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The school year at DREAM starts before the first bell rings.
This summer, our educators went out to meet each and every DREAM student and their families.
They visited Craig, a Highbridge Elementary School student who will talk anime and board games with anyone who asks. They met Harper, an East Harlem Middle School student who stage-manages for her school musicals, builds robots, and wants to see more of the world.
Family Visits have been part of DREAM for 15 years, beginning in 2011 and growing into a tradition that reaches all families across DREAM every year. What started as a way for educators to know students beyond the classroom has become a cornerstone of how DREAM begins each school year.
Beginning with listening
Before students arrive for the first day of classes, DREAM sets aside two days for Family Visits. Educators go in pairs, usually including a student’s homeroom teacher or advisor. Families choose where to meet, whether that’s the kitchen table at home, the stoop out front, or a bench at a nearby park.
Wherever a visit happens, it begins with DREAM staff asking families what they want the school community to know about their child, and what they are hoping for in the year ahead. Students get to talk about their own interests and ambitions, and to ask their new teachers a few questions of their own. Staff share what students can look forward to, and make sure every family has what they need for the first morning. But a family visit is more than an introduction or an exchange of information. It establishes the deep partnership DREAM wants to build with families throughout the year.
“Families are not just participants in our program—they’re true partners in their child’s education,” says Jamie Platzer, DREAM’s Managing Director of Education Initiatives. “These visits set the tone for that relationship. It’s not something we’re doing to them, or even for them. It’s a two-way, mutual relationship that we’re building together.”
Family visits mark the beginning of that partnership. Throughout the school year, families are often the ones traveling to school for conferences, meetings, and events. During family visits, educators make the trip instead. That effort is a small one, but it opens up a warmer and more relaxed conversation, and it happens before the school year gets busy.
“I love Family Visits because it gives me an opportunity to meet my children’s new teachers and also lets them explore our community, our family, our home,” says Anne Marie, mother of two Highbridge elementary students. “I’m a returning parent and my kids love it here and all the programs the school offers.”
What educators carry back to school
What teachers learn during a Family Visit can range from the smalll—a favorite game, a beloved dog, a baby sibling—to the big: the routines, strengths, and experiences that shape a student’s day.
They also get to meet the wider village around a child — grandparents, aunts, neighbors, and everyone else who shapes a student’s day. They learn about routines and strengths that don’t always surface in a classroom, and about the moments where a student may need extra patience or a little more support.
DREAM educators carry that knowledge back to school with them. During the year, our teachers will have a better understanding of whether a student needs more encouragement, or has an interest that becomes an easy point of connection. For DREAM students, they’ll walk into their classroom on the first morning where an adult already knows something real about them. “We show up before the first day, because we love our students beyond the classroom,” says Crystal Lane, Chief Education Officer.
Families come away with something, too. Their first real conversation with the school isn’t a rushed word at dismissal or a phone call about a grade — it’s an unhurried hour on their own turf, spent imagining a good year together. So when a harder conversation comes along, as it does in any school year, both families and educators are starting from a relationship they have already built.
Educating the whole child means knowing the whole child: the people, places, and ambitions that shape who a student is. Family Visits are how that belief becomes a practice.
