It’s Tuesday morning and Jen Laque is heading out to meet with a family to talk about their son’s attendance. As she gets ready to pull out of the parking lot, she gets a call from a grandparent she has been working with and who wanted to give an update on the custody situation with her granddaughter. Jen listens carefully, promises to check in with the school counselor to make sure he is aware of what is going on, and asks how the granddaughter is adjusting. When the call ends, Jen makes a note for her case files and gets ready to head out, when another call comes in—this time from a school where a family recently lost their home in a fire. Jen shuts the engine back off, pulls another folder out of her bag and talks about the resources she has found for the family. This is business as usual for a Pupil Personnel Worker (PPW) in Anne Arundel County.
As a PPW, Jen serves as a facilitator between families and schools. Working collaboratively, PPWs help identify, address, and alleviate issues impacting a student’s education, especially those related to attendance, residency, custody, and personal hardship. Part school counselor, part social worker, PPWs get to know families across the county and connect them to the resources they need to help their children be successful in school.
Providing Resources for Families in Crisis
This week, Jen has a meeting scheduled to touch base with a family that was referred to her last week. The mother had recently experience domestic violence and came to the school looking for help for her and her son. The school called Jen and, together, they found a safe relative who the family could stay with. This week, Jen is going out to visit the mother at her relative’s home to talk about how to enroll her son in local school, since they are now living in a different area of the county, and to provide resources for clothes, furniture, and counseling.
Providing resources to a family in crisis is one of the most important roles of a Pupil Personnel Worker. Every day, Jen and the 30 other PPWs in AACPS work with some of the most marginalized families in our county and see parents and students struggling with drug use, homelessness, mental illness, domestic abuse, and poverty. But by getting to know these families and listening to their individual stories, PPWs can better understand what a family may be struggling with. From getting assistance for parents to pay their utility bills to getting a student into a rehabilitation program, PPWs connect families with existing resources within the community.
In some schools, where there are high levels of absenteeism and students who receive free and reduced meals, one PPW bay be assigned to work full time at one school. In other communities, where the need is not quite as great, PPWs may split their time between schools. But whether he or she works with one school or an entire feeder system, each PPW gets to know the population and builds a relationship with the community so parents know they can turn to the PPW if they need help.
“They’re very caring, loving individuals that have the best interest of the child at heart,” says Timothy Merritt, Principal at High Point Elementary School. “They will exhaust every measure to help a child and the family and that can be everything from accessing every resources we have in Anne Arundel County Public Schools [and] beyond.”
Going Beyond the Attendance Record
Another important responsibility of a PPW is to help families whose students are frequently late to school or missing a lot of school. During one of her monthly attendance meetings, Jen sits with the school’s principal, attendance secretary, and school counselor to discuss students who have had multiple unexcused absences. In some cases, the absences are known to be an isolated incident (such as a family vacation), but in others, the student’s absences may be a symptom of a larger problem. When a school is unable to resolve an attendance issue on their own, they turn to their PPW to reach out to the family and find out why the child is missing school.
PPWs recognize that every family is different and that every family is facing their own challenges. Whether these challenges are big or small, the PPW works with each family to develop a plan to address the root of the problem and remove some of the barriers to getting the child to school.
This outreach is not necessarily always welcomed with open arms. PPWs need a tough skin to confront families who are angry or embarrassed by the questions a PPW may be asking. But by taking the time to understand the situation going on in the home, and by offering support rather than criticism, PPWs can understand the situation from the point of view of the family and learn about what else may be going on in the home.
“The primary way we can help a family is to be there to listen to them, get their story, understand what’s going on and try to go from there to work with them,” says Laurie Jones, a PPW in the county “You find out what the needs are,” she says, “and the needs can be so great for a family that attendance is an afterthought because they are dealing with so much. So, that’s why I say just hearing their stories—that level of communication with the families—is so important because you never know what a family is going through.”
Almost all of the families that PPWs work with want to do what is best for their children, but they may not have the tools to control the situation on their own. By connecting families with resources to meet their unique needs, PPWs can provide parents with a plan to see their student succeed.
Empowering Families to Support their Children
On Thursday night, a dozen families from across the county gather for the second class of the Responsible Attendance Action Program (RAAP). Designed by PPWs Jen Laque, Laurie Jones, Nicole Better, and Lauren Stoesser this AACPS program walks parents and students through a series of topics from goal setting and family communication to parenting styles and discipline to help families shift the behavior in home and school. Offered in the evening, each class provides dinner to all participants and brings in guest speakers from the community to share local resources. By coming together with other families who may be facing similar challenges, parents and students can better understand the importance of good attendance and how their actions can impact their relationships with the school and each other.
Whether they are referring a family to a program in AACPS or an organization in the community, PPWs want to empower families with the tools and resources that they may need to support their children. Steven Elsis, School Counselor, says “Whether its financial need, whether its health related, whether its psychological needs, the PPW refers families to these place to get the help that they are not able to get themselves, which in turn helps get them on track and in a healthier position to take care of their kids and their kid’s needs.”
When families have the resources they need to support their children, our schools and our community can become stronger. But while their wealth of knowledge is important, what makes PPWs an essential part of our schools’ support teams is the compassion, dedication, and strength they bring to advocate for those families who may not have anywhere else to turn.
“All PPWs I’ve worked with are so willing to get out there and meet with the family,” says Nicole Sutton, a 3rd Grade teacher, “just see what they need as a family and to help their kids in the best way possible to be successful at school.”
