A dedicated principal, he works with students and increases parent engagement inside and outside the school. As he speed walked through the halls, Principal Vinson Lewis answered questions from parents and families that came up to him while he prepared another session during important occasions like Open House.

Open House in other Alief schools typically happens once every school year during the fall. However, because families mainly attend to learn more about their spring or fall classes depending on the semester, two open houses occur every school year. On February eight, the annual Spring Open House was hosted allowing families to gather more information regarding their students’ education.

“Meet the teachers and find out information about curriculum course expectations. That’s just an opportunity for us to partner with parents and give them the important information that they need to help their students be successful in school,” Lewis said. “And so that’s traditionally been the reason why we do open houses.”

Families attend Open House to create meaningful connections with teachers and learn how the classes work. Because Open House is a district expectation, Lewis decided to include more topics to help families.

“The topics we chose are usually a decision that’s made by our instructional leadership team (ILT). It is made up of myself, Ms.[Assistant Principal Sara] Tones, our counseling team, tech specialist, librarian, and academic coach,” Lewis said.

This year, Lewis and his leadership team took the initiative to provide more information for parents and students. Different information and topics consist of student prospective night, course selection, dual credit, and meeting the teachers combined in one night.

“We’re the ones that decide what’s going to be needed for parents when it comes to the process of actually what goes into those presentations,” Lewis said. “Ms. Tones and I were responsible for the prospective student night, so we decided what needs to be shared and who’s going to do what. The counselors were responsible for some breakout sessions, so they collaborated.”

Similar to group presentations in class, the ILT collaborates and splits tasks amongst each other. Each leadership role has a category that they will cover at the Open House. With an all-in-one despite the workload, there are many beneficial factors to it.

“I was helping eighth grade families with application issues,” Tech Specialist Clarissa Caro said. “I just made sure that computers were on and ready for the families to complete applications.”

At Open House, Caro pulled up applications for families who were interested in applying on the spot.

“Some families had specific issues with logging into the application site and/or recommendation site so we were able to work on that together,” Caro said.

As a tech specialist, Caro was present in person to help families if they needed help with their applications. On the other hand, counselors prepared different presentations such as graduation requirements and how to improve students’ health.

“Supporting your child during transitions,” Counselor Sherry Iyamu’s presentation said. “Sleep hygiene, physical movement, create an organization/time management system, and engage in self-care.”

The importance of these topics is not widely spoken and explained to parents. Because Iyamu decided to cover it, this efficiently allowed Open House to help different families in specific areas.

“One of the reasons that we do all of that in one night is we typically want teachers to be present for all of those events and it’s much easier to combine those so that teachers don’t have to come out on multiple nights,” Lewis said.

Saving time for parents and teachers, Open House allows the majority of teachers to be present and parents to attain all the information about the school in one night. 

“Anytime you have an opportunity for parents to be involved, to know what schools have to offer, to know the expectations, and to know how they can help their children be successful is always a win-win. It’s worth the time that we put into hosting such an event.”