Supporting Students One Parent at a Time

On Wednesday evenings in the month of March you will find thirteen excited parents who have shown up for their computer class. Yep, you heard correctly. The parents show up for class, and most of the time they are early. With help from Clair Chean and Nina “Will” Williams, I am in the process of teaching a beginning computer skills class at the Kent School District Refugee Transition Center (RTC). These are the parents of Kent School District students, and all are refugees living in our community. The RTC staff strives to help refugee families with anything they need as they transition to life in the United States. This means anything from getting kids to school to finding work, or providing them with clothing, shoes, and food donations.

Many of these moms and dads have never touched a computer before this class. When I asked why they had chosen to come to our class, they responded with two simple answers: “We would like to know how to use the Internet,” and “we would like to help our children do well in school.” This has become our mission. We started out with basic computer vocabulary: monitor, mouse, keyboard, laptop, desktop. Next, we looked at the Internet. We shared what it is, what you can use it for, and explored the school district website. We also gave an overview of email, as many of the participants have never used it, but would like to. Tonight, we will set up email accounts and practice emailing one another. By the end of the month, we’d like to have opened up communication between these families and their students’ teachers. How great would that be? Connecting these families with schools is a really exciting way to indirectly impact the success of their students.

More later - I’m off to class!

To see a video about the RTC, click here.