Rachael Maves: Hi everyone. I, Rachael Maves, and you're listening to getting real with leaders in education, where we strip away the layers and get to the raw, unfiltered stories behind the leaders shaping the future of Education. My guest today is Gloria Corral, president and CEO of Parent Institute for Quality Education, or PIQE is a National Organization providing families with the Knowledge and Skills essential to actively engage in their children's education and to strengthen parent School Community Partnership and collaboration. PIQE provides empowering, information, skills development and support systems for communities of color, multilingual Learners, immigrant and lowincome families. This family engagement empowerment model has benefited appr proximately 1.5 million children in its 32-year history. Prior to Parent Institute for Quality Education, Gloria served as the assistant executive director at first five San Diego, deputy director at first five San Francisco and co-director of policy and Outreach at preschool California.

Gloria, thank you for joining me today at the getting real with educational leaders podcast.

Gloria Corral: Thank you for having me, Rachael. It's an honor to be here and to spend time with you.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I'm. It's so good to catch up with you and to reconnect and hear about the great work that's happening at PIQE. Today. I want to hear a little bit, I think, on the personal side, from you. Why did you choose education with everything that you had before you and the choices and the opportunities?

Gloria Corral: Education. It's a way of how I see the world. My story, in so many ways, is the story really of the American dream my parents had for us, my family's from Mexico. My parents immigrated to Tijuana, which is the you know kind of the Melting Pot of so many who come wanting to come to the US, and my mom was a teacher in her small town because she had been able to go to middle school, and back then in Mexico, being a middle school graduate meant you were the most educated person in you know a 100 mile radius. And so when we came to this country, my parents and all they knew was that getting an education was the way for all of us to thrive and to really seize opportunities that were made available in this country. And so I remember my first day of school.

There's four of us, four children. My mom walked us to our elementary school, which was a few blocks from our house. She stopped across the street from the elementary school and she said: two. Things, behave and listen to your teacher, and then she sent us into the class. You know, into the school? None of us.

My brother was a first grader, I was a third grader, my other brother was a fourth grader. We didn't know a word of English and really my mom experience with education was one that where she trusted that teachers would care for us right and that they knew what was best for us. And so I think, for me, that love and that responsibility of nurturing a child's well-being, of welcoming families, left obviously a very big impression, and so I've dedicated my life, quite frankly, professionally and personally, to making those opportunities available to Children and Families, because I actually really believe that education really is a pathway for not just economic Mobility importantly economic Mobility but I think, also to enable every child's. Magnificent to thrive right and that parents ability and dreams for their children can be realized through a strong, loving, rigorous educational experience. It really can, and so I feel like if I can contribute to that journey in some way, big or small, then I've honored my parents and I think I can leave the world a better place.

Rachael Maves: I love that. I love that, and I love hearing, too, what you said about your mom trusting that the school and the adults in the system were going to meet you guys' needs and take care of whatever was happening within your education, and I my guess is that is something drives you at PIQE. So tell me a little bit about how you went toward that Focus, because that I mean that really is your focus is the parent, parental involvement and how do we engage families in a meaningful way?

Gloria Corral: Yeah, it's because I really believe that I have yet to meet a parent or a loving adult who doesn't want what's best for their children. I've never met them and listen, I've traveled across the country. I've worked in DC, I've worked in Sacramento, in San Francisco and San Diego. I've never met a, an adult, a parent, a grandmother, a Thea, an auntie who doesn't want a better future for their children. And the work that we do at PIQE is, as you said, like to do three things. One, give families the educa, the information they need to understand the education system.

That's critical. For so many families the education system hasn't worked for them, whether they're dropped out, whether they left unprepared to do econ, you know, to get a job, to go to higher ed. So we provide families information, we help them develop skills. What that means is actually learning how the system works, where they can impact it, how to impact it by, you know, reaching out to a principal. What's the difference between a principal and a counselor? Why does a vice principal deal with some issues versus a, you know, a psychologist?

So we talk to families about how you engage in this country, in the education system. And then, third and it's so critical, especially for the families we serve, Rachael, is that we build a sense of community and self and sense of self-efficacy. Meaning that in a lot of communities, especially if you are immigrant, if you don't speak English as a first language or if the education system has failed you and you've been in this country, you know, a hundred years. It's that sense of isolation, that you don't have a voice, that what you feel is something nobody else feels, that your dreams for your children are different from the dreams of the children next to you. So we very intentionally build that sense of community. Because our work leads families into action.

Now, we don't tell parents or families what that action should be. We believe that if you give people information, you give them skills, you give them a sense of self-efficacy, they will determine what is the best right step for them and their children, whether that's setting up a meeting with their teacher, whether that's going and advocating for services at the district, whether it's writing their Congress person like we don't tell them what it is. We say: these are the path, this is your voice, these are others who can join you, and that you're not alone. And let me tell you, the impact that we've had isn't just with that child. This is what's amazing about working with families is that you change the trajectories of entire communities. That parent won't just advocate for their one child of four right, they will advocate for all of four children and not just their children, their neighbors's children, the children right.

Because now they have knowledge, skills and a sense of self-efficacy that can enable them to do what every parent wants to do: create a better future for their children and for themselves. And so, you know, I think it's because I believe that fundament, Mally, that this partnership between. Families, Educators and community. That is the way in which children Thrive, communities come together and actually, as a social justice organization and an educational Equity organization, we believe that's our mission is to change the trajectory by opening opportunities for families, by enabling them to do what's best for them and their children, and the it's the collaboration r. That parents and families want with their Educators, with the teachers, with the administrators, and that there are community support and a community that supports and enriches and welcomes them. I believe that's what every child deserves and that every parent wants, and that's what every educator Who Wants to Be an educator is there to provide.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I and I think and not in an adversarial way, in a we're in this together. This is a partnership and we need everybody's voice at the table because the work is too huge. I mean, it requires the community to support and I this isn't something that was part of the questions, Gloria, but I feel like it's such an important piece to touch on is the disconnect. Between oftentimes not all the times, but oftentimes Educators and school systems and parents and what, the understanding of the desire for engaging. I mean, can you just speak a little bit about that, of where you see that disconnect in some of the misnomers that we have around, how parents want to be engaged?

Gloria Corral: Absolutely, Rachael, I'm so glad you brought that up. I think one there, I think there's two things. One is structural, I think what you don't know, what you don't know right, and if in your teacher preparation, right, how do you know about decod, different strategies around decoding, is because you were taught there's different ways to teach literacy. Right, there's this tool, there's this tool, there's right. And I say that basic in such a basic way, because. Structurally, we don't support aspiring Educators to understand what family engagement looks like and what tools they might need to pull out of their toolbx, just like when they're teaching literacy, just like when they're teaching numery or phonics or whatever right like there are different tools you need to use.

So I think part of this is, structurally, we aren't supporting our aspiring Educators to understand how to engage families effectively. So if you don't know that, right, what is it that you rely on? Is your preconceptions, it's your own experiences, it's your own biases. Yeah, that then kind of construct meaning around you know a child coming in late or a child falling asleep, or someone not coming in to your parent teacher conferences that happen at two o'clock, right? So, yes, so it's. It's not understanding that, structurally, you don't know what you don't know and therefore we need to support and give.

Educators the tools they need to understand what family engagement looks like and it can look like, and what are the tools. I think the second thing, which is in some ways the work that we do in more meaningful ways, I would say, is understanding and helping our educators understand that there are different ways of engaging that are equally valuable and valid. And I'll give you two quick examples. One is that when Educators understand just like my mom right where she came with a sense that, like me, going to talk to a teacher is disrespecting her expertise, so why would I go in and talk to a teacher if she knows best she's educated? I am not right like so. I think there's sort of a fundamental need for our Educators to understand that sense of where is the family coming from in terms of values, in terms of understanding the system.

So I do think there's that and part of what we do is help families understand that part of the system, right, and what the expectation of the system is: Visa, the adult in that child's life, right, which is very different than it is in Mexico, in parts of Asia, right. So there's that, I think, the second really important part to this, Rachael, which your question elicits. Is: what do I, what do I think family should do? And that is predicated on what did you see your parents doing for yourself, what you know, what do other people's parents do? Right, and I think that's the part where having strategies really helps. And let me tell you one example that really exemplifies this for me is that, you know, often times family engagement in the traditional sense means come to parent conf, conference.

You know parent teacher conferences, come to coffee with a principal, if they have it right, join a School site, Council or elac or something like that. Or volunteer right, come into the classroom, do something. So one of our parents in one in a very rural part of the state basically told one of our facilitators, said: can you show me how to make brownies? And it was kind of an interesting question. And so our staff was like, okay, sure, we can talk about that in our lessons. Like our staff was actually thinking about measuring, that maybe that was the issue, like let's use this as a teaching moment for measuring in math, right.

And so they said, great, okay, we can talk about it with the rest of the families and we can make this as an activity. And she said, no, I need to learn, because the teacher says they need brownies. The mom didn't know what brownies were like. Literally, she didn't know what they were because they don't need it at home, they don't, right? And so the when again, this is to me such an illustrative point is because the parent wanted to do what the teacher asked of them, but didn't know what that meant. Right, and so my staff, my team, did: great, we'll do this.

And what ended up happening was that the parents understood that, in order to support the teacher, they needed to participate in a bake sale. That was really the end goal for the teacher, because that was how the teacher was measuring parent engagement. Yeah, and it was one of those moments where, thankfully, we were working with the school, right, it enabled a larger conversation with the teachers, right, and the principals, and it really opened up, I think, a bit like a beautiful way of saying: food can connect families, and so the you know long story, this parent makes a brownie. But the broader point is that then what the school ended up doing was AES, and AES is like a potlock, and the moms ended up cooking and then this became, and they did it at one of their elac meetings and now it's a twice a year tradition that the school and the parents there's like a 100 parents coming all because there was a broader understanding of what it meant for the educator and the families to connect with one another, the values and the opportunities that look very different. It wasn't a bake sale, right, it wasn't at the parent teacher conference, but it was like: how do we, how can we communicate and validate one another and I'm there's a million stories like that because it's about connecting and finding that you share a very critical common bomb, which is the well-being of children.

Rachael Maves: Well, and I love the example that you gave too, because it provides, I think, such a rich picture of. It might start out like as this tiny little seed, but when you value and honor what the community is bringing in and the gifts that they have, how it can flourish. Into this I mean completely different Vision, but the engagement is so different and the connection and the community it just allows that space for everyone to show up and bring their strengths and their best selves. Which right is what we need? Right? An education right?

Gloria Corral: That's right. And I think, Rachael, and I think the other really important point, I think for our Educators that they were open, leadership matters, y, leadership matters. So thees was at five o'clock guess what? Not at one, because none of the parents were available that one right. So again, I just wanted to make the point that there was like an openness and a receptiveness and a willingness to do things differently from the part of the educator. You can have all these things, but if the leadership, if the teacher wasn't willing, if the principal wasn't willing to leave the school open, right for the custodian to be the, we wouldn't be telling this story.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's right. And then the teachers takeaway would have been: parents don't care, because they didn't turn in cookies for the bake sale, even though I told them, yeah, that could be the lesson from here, yeah, which we hear often, unfortunately. Yeah, so as we think about I mean really some of the persistent issues within education, especially now that we've just gone through this pandemic, what are the two things that keep you up at? Night.

Gloria Corral: It's what we hear from families, they. So we do a community needs assessment of families. We interview families in their home language from across the state of California and, interestingly, very important similarities across the country. And the things that keep me up are two things. One is really, I think, recognition that the social, emotional, well-being of children is Paramount to AC, you know, for their wellbeing, but importantly to academic achievement. And we, I think, are really struggling still to take some of the best practices from Early Childhood.

Right that we think of children's well-being, things like self-regulation, ability to negotiate conflict, because, again, teachers aren't, aren't like, comfortable in those pedagogical approaches. Right, to have children with they're 10 come in and do a mood analysis like: how are you feeling today? Right, that's all three-year-olds do that when they walk in. Right, why? Because the teacher can then see how their children. Did they wake up?

Well, did they have a tummy ache? Right? We somehow forget some of those practices. When we're talking about 12year old, I have a 13-year-old, my 13-year-old woke up in a very bad mood this morning just because he's 13, just for no reason, just because he's 13, right like, but we kind of forget some of that. So I think the fact that we still haven't em embraced social emotional learning and social emotional wellbeing as a vital part to academic success is really critical because it has really serious consequences and families are worried about this depression, bullying, school safety. Those are issues that families have elevated, really, and they started in elementary school, Rachael, and that's really troubling because of the pandemic when there was a lot less socializing among children, especially our youngest children.

So I think that's one. The second, which is equally important. You know, I'm a huge believer that home language, multi, multilingualism, is a huge asset, not because I believe, it's because that's what the science tells us, that's what the literature says, right, California is a multilingual State. I think it's this other construct, that the otherness of being right, and I think that what that means is that we look for otherness. And in a highly diverse State like in California, where 75% of children aren't white and yeah, you know, and 50% of them speak a language other than English, and right and it's. So I think that's the other part.

Is this sense of otherness that if you're, if you're not white, if you're not an English only? Child, then you are other, when in reality it's the diversity of language, of culture, experiences that makes the country, makes California specifically, really a thriving place, right, and so that sort of that keeps me up at night because I feel like, as we think about diversity, Equity, inclusion, belonging, right, these terms that really have become in Vogue after the murder of George Floyd and so many others that we can just stay with the language, with the words, but not the practice, right, and so families are really feeling this sense of I don't belong or people don't. People don't think I belong and my children don't belong. And so I think, to me, this continual focus on otherness, because you look different, because you don't speak English without an accent orc, right, whatever it might be, really under undercuts. I think the foundational values of this country, which is opportunity, right, that having a wide set of opportunities made available for everyone is really a belief in the public good, right, public libraries, public education, right, like public parks, is that we all benefit as a community, as a state, as a country, when we see each other not as other, but is one right? And so I think that sense of isolation and that sense of otherness is really troubling for the well-being of a community, of a child.

I think. Importantly though, Rachael, for democracy, you know, for the wellbeing of our state, for the well-being of our country, and that's really concerning to me, because I feel like you're talking about feelings, right that, and changing mindsets, and so, as a policy walkon, you can't legislate kindness, you can't legislate Goodwill, you can't legislate these things right, and so that's why it feels very concerning to me is that each of us then have to make a choice about: is that person that I see in other, or am I seeing that person really as part of my community?

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's right, and I love that you keep bringing it back to community, Gloria, because I feel like it's so much in this conversation. It's: it's: how do we shift power and move power over other power, and I feel like we're trying to actually propose the wrong thing. It's: what does it look like for us to do this in community where the power structure isn't about who has power over whom, but what does it look like to honor, value, uphold, uplift one another as human beings at that very core and embrace those differences, and that's, it's a different type of conversation. So, as you think about all these things, two ways that we could move forward, what are like two really practical ways that we could start to address these issues.

Gloria Corral: You know, one is to listen. I think what being curious and listening right like it seems so fundamental. But I will tell you, Rachael, going back to the example I gave, like if we hadn't asked this question of this mom, like why do you want to learn to bake? Like right, like we were curious. Like for us to say like no, that's not what we do, right, like that could have been our answer, but it's, it wasn't. It was like: let's be curious, let's listen actively.

Right, because that is how you learn, that's how you build community, Rachael. And so I would say, whether you're a teacher, whether you're an educator in any capacity, whether you're administrator, is to really question with curiosity and then to listen actively, right. So if you're a principal and you've always done the same thing the same way for the last three years, right, then question that: why are you doing it? Right, like the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome, right? So if you're thinking, you know these families are hard to reach, these children can't read, like, and you're still doing the same thing, question: be curious, what about this? Can you revisit and then bring in different people to inform you?

Right, to listen actively and say, like we've never asked these questions or we've never asked these three teachers that don't show up to staff meetings. Let me come up with a different strategy to listen to their point of view. So I would say: actively listen and be curious about what it is that you are doing as a professional is critical. I think. The second thing that I would invite others to think about, especially when it comes to engaging families, but I think more broadly is: how is it that you're thinking about building community, and that's very different than what parent engagement activities are you doing? Those are two different questions, and so I always want, like: so what is it that you are doing as a leader in the school, as a teacher in the school, as a colleague or a CBO partner in the school to build community?

And what that means, Rachael, is to look around. Who isn't at the table. Where's your federally qualified Health Centers, right? What about your before school and after school providers? Where are your family tare providers in the neighborhood, right? Where are your corporate, you know, your liquor store, if that's what you have, right, because in some communities that's all you have: your grocery stores, your food bank, right?

Where are they really to build community? And then, where are you in relationship to them? Are you showing up to the public library? Are you showing up to the festival that everyone attends? Are you going to the park where the kids hang out? Right again, the list is endless.

But I would say, like the strategies around building Community actually means identifying who's not at the table and reaching out to them, not once, not twice, but in an ongoing way, because that's how you build community. And then, where are you in Rel relationship to them? Where and how are you being present for those families and those communities? Right, and then I would say like, don't think. Don't think that, because we're no longer in the pandemic, that the digital divide has closed that right. The digital Equity is no longer an issue for families.

So I would Elevate and invite our colleagues and our partners who are listening to keep some of those best practices that they had to come up with during the pandemic: home visits right, like sending out, you know, messages on Facebook every Sunday night, sending personalized phone calls right. Keeping your parent engagement or parent lias on staff, keeping the extra hours for your psychologist on staff right like these are all things that people were doing in a crisis. I would invite some of us to consider that we are now in a different phase, but those strategies and those practices were actually best practic.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, talking families in multiple ways, in multiple channels, consistently, in an, in a language that it's accessible to them, in the modality that's accessible to them yes, those are great practices that should continue because the crisis hasn't subsided. It just looks different.

Gloria Corral: [speaker uncertain] Right, it looks different.

Rachael Maves: Yes, yeah, that's right. Well, as we get ready to wrap up, Gloria I we want to end the podcast with this question, because I feel like sometimes we're fixated on the same conversations, and one of the things that I want to draw out really is this question of what question in education are we not asking that we really should? Be.

Gloria Corral: In some ways, it's my favorite question and the my most frustrating question, Rachael, because I will tell you that I don't. I still don't understand. The question to me is: what will it take to fundamentally rethink our teacher construct? What will it take? It's not the demographics have changed, so that's not it right like so it's the most. In some ways, Rachael, the reason why it's so frustrating is because it seems like the most obvious question and yet it is so entrenched.

That's what I continually think about. What will it take for a recognition that the way that we support. Educators that are currently in the field, and inviting our young children to want to become Educators and I do say that, Rachael, from Early Childhood into professorship, right like that Continuum of being an educator is really to me, something that you know keeps me up at night, because I really believe that until we decide to change the way we think about our future Educators and what is valued and what is taught and who teaches them, and that we talk about, you know, systemic racism, that we talk about proactively dismantling systems of Oppression, that doesn't mean that there's there's anything wrong. It just means that we need to better understand the communities that make up our education system, that are fundamentally different than they were 150 years ago when our education system began. And so what will it take? You know, our a crisis, our Health crisis, made our Educators think about engaging families differently absolutely right.

So what will it take for our teacher preparation, teacher engagement pipeline to be radically different? I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that it's going to need to be answered, I think, strategically. Thoughtfully, creatively, so that we have different Pathways, whether that's apprenticeship, you know, internships, it's the all and that we teach teachers differently.

Rachael Maves: [speaker uncertain] That's right.

Gloria Corral: Different people need to teach people differently right, and with all due respect to Academia, there's a place for that. And then there's a place for lived experience for being in Comm community. That I think we just need to re really rethink that Pipeline, and so I'm hopeful that we can. But that's the question that keeps him keeps me up.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I appreciate that, Gloria. My guest today has been Gloria Corral, president in CEO of Parent Institute for Quality Education. Thank you, Gloria, for joining me today on the getting real with leaders in education podcast.

Gloria Corral: It's been an honor. Rachael, thank you so much.

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This transcript was created from the episode's captions and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors; please refer to the audio for exact wording.