In San Francisco, City Schools Are Focusing on Students With Incarcerated Parents
Teachers often ask kids in school what their parents do or to draw a picture of their family. It’s a curriculum that seems harmless enough, but for students with incarcerated parents, activities like these can cause a great deal of pain, without instructors even knowing it.
Matt Haney, president of the San Francisco Unified School District, recalled how one student was asked to write a story about his family and made it up instead of writing about his imprisoned father.
“Even with parent-teacher conferences, teachers will ask, ‘Where’s your parent?’ or ‘How come they’re not here?’ ” Haney told TakePart. “As a school district, we’re not really talking about it or how teachers need to handle those situations.”
This year, Haney says, the school board conducted its first training session for counselors and social workers working with students with incarcerated parents. Youths and older adults who had family members in correctional facilities led the training, talking about experiences they had in school and which ones increased feelings of anxiety or stigma—one example being when they were asked what their parents did for a living. The training was so well received by participants that the school board wanted to expand it, and with it came a new plan of action to help better the lives of those kids currently in school who had imprisoned parents.
Under the recently introduced plan, proposed by Haney and Shamann Walton, commissioner of the San Francisco Board of Education, the school board would create a series of programs, curricula, and training sessions focused on students with parents in prison.
On Tuesday, the two officials proposed a resolution aimed at expanding San Francisco school districts’ efforts to support youths with incarcerated parents, especially in schools with high concentrations of these students.
Details of how city schools would go about connecting imprisoned parents with students and In San Francisco, City Schools Are Focusing on Students With Incarcerated Parents - Yahoo News: