Author Archives: Mica Pollock

April 26, 2010

21st century parent dialogues

By Mica Pollock

Communications between parents, and between parents and city decision-makers, are key to student success.

Throughout April and May, the Somerville School Committee is waiting to hear parent opinions about the future of programming at the Healey School, which has long contained four programs within its walls. The School Committee is deciding whether the programs should remain separate, or combine. The Healey has also just selected a new principal for the coming fall, who will implement the decision.

We went to a School Committee meeting April 5 and noticed some communication issues that affect any diverse community:

  • parents who were on a listserve found out more easily about the School Committee meeting. Others relied on paper in backpacks. The former group came to the meeting in large numbers; the latter group didn’t.
  • parents who went to the School Committee meeting got great information (verbally and on paper) about the options facing the school. That information was all presented in English, however.

To date, many parents attending the school don’t know about the options facing the school.

Since the OneVille Project wants to support Somerville parents to communicate and collaborate to support the success of every young person in the city, we wanted to help out. So, we’re holding face to face parent forums about the future of the Healey School (our next one is May 1) and inviting all parents on to an online community forum that allows people to review each other’s ideas. The OneVille team will actively train any parent who wants to use the OneVille online forum to share their thoughts in any language.

We also walked around the Mystic Housing Development and taped fliers above mailboxes, a key communication tactic designed to reach busy people checking their mail!

In these efforts, we are asking parents a broader question:
What kind of education do you want for your kids?


We will collect parent feedback through all of these channels, and present it to the School Committee. After that, we hope parents will stay on the forum as another site to share ideas about education in Somerville. 21st century communication for parents: face to face, plus paper, plus electronic.

Related events:
April 27, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Training, to use OneVille’s online forum
Healey Library

May 1, 1 pm to 4 pm
Healey parent forum
Mystic Activity Center

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April 23, 2010

21st Century Community Collaboration

By Mica Pollock

I’m a parent in the Somerville public schools, and a professor. I’ve worked for years on helping people talk about educating young people in diverse settings. Now, I’m learning how technology can help.
On the OneVille Project, our hunch is that supporting kids in the 21st century takes an ecosystem of communications between the folks in a young person’s social network. It takes face to face communications (like a parent-teacher meeting or parent coffee hour), print communications (like a handout in a backpack), and electronic communications (imagine a student emailing his teacher about an assignment, or a basic social networking tool supporting students in running communication about homework.).

As a research team, we’re trying to understand the existing ecosystem of such communications about kids in Somerville. And, we’re testing new tools and strategies for supporting communication and collaboration between key folks in kids’ social networks. Check back in with us regularly to see what we’re finding out!

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April 23, 2010

It Takes A Network to Raise a Child

By Mica Pollock

Every young person has a social network made up of the key people he or she knows. Friends; family members; teachers; coaches; mentors; all the folks whose actions matter.

On the OneVille Project, we think that if the folks in any young person’s social network communicate regularly about how the young person is doing, and collaborate to support the young person’s success, every young person can succeed.

In Somerville, MA, we’re learning how people who share kids’ social networks can communicate and collaborate on a daily basis. We’re particularly interested in how basic technology can support people to do this. Stay tuned!

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