1My family and I moved to Bethesda, Maryland, from New York City in the fall of 2014. I am French and was raised in Paris. I went to graduate school in the United States in the late 1990s and have worked in the field of higher education and research for the last 15 years. My husband is American, and we have two boys. We speak French and English at home. Both boys are raised bilingual and are fluent in English and French. Since 2015, my eldest child has been enrolled at our local public elementary school, Bethesda Elementary (from now on “BE”). He started in first grade and is about to graduate from 5th grade. My youngest son is currently enrolled in kindergarten.

2Our school is located in the heart of Bethesda. We live in an urbanized area in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, just Northwest of Washington D.C. It takes its name from a church located there, the Bethesda Presbyterian Church, built in 1820 and rebuilt in 1850, which in turn took its name from the “Pool of Bethesda” in Jerusalem (in the New Testament account of Jesus miraculously healing a paralyzed man).

3Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), which BE belongs to, is the largest school system in Maryland and the 14^th largest school system in the United States, with students from 157 countries speaking 150 languages! It is also highly rated nationally.

4Bethesda is an affluent and highly educated community. Major local employers are the National Institute of Health (NIH), Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Johns Hopkins University, Marriott Inc, Lockheed Martin, Geico, etc... It is well served by local public transportation to downtown D.C. where many of the children’s parents work at foreign embassies, the I.M.F. and the World Bank. BE is perceived locally as a ‘wealthy’ school compared to many of the area’s elementary schools. The small number of students receiving free or reduced-price meals is one indicator of such a disparity (only 6.5% compared to 35.1% in the rest of the county). However, the perception does not reflect the continuous influx of military families and families who live in low-income housing facilities.

5In 2019-2020, the school’s population was comprised of 670 students enrolled in grades K to 5. There is only one elementary school in downtown Bethesda, which explains the high number of the total student population. It is also a highly rated public school in an area with a large offering of private schools. The area is also experiencing major urban growth and development. As a result, the school’s population has grown by 15% over the last five years and is expected to continue to grow. There is a projected expansion project currently approved and the school’s PTA (Parent Teacher Association) is very involved in making sure this project comes to fruition. Overcrowding has real consequences for BE’s student population, and it is often perceived in association with the increasing influx of international students to the school.

6For the last 15 years, BE has had an active community of families with special needs students (11% of the total school population). They comprise students with many different disabilities, who receive instruction both inside and outside the general education classes. The school receives extra funding to provide special education paraeducators and teaching tools. This makes BE very attractive to local families looking for specialized schooling.

7Inclusivity is at the heart of the school motto: “striving for a high level of success for all students, ensuring that safety and welfare of all is a top priority, working collaboratively to ensure that all voices are heard, showing respect for each other in pursuit of academic excellence”. Indeed, children are exposed to different kinds of disabilities from an early age at BE, and it teaches them life lessons. My children have certainly grown more empathetic and tolerant.

8Bethesda Elementary has a minority enrollment of 40% of the student body (mainly Asian and Hispanic) which, even though it is lower than the state average, also reflects its large international population. I counted 74 countries represented at our school last year and about 30 languages spoken. For this year, as in most years my children have been enrolled at the school, the largest group of foreign students come from Asia and South-Asia, with the biggest contingent coming from Japan and secondly from China. This year, in order of frequency, the most spoken foreign languages are Japanese, Spanish, French, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese/Chinese Mandarin, Albanian, Pashto, Italian, Russian, Filipino, Polish, Hindi, Farsi/Dari, and Arabic.

9One last but important fact about BE is its high annual turnover (17%). Indeed many, but not only, international families leave after one year, and sometimes they leave in the middle of the year. I think this is particular to our area in general and to the fact that many foreign job postings do not follow the academic calendar. Again, this impacts overcrowding and furthermore corroborates the perception that the school is a pool of transitional international mobility.

10I believe there are three reasons why international families enroll their children at BE instead of enrolling them in local private schools, which sometimes offer full language immersion (such as the Lycée Rochambeau for the French-speaking community, the German International School,…). Firstly, the school offers a highly rated quality of instruction. Secondly, it dispenses E.S.O.L. (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes to all non-English speaking entering students. Finally, the gratuity of the school is highly valuable in this expensive semi-urban enclave close to the country’s capital. In addition, many international families enroll their children in Saturday language schools, which are widely available in our area. My children for example go every Saturday to a French heritage school that offers advanced courses in French.

11When we enrolled my eldest son in first grade a couple of years ago, he had been attending the Lycée Rochambeau Maternelle grande section for a year. He was automatically enrolled in E.S.O.L. classes based on his previous schooling and the fact that his mother’s tongue was French. He quickly phased out of E.S.O.L.; his English skills were strong enough to re-enter the regular classes with his classmates. BE enrolls about 100 to 150 students a year in E.S.O.L. classes, which represents roughly 15% of the total student enrollment. Students are identified for eligibility and then monitored for their English language development (ELD). They receive direct language instruction to support ELD while accessing grade-level material. The school follows the pull-out model, which means students are instructed outside the general classroom. This enables the teachers to provide intensive language instruction. The E.S.O.L. team is composed of three teachers, each with their own classrooms. The school’s expanding E.S.O.L. population resulted in the hiring of an additional teacher two years ago and the building of additional outdoor temporary classrooms housed in portables.

12My husband and I were generally very happy with our choice of school for my eldest son. He seemed to flourish and quickly made friends. Many were foreign-born and spoke another language at home like he does. He enjoyed learning to make difficult Origami projects with his Japanese classmates and he marveled at their home-packed school lunches. He even told us he wanted to learn Japanese and travel to Japan. I, on the other hand, soon befriended a few fellow European mothers and enjoyed the diversity of motherhood experiences. Picking up my children from school at the end of the school day meant chatting with fellow moms from so many countries and with so many different yet oddly similar lives. It also meant expanding my cultural and linguistic horizons.

13One day, two years ago, after picking up my children and while they were playing at the school’s playground, I spoke to another parent whom I knew was an active member of our school’s PTA. I told her I had noticed that the PTA did not seem to reflect the school’s diverse population. We talked about the fact that there seemed to be this great divide between the “local” families and the “international” families. You could witness it right there under our eyes at the playground: the Japanese mothers speaking only to each other, the European moms huddled in another area, the Spanish-speaking ones together, and so on. The “local” moms rarely come to the playground after school. She blamed this divide on language skills, cultural differences and what she perceived as the high turnover of students coming from international families. She also alluded to the rather more stereotypical, socio-economic narrative “them vs. us”. Them, meaning those whose English was not always strong and who lived in apartment buildings, enjoying a free education for their kids. Us, meaning herself and her fellow American parents living in residential homes and paying their taxes. I could see this conversation could easily go in the wrong direction!

14I decided to tell her more about my personal and professional backgrounds and how I would address and try to bridge these types of prejudices and stereotypes. Indeed, I told her: I can speak English like a native, I understand the local customs and the US education model. Maybe I could help breach this misunderstanding. She agreed with me completely and went on to ask me to come to the next PTA meeting to voice my concern and volunteer.

15At the meeting, I met with other PTA volunteers and the school’s principal and vice-principal. We both spoke of our recent conversation and how we thought the PTA could best address this situation. My offer to join was met with enthusiasm from both the PTA’s leadership and the school’s administration. The PTA voted me into their Executive Board that night with the title of VP International Liaison.

16Since that initial meeting, the PTA has changed leadership and incorporated new clear objectives and directions. Its goals are to build the school’s community, involve the international community, increase PTA membership and improve PTA communications. In order to further these goals, the PTA sponsors and organizes many events during the school year: the Used book sale, Back to school night, Movie Night, Skate night and so on. The core of the school’s mission is to promote a feeling of inclusiveness and understanding. Within this framework, my role is to help international families navigate the school and help them integrate the school community at large.

17Starting out as a parent volunteer, I mostly shadowed another mom. She was French like me and had been involved in the PTA as the Arts projects coordinator for quite some time. As a binational parent herself, she welcomed the opportunity to get more involved with the international community. Our first common assignment was to greet and help new arriving international families at the start of the year’s first welcome meeting.

18I also helped her during an E.S.O.L. meeting for parents of children enrolled in E.S.O.L. classes. The parents and the E.S.O.L. team were extremely responsive to our offer to help. We identified one major problem, which we decided to tackle. The E.S.O.L. teachers need parent volunteers in the classrooms to help with the children. One E.S.O.L. teacher speaks Spanish and another Chinese Mandarin, and they have picked up some Japanese over the years. However, E.S.O.L. classes are so large, teachers need volunteers (mainly speakers of the most common foreign languages) to communicate with the children who speak no English at all. The volunteers walk the children to the nearest bathroom, help them with projects, go over some of the reading material with them, help the teachers by prepping the room and cutting out work sheets. The E.S.O.L. team typically likes to have one parent volunteer per class every day, especially in the smaller grades. I now advertise for these volunteer positions and direct parents to sign up weekly.

19Volunteering within the school can take many forms: you can volunteer to be present at recess, during lunch break at the cafeteria, in the classrooms and on field trips. The role of volunteers also extends beyond the school building. There are volunteers who work on special assignments from home, those who volunteer on a regular basis, those who are part of a rotation, and those who are scheduled as needed. The school relies heavily on the commitment, time and energy of its parent volunteers. The volunteer program not only provides valuable hands-on assistance in many areas of the school, but also benefits the students by reinforcing ties between the children’s individual homes, the community at large and the school. Our school’s community of interested, committed and involved parents is not different from other local schools in our areas. In generally high-income areas like ours, parent engagement in and outside the school is high. Ongoing research shows that family engagement in school improves student achievement, reduces absenteeism, and restores parents’ confidence in their children’s education.

20At BE, the academic and professional backgrounds of many parents is reflected in their volunteering. Bethesda is ranked fifth among 50 U.S. cities with the highest percentage of doctoral degree holders. It is not unusual for top NIH parent-scientists to come and volunteer in the classrooms during STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Fair week.

21For many international families however, school volunteering is not something they are used to back in their own home countries. My parents never came to help at my Maternelle cafeteria and never signed up to be Mystery Readers in my first-grade class!

22Each year, parents are required to submit a volunteer agreement. The signed agreement is for volunteering in any capacity. Parents are also required to complete an on-line mandatory training module in the prevention, recognition and reporting of child abuse and neglect. Volunteers cannot interact with students until this training has been completed and verified by the school. The module emphasizes the procedures and responsibilities inherent in working with children. It provides guidance for volunteers to help keep students safe. Such a protocol is also followed for the vetting and training of employees and contractors within the school system at large. Practices such as these reflect nation-wide changes that occurred in the early 1990s, when several reported cases of child abuse dramatically affected federal and state laws and policies.

23The module is offered in six languages (Spanish, French, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Amharic) but not in Japanese. One of my first tasks was to help organize a morning training session with a Japanese interpreter provided by the county, for Japanese families who wanted to come and help during E.S.O.L. classes but could not follow the volunteer training module in English. I brought coffee and French cookies to the meeting and we helped three Japanese mothers. They wanted to volunteer to better understand how the E.S.O.L. curriculum worked, so that they could help their child at home with homework. Their English was very limited, and they thanked us for organizing the session. This year, I organized a similar session and more parents came. Culturally, international families have a hard time understanding the need to take this on-line training. Unfortunately, it works as a deterrent to more families volunteering at the school for E.S.O.L. classes or school events in general. This type of mandatory screening along with increased safety measures at school are hard to comprehend for many international families, who may not be familiar with the challenges American schools face while addressing heightened security issues.

24My second assignment was to help with Multicultural Night. It is one of the school’s most well attended events of the year and highlights the diversity of the school’s international community. Festivities start with a parade of flags representing the many nationalities. The students greet the audience in their native language with a ‘hello” or “good evening”. They are invited to dress in the traditional clothing representative of their country. It is an extremely moving ceremony for parents and children alike. Imagine 74 countries represented and 74 flags lining up in the school gym! During the second part of the night, parents volunteer to create displays to showcase their culture. They can include games, food samples, musical instruments to try, calligraphy, crafts, posters and maps or facts about their country of origin. Each country is given a table in a classroom to set up a poster, small food items and organize an attractive activity for kids. Rooms are set up by continents and I was put in charge of the European continent. I helped parent volunteers set up their table displays and clean the room while also tending to my own table display with another French parent. We offered a display of French baguettes and cheeses, crepes, and donated macaroons made by a local French professional baker and BE parent. We had also set up a giant display of Paris to be colored by the children and proposed a little arts-and-crafts project around the Eiffel tower! Our traditional food offerings attracted a big crowd and were soon gone!

25BE families enjoy that part of the event the most. I have heard from many American families that their children feel like they are traveling the world on that night. The school is taken over by new smells and noises, children trying on national costumes and sampling as many foods as they possibly can!

26I met with numerous international families that night and heard from many what their needs were. One thing that kept coming back in the conversations was the fact that many international parents did not know that the PTA had helped organize this wonderful community event and did not know what the role of the PTA entailed. Secondly, and most importantly, many said they could not understand most PTA emails and flyers.

27As a result, after much discussion with the school’s administration and within the PTA Executive Board, a decision was made to focus on increasing the visibility of the PTA and its resources, by systematically translating all PTA and some school communications. The purpose of systematizing translations is to increase communications and international community involvement. The recruitment of volunteer translators started during the back-to-school events and has been on-going. I decided to focus on the most represented foreign languages and went out to find parents who could help. After finding a core of about eight volunteers on Back-to-School Night (Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Nepali, Japanese, French, Arabic and Italian), I continued to look for more parent volunteers by myself. I knew I would need an additional Japanese translator as it was the language most in demand for translations requested by the E.S.O.L. team. I asked friends, my children’s classmates’ parents, I asked complete strangers at school pick-up and at the playground. I was soon becoming the annoying PTA parent whom everyone tried to avoid!!

28By the end of 2019, I had a group of 18 volunteer parent translators, which now covered Korean, Russian, Polish, Turkish and German. Most volunteer translators have a full-time job, some are stay-at-home parents or parents waiting for work permits. They enjoy doing something for their children’s school that is valuable and helpful for their national or linguistic communities. I take great care to give them ample time and flexibility to work on the translations. I often work on translations in French myself.

29Volunteer translators help translate PTA communications on a variety of subjects, from school events to fundraising efforts, to driving and parking rules. I work with the PTA communications VP, and she helps send along the translated material through the PTA’s communications outlets. Sometimes we decide to translate some PTA messages in order to help increase turnout, sales or most importantly to make sure important messages are communicated to the broadest population. A large part of the current translation effort is devoted to translating new E.S.O.L. curriculum material in Japanese, Italian and Arabic, languages not offered through the county’s translation services. The E.S.O.L. team’s goal is to use the newly translated material in the years to come and create a library of translated curriculum material. It is no small project, and I currently rely on a rotation of five different Japanese translators to help with the work.

30We do not know if our messages reach more families by being offered in translated formats. We have heard from families that they are grateful to understand better what the PTA does and offers. We sometimes notice a peak in attendance at events that are not traditionally well attended by international families. I think it is extremely hard and a bit premature to evaluate the impact of this work. However, I believe that by promoting international parent involvement it fosters a better sense of representation and inclusiveness.

31We are also interested in measuring the financial impact of this new form of communication on our PTA membership and our donations. A large part of our messaging to international families has consisted in explaining the role of the PTA and what it sponsors for the children and their teachers in the school. International families traditionally do not give funding to the PTA. They rarely come to the school’s Auction Night for example. I think it can be explained as a result of cultural differences mostly. I know European families would never think of donating to their local public schools. In their mind, the State provides for everything in the schools. And they do not understand at first that things are different in the North American public-school system. Our county public school funding does not cover the full cost of curriculum enrichment, teacher training, classroom supplies, cultural and arts programs, and recess and recreational equipment. Thanks to our PTA student fund, the PTA raises money to support students, teachers and school.

32When I joined our PTA almost two years ago, my main goal was for this organization to better reflect its school population. I believe it now does, with other new international volunteers who have joined the Executive Board and a more open-minded leadership. International families have increasingly been joining our PTA and our membership has grown since the beginning of the year. By keeping international parents informed through translated PTA material we hope to continue fostering social connection, advocacy, networking and access to specialized programs and resources.

33As I write this article, our school remains closed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the confinement measures. The PTA is still active in its communications to parents with weekly, sometimes daily updates, setting up various pedagogical tools to help with homeschooling. Our principal has read Dr. Seuss’ books during virtual meetings with the children. Teachers are getting trained for online distant teaching. The international parents I know and work with have all reached out to their communities and translated homework assignments and county recommendations. In the BE community, involvement, though virtual, has remained strong.