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Family
The following article originally appeared in Salt of the Earth. It is posted here for private use only. It may not be reprinted in whole or in part without the permission of Salt of the Earth magazine.
Joanne Navarre
Joan Flynn Fee interviews Joanne Navarre
IN THE CAJUN COUNTRY OF LOUISIANA, teacher Joanne Navarre had been wooing 6- and 7-year-olds into reading, writing, and figuring for 20 years. She spiced up the lessons with storytelling, contests, and rainy-day jacks games. But Navarre found her job more and more difficult. Children barely cutting their big teeth had lost interest in learning. Teenagers had lost interest in life.
Parents told her they did not know how to help their children. They needed more support—parent education that could draw on their rich African American culture. Navarre launched a new program called Effective Black Parenting, which has spread throughout Louisiana.
She says parents "needed something that would open their eyes and make them realize, 'Look, we have gotten this far because of the struggles of so many people. Are we going to stop here and let our children end up back on the streets in the hands of the drug dealers?' "
ONE CHILD I THINK ABOUT is a little girl who desperately wanted to read. She wanted to excel so much. I had a reading program, a contest. I had sent letters home asking parents to listen to their children read books and then discuss them with their children and ask them questions.
When the children brought back their books, I asked questions about the stories. If they answered them, I put a little star on the chart that was on the wall, and they got another book.
The other children would take books home and bring them back and get stars. But the little girl didn't return hers.
After two weeks I asked her about her book.
She said, "My mother said she does not have time to listen to me read."
I told her, "Ask your daddy."
"He doesn't have time to do it either."
So I said, "Ask your big sister or someone in the neighborhood to listen to you, to discuss it."
"It's no use. I'll just bring my book back."
Finally the mother sent me a letter saying she didn't have time for reading and I should stop sending letters. I thought, "Oh, wow."
SO I HAD ANOTHER TEACHER WORK with her so she could get into the contest. The child was an excellent reader: she read more than the other kids and won the prize four times.
Many children are emotionally or physically neglected. Some never get any hugs. They cling to you like gravy on rice, as we say around here. If you praised them or gave them one of those smiley-faced pencils, any little reward, it would throw them into ecstasy. That just got to me.
In CCD I was disturbed with our high-school and junior-high children. Some of the children were telling me, "We know so-and-so, the drug dealer. No big deal. We were on the corner with him, but we don't use those drugs."
I asked, "Does your mother or father know?"
The students said, "They don't care."
I asked them what they wanted to do with their lives, what their goals were.
The girls said, "I'll probably get married and have a baby or so down the line." The young men said, "Oh, I don't know."
When I found out that two of my 15-year-old CCD students were pregnant, I almost hit the roof. God knows they don't know how to take care of children. They had no parenting skills.
They really needed something that would open their eyes and make them realize, "Look, we have gotten this far because of the struggles of so many people. Are we going to stop here and let our children end up back on the streets in the hands of the drug dealers?"
A few of my friends agreed, but we weren't sure what we could do about it.
I RESEARCHED CHRISTIAN PARENTING, mostly Catholic Church programs. They were all great, but we were looking for something based in African American culture. Finally I found out about the Center for the Improvement of Child Care in Studio City, California.
The CICC program includes components of other parenting programs such as Positive Parenting, Systematic Training for Effective Parenting, and Active Parenting. But it is unique in that it is based in African American culture.
The Lafayette diocese and the Franciscans gave us seed money to get the black parenting program started here. And we got donations from many African American professionals in town.
We trained 20 teachers, social workers, and school psychologists—all African American, except one. The first class started three years ago.
THE BLACK PARENTING PROGRAM is based on a pyramid. At the top is what you want for your child. At the base are characteristics that you must model and teach, things like love and understanding, pride in blackness, self-discipline, good school habits, and good health habits.
We give parents new ideas about how to help their children develop healthy characteristics.
The program starts with our heritage. It talks about traditional parenting and why most parents raised children the way they did. For example, the spankings that turned into beatings were because in slave times African American parents did not want anybody else beating or correcting their children. So they would do it themselves.
THE EFFECTIVE BLACK PARENTING PROGRAM stresses family and spiritual values. Celebrations and family gatherings always were big things in the African American community. Not just weddings or graduations but little things like a kid's fourth birthday. The program suggests, "Go back and look at what your parents and grandparents used to do."
Our parents played with us more. Today parents say, "We don't have time." And many of them don't because they have two jobs.
But I can remember my parents turning the rope when we jumped rope. And when they did this, we were saying nursery rhymes or counting. These were all skills that our parents were developing in us without knowing it. Many parents weren't very educated. But they played games with us. It wasn't, "You go your way and do what you have to do." It was a sit-down dinner, the whole family together.
We'd sit on the porch swing and our parents would tell us stories about the struggles our grandparents or great-grandparents went through.
THE PARENTING GROUPS MEET for 15 weeks. We have about 10 to 25 parents in a session. We have some fathers. The best place to hold parenting sessions is in church halls. People are more trusting there.
Some of the parents didn't have any self-esteem. They'd say, "I was never hugged. I was never told I was loved, I was good, or could do anything good. So I've never told it to my child."
That's where we had to start. Before we even started to teach parenting, we had to work with parents on self-esteem and self-worth.
As the sessions went on, the participants often became so close that they didn't want the classes to end. Some participants of classes continue to support each other in self-help groups.
IN OUR FIRST CLASS, the members who had not finished school were helped with getting back into school. That was great because their children saw that their parents were disciplining themselves to do something with their lives.
Some sessions are touchy. I remember one on spanking, which is a very sensitive subject, especially for African American parents.
One young woman didn't want to listen and said to the instructor, "I will do as I please." The instructor just held to his guns and said, "There are other ways to discipline, and I wish you'd listen to me." Two or three weeks later the woman stopped arguing and started listening.
On the night of the graduation, the mother shocked us all by saying, "You know, Jimmy, I was ready to jump across the table that night and really beat you up." Then she said, "I'm happy to tell you that your method does work."
She told us a child had been taken away from her because of child abuse. She could admit this now and tell us, "Tonight, I got my kids back." And she had just found her first paying job.—END© 1999 by Claretian Publications
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