sure the lines of communication between my classroom and home are open, trying to inform parents routinely, and in a number of different ways with what is happening in the class.  Even after all of that, I have still always felt like I could be doing more. Although, not entirely sure what.  Last spring I took a cultural awareness class and it was truly the first time I have thought about creating a culturally responsive classroom.  In fact, I really didn't even know what that meant, that it was my job as an English teacher to talk about difficult topics with my students regularly, giving opportunity for discussion throughout the year.  Creating an environment where students felt safe expressing their opinions, their beliefs on difficult topics, etc.   One question that came out of that course was, how can I go about and learn about my students on a deeper level? Not just what sports they like, but getting to know not just my students, but their families.  Last spring, I set the goal to host potlucks for each of my classes in the fall of my new school year.  Yes, we have an Open House. Parents come in, but 13 minutes of me rambling about what to expect throughout the year, is not nearly sufficient.   As this school year began, I looked at the calendar to pick when would be the best time to start spreading the word on this.  I used Open House as an opportunity to plug my "Tribe Dinners" and gave dates, times and what parents can expect, giving this idea some legs.

Over the course of two weeks, I hosted 5 different potluck dinners for each one of my English classes.  All members of the families were welcome, and I asked everyone to bring a dish to share, while I provided drinks, utensils, cups and plates.  I have 64 students in my traditional English classrooms and a colleague and I co-teach a project based learning class made up of 46 students.  So out of 110 students, and five different nights, I was able to meet 140 students, parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins.  We spent an hour together, for each potluck, enjoying all of the fantastic food everyone brought in, as I was able to connect to parents on a different level than I have in my last 11 years of teaching.  I was able to share some parenting resources, give them a glimpse into our Google Classroom and online portfolios in Seesaw and then spent the rest of the time, having fun: Playing Kahoot (useless trivia of course) or teaming up to complete a digital "Breakout".

While it turned out to be some long days/nights, it was totally worth it.  I was able to have some powerful conversations with parents, confirming my attempts at creating a more cultural aware classroom, as we had just recently taken on the topic of "Blue vs Black" in a recent article and classroom discussion.  Out of these nights,  I made a commitment to host a winter and spring Tribe Dinner as well, and I got the sense that everyone is already looking forward to it.  There were some nights where some students showed up with other students and no parents and that was ok.  I was simply thankful they themselves made an effort to be part of our classroom community.  Keeping the Tribe Dinners low key, laid back and minimal expectation allowed for me to enjoy them more and really be proud to have such a great group of students