Our Project!

Our group's inquiries centered around how to engage and gain the trust of minority families and families of diverse situations. Specifically, our questions were:

1. What can we as educators do to reach minority families or those with diverse situations?  

2. How do you reach parents who appear not to care because of cultural differences or other circumstances?

3. How can we provide support to help ELL parents feel more confident about participation?

We researched different ways to reach out to these specific family types, and came up with a lot of ideas and resources to share with y'all!!

The School's Role in Family Involvement: What can we do as educators?

- Make a good first impression by actively welcoming families at the very beginning of the year. The first impression sets the tone for the rest of their experience at the school. 

- If engaging parents in traditional ways does not work, then try new ways to get them involved: Be patient, don't give up, and keep pursuing a positive relationship.

-Seek outside sources-- no one should be expected to do this alone. If possible, find people in your local community that would be able to relate to the families in your class: culturally and linguistically. These sources can hopefully serve to bridge the gap between teachers and families.

-Take parents/grandparents/guardians' concerns seriously.

-Provide clear opportunities (in advance) for families to get involved.

- Post signs around the school in the native language of families in your class.

- Provide a family resource center

- If possible, hire an administrative staff who speaks the same language as families

- “Resist the stereotyping of parents based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or any other characteristic. Recognize the diversity that occurs within cultural groups, as well as that which occurs between them”

- Focus on building trusting and collaborative relationships with teachers, families and community members

- Recognize and respect different classes and cultures and address the needs of individual families' needs

- Share power and responsibility

- "Families who feel ignored or slighted by the adults in the building are unlikely to come back, especially if they had been hesitant to come to the school in the first place." 

- Set high expectations for family-school partnership

Why Family Engagement is Important

Our Goal as Educators

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLmgJvYDXLU

Throughout the semester we have learned the importance of encouraging families to get involved in the classroom. In this blog you will find several resources regarding ways to engage parents of different minorities.

Resources

http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/School-Improvement/Federal-Programs/Pages/Parent-Engagement-Program.aspx

Trust

Vulnerability
-Those who trust make themselves vulnerable to others in the belief that those they trust will act in ways that are not harmful or detrimental to them
-trusting individuals have a positive expectation in the actions of those whom they trust
-vulnerability and confident expectations of outcomes are crucial aspects of trust

Risk
-an important aspect in the psychological, sociological and economic analyses
-defined as perceived probable loss
-creates opportunities

Interdependence
-the interest of one party cannot be achieved without reliance upon another
-no interdependence= no trust

Trust is seen as a condition in which people or groups find themselves vulnerable to others under conditions of risk and interdependence

Facets of Trust
Benevolence
Reliability
Competence
Honesty
Openness

“trust is systematically associated with student socioeco- nomic status—the larger the proportion of poor students in the school, the lower teachers’ perceptions of trust”

Collective Trust is built of faculty trust, parent trust and student trust

Collective Trust Model
-->External context- all environmental influences and experiences that have shaped and continue to shape the values, attitudes, and expectations of individual group members
-->Internal context-focuses on influences and conditions within an organization that affect the values, attitudes, and expectations of individuals and groups within the organization
-->task context- set of constraints inherent in the group's particular task or specialty that establish the levels of trust necessary for group and organizational effectivenesss

20 Strategies to Engaging ELL Families

A Guide for Engaging ELL Families

This is an (extremely lengthy) article that provides many, many different strategies (20 to be exact) to engage ELL families in the classroom. Pick and choose strategies that work best for you in your classroom, and the authors of the article tell you what you need to know about that strategy, offer reflective questions for teachers who want to implement this strategy, ways to implement the strategy, and concrete examples of what it looks like in real schools and classrooms. 

The strategies include:

1. Learn about your ELL population 

2. Integrate cultural traditions of your ELL families throughout the school 

3. Create a welcoming environment for families

4. Make a personal connection with families
5. Show that you value families’ native language

6. Find ways to communicate with ELL parents 

7. Make the enrollment process manageable for ELL parents 

8. Make the enrollment process accessible all year long

9. Provide opportunities for parents to learn more about important topics

10. Look for ways that ELL parents can help with children’s schoolwork 

11. Look for ways for ELL parents to participate and volunteer 

12. Think outside the box about parent involvement

13. Look for the successes
14. Consider scheduling and location alternatives

15. Encourage ELL parents to take on leadership roles 

16. Look for ways to make parent leadership more sustainable

17. Build partnerships with the local community 

18. Get to know your neighbors

19. Solicit ideas 

20. Look for the funding

Engaging Grandparents

Here are some tips for engaging the grandparents of students in your classroom. Grandparents who are "parents again" encounter different challenges in dealing with schools, and giving them the support they need is crucial for developing valuable relationships with them.

1. Be aware of laws concerning guardianship because some grandparents may live with their grandchildren, but not have custody of them

2. Provide support and looks for others who can provide support to help grandparents. School is much diff. than it was when they were in school.

3. Establish a good rapport with them in the beginning of the year.

4. Acknowledge that their funds of knowledge are valuable and important and different than other people’s.

5. Be aware if the grandparents are tech savvy or not. Make sure they have access to everything sent home electronically like e-mails or newsletters, etc.

6. Make sure they know the rules of the school and the school system. Sometimes the grandparents are the only advocate for the child. The grandparent needs support, too. Be THEIR advocate.

Understanding Latino Parental Involvement

Understanding Latino Parental Involvement

This is a fantastic article by Dr. Maria Estela Zarate that details the differences in perceptions and expectations between the teachers and parents of Latino students. She explains that parents view education (or educacion), and their role in it, much differently from the school officials and teachers at their children's schools. They key findings include information about:

• Parents’ Perceptions of What Constitutes Parental Involvement in Education
• Parents’ Perceived Challenges to Parental Involvement in School
• Educators’ Perceptions of What Constitutes Parental Involvement in Educatio
• Programmatic Initiatives Addressing Parental Involvement in Education
• Students’ Perceptions of the Role of Parental Involvement 

At the end of the article, she provides recommendations for policy makers, school officials, and teachers.

Understanding that different cultures have different perspectives of education-- as well as different perspectives of parental roles in education-- is the foundation of building cooperative and meaningful relationships with parents of these different cultures. We as teachers need to have open minds to different ways of doing things, in order to involve and respect all the cultures that come into our classrooms.

Family Engagement: What can Families Do?

Categories for Family Involvement

*for many students their guardians could be parents, grandparents, older siblings, tribal members, or other members of the students's extended family*

Parenting
- Setting aside time to help their child with their school work
- Set high expectations for their child
- Helping with school events or classroom events

Communicating with schools

- Talk to the teacher or the administration about ways they can help you help their child

Volunteering at school

- Helping in and out of the classroom
- Being available whenever possible

Supporting learning at home

• Providing quite study environment
• Expressing value for learning
• Setting high expectations
• Helping with homework assignments
• Chaperoning school events
• Attending parenting classes
• Serving on the school board

Participating in school governance

- Can be anything from participating in the Parent Teacher Organization to helping with fundraising to assisting in planning school events

Decisionmaking

- Making the choice to be involved or not
- Includes: having kids assessed for special education or gifted programs, being involved in the school community, being involved in the school outside of the classroom

Taking part in school-community
- Can range from: dropping your student off at school to coming for student-teacher conferences to participating in events going on in the classroom


* Some parents and guardians will have more time to participate in school and take part their child's education more than others.*

Resources and Works Cited

Resources

Here are some great resources about family engagement in Georgia and hints to engage families in the classroom

http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=766

http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/School-Improvement/Federal-Programs/Pages/Parent-Engagement-Program.aspx

Chapter 2 in Foundations of Collective Trust

Brewster, C., & Railsback, J. (2003). Building trust with schools and diverse families:a foundation for       lasting partnerships. Portland: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.

http://www.nea.org/home/37022.htm

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/35698/

http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/famncomm/pa400.htm

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/engaging-parents-book-clubs-conferences

http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content2/involving_parents.html 

http://www.tusd.k12.az.us/contents/depart/counseling/Documents/cappinvitation.pdf 

http://www.smcm.edu/educationstudies/pdf/rising-tide/volume-3/melissa-detorres-mrp.pdf 

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Final_Parent_Involvement_Fact_Sheet_14732_7.pdf 

http://www.educationworld.com/a_special/parent_involvement.shtml

http://www.colorincolorado.org/pdfs/guides/Engaging-ELL-Families.pdf 

http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED502065.pdf

http://www.nea.org/home/37022.htm

What Would You Do?

1)      You have a child in your class who never turns in permission forms to go on field trips, or participate in activities that require parental consent. The child always seems to feel left out, but you are frustrated because they have had ample time to return the forms. You know that they liv e with their grandparents, what can you do to help?

2)      A student who lives with their grandparent is bringing in long division homework with work shown that you haven’t taught. You would rather them show you their work with conceptual understanding using pictures of word sentences. They are bringing in work done with the standard algorithm, but cannot explain what it actually means. They say that their grandparents say this is the way to do it. What can you do without being disrespectful towards the way the grandparent learned?

3)      A student in your class just moved from Guatemala at the beginning of the year. It is evident at this point in the year that he speaks some English because you have heard him respond to questions and hear him read in English. He seems to refuse to try to speak English to you or other adults, and many time when you try to speak to him, even to just encourage him, he refuses to look at you and puts his head down, many times physically attacking you. His parent is hard to get in touch with him by phone or e-mail. You speak NO Spanish. What do you do?

4)      You have a conference with a parent who speaks only Spanish. Their child CAN translate, but there is no other adult translator in the building. We know from research that Latino parents prefer not to have their child translate for conferences. What can you do?