Focus Groups

Today we held our first of six focus group meetings, this one with the parents of students at Michael R. White elementary school in Cleveland. Or should I say, we attempted to hold our first focus group. After much preparation on behalf of the senior capstone group, two juniors, and Dr. Killion, not one parent showed up. It’s not as if we told them about it one time and expected them to show up, we pretty much hounded the parents who initially signed up at the MRW Open House. We called them a week beforehand to get an initial count of who would attend, and then called the day before the meeting to remind the parents. We had six parents who said they would attend, and we had hopes that a few more would show up.
The meeting was set to start at 4pm, so the four senior capstone students arrived at the school around 3:15 to set up. We brought with us light refreshments that we had bought earlier that day. We were very optimistic and ready to get the parents’ input on how we could best help their children be healthier during the school day. We were also looking forward to the next day’s focus group with the faculty and staff of the school. However, we first knew something was amiss when the overhead announcements came on to signal the end of the school day. The announcements told the wrong dates for the focus groups and mixed up the parent and faculty dates to do some sort of miscommunication. Not to be disheartened, we told the faculty the correct dates and continued to wait for the parents. At about ten after four, we began to realized that no one was coming to our meeting. Finally, at 4:30, we packed up our belongings, put the chairs and refreshments back, and sat down with our faculty advisor, Dr. Killion. The four of us were pretty unhappy about the turn of events, but Dr. Killion was very encouraging. She told us that it is common for such a thing to occur, and that we will certainly be successful with our future focus groups. She also told us a story of a focus group she held to which no one came, and then the next day she had another one with a great turnout. She made our next focus groups look much more hopeful than I had thought, and I now look forward to our faculty and staff meeting tomorrow. I am ready to start making some great changes for the students of Michael R. White.