Speaker: Katy Kingsland, Steamboat Springs, CO
Tell us about your experiences and stories doing home visits with your students and their families.
Katy Kingsland: This was my first experience with home visits. I teach at a local high school here in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and I loved every part of the experience. I'm a big, big fan and overall, I was so happy I signed up and was able to meet so many of my students in their homes. And it was really great. One really cool thing was the fact that not only was I able to go see students and their families, and get to know them and not be at school and do that in a more comfortable relaxed setting. I went often with my coworker who I worked very closely with and I was able to really build a connection and a relationship even more meaningful with her going through this process together, working out when we were going and who can drive and all of that. And so that really built that kind of connection as well that I wasn't really expecting. the students were so excited to have us, um, they wanted to show us things and share with us things and it was great to see them interact with their family and with people inside the home. But you could tell they were just so welcoming and so gracious to have us there that you can only be excited to be there with them. And the time that you really spent wasn't like a huge amount of time, but it was such like intentional, meaningful time that it was so great. So some of the experience experiences from that are just that I was able to see my kids in a different light. I was able to see them interact with their family and ask them questions. I love the overall questions of what do you hope and dream for your child or what do you hope and dream for your future? I think that's just great lines of questioning that open up a more relaxed conversation but also very meaningful one. So then in the classroom, I was able to connect that, you know, like not only hi, do I see you normally on a day to day basis? But I was just at your home last night and we shared this wonderful, you know, of moment and now we're in class and I'm asking you to do certain things and um just that buy in and me knowing where they want to go with their life or with their future, especially in high school has been really, really impactful and just meaningful. Like I can reference the home visit, I can reference to them what we talked about um and the kids just loved it and I never knew I would take so much from it, but I really did. So my experiences were super positive. All visits went really well. In addition, not only did I get to see the students on my current roster, but it's a high school, but I was able to connect with some of the middle school specialists who were registered for home visits and we could go to um homes of students that are incoming, so incoming ninth grader. So I've been able to meet some new students that I'll have in the fall. And that's just a great way to set up, you know, all that time that we'll spend together, but a great way to kind of like catapult us into into the future and into the fall. So I'm so excited about that. So, yeah, I mean, my experiences are really great, super positive, very meaningful. Um and really felt like it mattered. I felt like it mattered that I could be there that we could come to this time, like agreed upon time and overall really, really well, so just big fan and I'm so glad I I've done it. It's been great and I want to do it again.
