Nia: A restorative work to enhance parent involvement in a predominantly Afrikan-American classroom

All children can benefit from enhanced parent involvement. This is particularly true for Afrikan American children who tend to experience formidable barriers to their academic success. In the Afrikan American community can be found many parents who are doing all they can to ensure their children gain a well-rounded and empowering education. My study is not focused on these parents except to encourage and support their efforts. My focus is, instead, on those parents in the Afrikan American community who have, for a variety of reasons, become disconnected from the very processes that might assist them to create the kinds of learning environments likely to help their children excel and make their own lives more meaningful and productive in the process.; In an effort to enhance parent involvement, I sought, as a necessary first step, to raise their consciousness level. This was done by introducing the "Sankofan Educational Process," a model I piloted on a classroom of third-grade parents at a predominantly Afrikan American school. The uniqueness of my model was its merging general parent involvement theory with values from traditional Afrikan philosophy while also taking into consideration the current realities of the parents. To heighten parent awareness, my Sankofan Educational Process model incorporated the following key components to carry out the work of knowledge transfer: (a) dialogue group meetings, (b) home visits, (c) audiocassette study on the Sankofan Educational Process, (d) "News of the Week" newsletters, and (e) periodic reading material. Each of the five components was assessed through parent responses in qualitative surveys to determine the component's relative value.; My work draws heavily from general parent involvement research, especially that of Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (1997) as well as from the cultural anthropological scholarship of Elleni Tedla (1996). Tedla's work highlights the strengths of traditional Afrikan philosophy which she uses to conceptualize a Sankofan Education model to be targeted for school systems on the Afrikan continent. My pilot began in the fall of 1997. Seven months later, the results are encouraging. Seventy-five percent of the targeted parents came "on-board" the process by participating in the Sankofan Educational Process and expressing their strong intent to enhance their educational involvement. In addition, parents tended to support and recommend that the Sankofan Educational Process be extended beyond the pilot phase. The greatest obstacle to full introduction of the process to parents was time. Suggestions are offered for improving the Sankofan Educational Process, thereby making it more responsive and suitable for application in other settings.