Teachers' house calls make pupils, parents feel at home

But 3-year-old Megan Coyne wasn’t tempted by the goodies. Suddenly bashful, even though she spends six hours a day with them, she stood behind her mother in the foyer, arms wrapped tightly around her leg.

“You have frogs all over your pajamas,’’ her teacher, Pam Richardson of Dorchester’s Lee Academy Pilot School, said to Megan with a reassuring smile. Then she turned to the girl’s mother and reported: “She didn’t eat that much at lunch. Was she hungry when she came home?’’

Richardson is one of dozens of elementary, middle, and high school teachers in Boston and Springfield who are making house calls this year to visit their students’ families, a practice gaining popularity nationwide. The goal is to build stronger relationships between teachers and families in a quest to bolster parent volunteerism in school and involvement in their child’s education at home, as well as break down any misconceptions that parents and teachers might have about one another.

Boston, which is working in partnership with Harvard University, began its program two years ago and has expanded it to five elementary schools. It followed Springfield’s effort, which launched about five years ago as a partnership among that city’s teach ers union, a middle school, and the Pioneer Valley Project, a faith-based community-organizing group that works closely with parents. The program is now active at seven schools, including a high school.

The outreach - to several hundred families this year - is part of a strategy in these two cities to reverse a trend of parental disengagement. In both districts, parents rarely turn out for parent-teacher organization meetings, teacher conferences, and other activities at many schools.

In some cases, they are too busy working multiple jobs, don’t have transportation to get to the school, or feel intimidated talking to teachers because of their own lack of education or a bad experience in school. In Boston, many parents who grew up during the tumultuous period of forced busing keep away from the schools because they harbor resentment or even mistrust of the system.

The visits are also designed to enlighten teachers, many of whom live outside the cities and may have false impressions about the neighborhoods in which their students live and what their home life might be like. Boston teachers are paid about $60 a visit, while Springfield teachers receive roughly $30.

“What the home visits do is eliminate the cycle of mistrust that happens between educators and families,’’ said Linnette Camacho, family education administrator at Springfield schools.

While neither city has conducted a formal study on the effectiveness of the program, organizers say that teachers and principals have reported more parental involvement at the schools and that students’ grades also have been going up.

Springfield school officials have been so encouraged that they are putting together a proposal to expand the program to other city schools. Aiding that effort has been the foundation for the National Education Association, the powerful national teachers union group, which provided the district with a $50,000 planning grant - the first step toward securing $1.25 million to expand.

“Teachers realize that parental involvement is key’’ in boosting student achievement, said Tim Collins, president of the Springfield Education Association. “I think there is a lot of data out there that shows when parents are engaged, students are more successful in school.’’

Boston and Springfield have modeled their programs after one started more than a decade ago in Sacramento, which has seen student attendance rates and test scores increase while suspension and school vandalism incidents have gone down.

In Boston, the program is part of the broader Three-to-Third initiative, a collaboration among the mayor’s office, School Department, and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education to get all pupils reading for understanding by the end of third grade. Harvard offers training for the home visits and has organized focus groups and surveys on the program. It is about to embark on a more comprehensive study of the program’s results.

Generally, teachers initiate the idea of a visit with parents in a letter welcoming them to their school or by cold-calling. They do not show up on a family’s doorstep unannounced, as a truant officer would.

The Coynes were caught a little off-guard when they received an invitation before the school year started from a teacher who would be working with their other daughter, Mackenzie, who is Megan’s twin.

“I was sort of skeptical at first,’’ said David Coyne, who took the phone call. “It seemed like Big Brother - the government - checking to see if we were good parents or not.’’

But the visit went well, he said. The teacher never came across as a child welfare inspector. She did not walk around with notebook in hand, jotting down observations along the way. In fact, teachers are instructed to keep notebooks in their cars. Instead, teachers and parents just talk, and parents are often asked what their hopes and dreams are for their child.

So when Richardson arrived a few weeks later with her teaching assistant, Misheka Barrosy, the Coynes felt like pros. They had pizza delivered and they all gathered around the kitchen table, talking about how the school year was going so far.

The Coynes had a rough start at the school. Initially, only their daughter Mackenzie won entry, forcing Megan to return to a private preschool that her parents believed had an inferior program. It was tough for Kellyann Coyne to see the twins split at such a young age during the first weeks of school. And Megan kept coming home from the private preschool with the same projects the twins did a year earlier.

The Coynes grew so frustrated that they reluctantly invited a realtor over to their house one night last month, as they contemplated a move to the suburbs. An hour later, though, Lee Academy called about an opening in Richardson’s class. Megan’s number had finally come up on the waiting list, nine months after she was placed on it.

“Boston has the best early-childhood education program,’’ Kellyann Coyne said, as the two teachers sat across from her at her kitchen table. “I knew the girls would just flourish there. . . . I’m thrilled with their progress.’’

After gabbing away for over an hour at the table, the Coynes showed the teachers around their two-story house.

At about 8:45 - two hours and 15 minutes after their arrival - the teachers went to leave. The mother walked outside with them, and the chatting continued.