The director of the Centre worked hard to get people to come out, and we were pleased that eight parents showed up, including a couple of fathers. At the end of the session, in which we made sidewalk chalk, I talked about the research project, and everyone said they would be interested in participating in a group we planned to start in January, and gave me permission to phone them to let them know the details.
I phoned them during the week between Christmas and New Years, and again in January in the week before the first session was to start, to remind them that we were starting, and asking them to come in for initial interviews. Most said they were still interested and would be there. None of them came in. Three other people came in for initial interviews and tests, and signed up for a group on site, but none of them came to any group sessions, and the group was cancelled. All of these three were taking math classes at the alternate high school.
The director of the Child Care Centre surmised that the idea of taking a math test would prevent people from coming. She was working hard to recruit participants, because she thought the groups would be a good resource for the young parents who are her clients, and she would have been happy to have no tests and interviews. I also thought that it would be easier to recruit participants without the preliminary interview, and especially without the test; however, since those things were part of my research project, I had to be open about them in advance, and not spring it on people after they had agreed to participate.
I wonder also if it was harder to recruit parents attending the alternate school than attending an ABE program because the former are still so involved in school math themselves. The participants who attended an ABE program were generally older than those who signed up at the day care centre, and had been away from school for years. Perhaps that was time enough to have forgotten the specific details of their math difficulties and be willing to try it again. Perhaps during the intervening years they had developed a self image that was not mainly concerned about their achievement in school subjects, and so could come to the family math groups with a more relaxed attitude to math.
As I was forced to the conclusion that it was nearly impossible to recruit participants who did not like math, I began to see that it was pointless to write a manual for such parents. I shifted the focus for the manual to professionals who work with children and parents, and wrote two new sections to the introduction. One new section was geared toward facilitators of programs such as family literacy, Strong Start and other family service programs, day care workers, nursery school, kindergarten and primary teachers; the other was aimed at ABE/literacy math instructors. Even with this shift in audience, however, I continued to write for parents who would read the material on their own (mainly those who like math), and for parents who would read the material as it was presented to them in the context of one of the groups named above. To this end, most of the introduction and all of the directions for activities are written in plain English.