50 Strategies for Communicating and Working with Diverse Families

141 Pages·2009·28.625 MB·English

by  Janet Gonzalez-Mena

50 Strategies for
Communicating and
Working with Diverse
Families
SECOND EDITION
JANET GONZALEZ-MENA
Beginning Together
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gonzalez-Mena, Janet.
50 strategies for communicating and working with diverse families /
Janet Gonzalez-Mena. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: 50 early childhood strategies for working and
communicating with diverse families. c2007.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-700231-3
ISBN-10: 0-13-700231-9
1. Children—Services for—United States. 2. Early childhood
education—United States. 3. Family services—United States.
4. Multiculturalism—United States. I. Gonzalez-Mena, Janet. 50 early
childhood strategies for working and communicating with diverse
families. II. Title. III. Title: Fifty strategies for communicating
and working with diverse families.
HV741.G637 2010
362.70973—dc22
2009027694
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 10: 0-13-700231-9
ISBN 13: 978-0-13-700231-3
Introduction
This practical book provides strategies on partnering with families to support, enhance, and maximize
the quality of care and education of young children. Many of the strategies in this book address ideas
about how early childhood professionals can create a climate of trust by communicating with family
members in a collaborative way. The goal is to create useful, inclusive programs that respect and
honor differences in families and individuals. These easy-to-use strategies provide a strong basis for
working and communicating productively with families of all types and from varied backgrounds.
NEW IN THIS EDITION
The second edition of this book looks quite different from the first! The strategies are now grouped in
categories rather than arranged alphabetically. The old strategies have new names, and some have
been combined to make room for additional strategies that did not appear in the first edition.
Diversity is a theme throughout the book, but it shows up first and foremost in a brand new Section 1,
on varying types of families and family composition. This edition puts more emphasis on kindergarten
and primary-grade teachers using the strategies than the first edition did. This new emphasis shows up
in examples and stories about teachers and families. Based on reviewers’ feedback, new subjects
include working with families to maintain home language, deciding about holidays in the classroom,
addressing media issues, improving child nutrition, getting children outside in nature, and dealing
with a death in the family.
FAMILY-CENTERED CARE AND EDUCATION
This book is based on the concept called family-centered care and education. The tendency in the
early care and education field has been to focus on the child, and indeed, some programs actually use
the words “child-centered programs” in their philosophy statements. This book is based on the idea
that you can’t separate the child from the context of the family. The childis a term that has no real
meaning, because no child stands alone; the influences of the family are always present. When pro-
grams regard those influences as a good thing, they are on their way to becoming family-centered.
When a program becomes family-centered, diversity is a part of the package. You’ll see that respecting
diversity is addressed in two major sections and is a highlight in many of the strategies. Where respect-
ing diversity isn’t highlighted, it is quietly implied. With diversity comes the idea of equity as well as
inclusion, meaning that you have to include everybody. You can’t celebrate diversity and then exclude
some families from the program because they or their children are too different. This book is about
including allfamilies and their children. It’s about honoring diversity, even when it is hard to do so.
WHAT DOES “PARTNERSHIP” REALLY MEAN?
Partnership is another theme in this book. In building partnerships, establishing trust is key, because
you can’t have a partnership without trust. A partnership is different from merely trying to get families
to cooperate with the program and carry out its goals. Involving parents is an approach often taken
with that idea in mind. Policymakers learn about how school readiness and academic achievement
are strengthened when parents are involved in their children’s education. They jump on a bandwagon
iii
iv INTRODUCTION
to teach parents how to help their children carry out the program goals. The parents then learn how to
help their children according to the school’s way of doing things.
A partnership is different from that kind of parental involvement, because it implies equity and
shared power rather than one side dominating the other. In a partnership, roles and responsibilities
may differ, but both sides have rights. At the heart of the partnership lies the welfare of the child. Each
partner—family member and teacher—brings different strengths and skills to the union. Partners
collaborate rather than issue orders. In a partnership, communication is two way rather than hierar-
chical. It takes communication skills for two parties to work in partnership. Accordingly, many of the
strategies in this book relate to communication. Communication may be very different if the focus of
the school is merely about getting parents on board so that they can help their children by doing at
home what the school system and educators see as beneficial to readiness or academic achievement.
TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION IS THE MODEL
An approach to involving parents is often linked with parental education. The partnership approach is
not the same, even though both involvement and education may well be part of it. Certainly, families
who are involved in a program are more likely to take their partnership role seriously. Also, early
childhood education professionals have knowledge, experience, and expertise that parents can bene-
fit from; at the same time, parents know their own children, goals, beliefs, values, family traditions,
and culture better than anyone else. So the educational model here is transformative educationrather
than the traditional teacher-student, one-way educational approach.
Transformative education is defined as two people or groups coming together and
interacting in such a way that both parties learn something and are changed for the
better by the interaction.
SOLVING THE NAME DILEMMA
In writing this book, I was faced the problem of what to call the adults who work in early childhood
programs. This book takes in a wide sweep of early childhood and includes children from birth to age 8.
Although all adults in these programs could be called teachers, some who work with the youngest
children resist that term, because they don’t teach, they care for. Others who resist the term teacher
think of themselves as facilitators of learning and prefer to call themselves as educators. Still other
adults who work with children in that age range work out of their homes, not in schools or centers,
and call themselves family child care providers. Early childhood education is a complex field, and no
one name works for everybody in it.
I also had to figure out a name for the early childhood programs themselves that included all the
different forms. A third-grade classroom with a teacher is different from an infant-toddler center with
caregivers, yet both fit under a label early childhood education. A half-day preschool is different from
a kindergarten and also from a full-day child care program, which is different from a hospital child
care center that is open 24 hours a day to serve staff on all shifts.
CARE AND EDUCATION CAN NEVER BE SEPARATED
So what names did I use? I addressed the dilemma by changing “early childhood education” to
“early care and education” and calling the adults who work in the field teachers at some times
and early care and education professionals or early childhood professionals at other times.
Adding the word carehighlights the idea that care and education can never be separated in the
early years. The letters ECE, which are commonly used to define the programs for children ages
birth to age 8 are used by some to mean Early Childhood Education.I use those letters to mean
Early Care and Educationto broaden the scope. To me it is very important to link education with
care and not use the term education alone even when the example is in a primary classroom in a
public school.
INTRODUCTION v
For young children, care is always a part of the educational process. Nell Noddings writes about
this subject in many books, and she takes in the whole realm of education when she says care must
always be part of it—through higher education even. My point is that though you may separate pro-
grams by the age of the children they serve and give them different labels, all should include both
education and care.
Other terms also varied by the focus of the strategy, so sometimes I used schooland classroom,
and other times I used programand center. Sometimes I was aiming more at teachers in school and
other times more at staff in programs, such as prekindergarten or preschool, infant-toddler programs,
early intervention programs, child care, Head Start, Early Head Start, and school-age child care. It’s
complex, because these programs take place in a variety of environments, including centers, schools,
or homes, and some strategies pertain more to one setting than to the others.
In summary, this book is a targeted text that offers practical strategies for partnering with families,
creating the trust necessary for true collaboration and developing programs that include all families
and individuals. Of course, at the heart of all these useful strategies lies the welfare of the child.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following people for helping make this book what it is: Marion Cowee, Lynn
Doherty, Tim Gonzalez-Mena, Lisa Lee, Kitty Ritz, Ethel Seiderman, and Joan Symonds. In addition,
I wish to thank the following reviewers for their suggestions and insights: Irene Cook, California State
University, Bakersfield; Sandi Jessen, Minnesota State University, Mankato; Alycia Maurer, University
of Texas, San Antonio; and Lynda Roberts, Cerritos College.
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Contents
Section 1 Welcoming Everybody Section 4 Family Participation and
1 Education
Appreciating All Kinds of Families 1
22
2 Considering Family Participation 54
Working with Immigrant Families 3
23
3 Including Parents in the Classroom
Including Families of Children with
or Center 58
Special Needs 6
24
4 Focusing on Fathers 61
Creating an Antibias Environment 8
25
5 Taking a Transformative Approach
Respecting All Families, Including Those
to Parent Education 64
with Same-Sex Parents 11
26
Working with Parents around Holiday
Section 2 Partnerships with Families Issues 66
6 27
Building Partnerships 13 Exploring Parents’ Role on Decision-
7 Making Boards and Councils 68
Removing Barriers to Partnerships 15
8 Minimizing Competition with Section 5 Communication
Parents 18
28
Creating Environments for
9
Supporting Attachment 20 Communication 71
10 Considering Authority 23 29 Empowering Self and Others 73
11 Focusing on Family Strengths 25 30 Communicating Through Writing 75
12 Helping Parents to Be Advocates for 31 Holding Ongoing Conversations with
Their Children 28 Families 78
13 Encouraging Parents to Become 32 Looking at Nonverbal Communication
Advocates for all Children 30 Across Cultures 80
14
Creating a Sense of Community 33
Section 6 Meetings and Conferences
Section 3 Honoring and Working 33
Meeting with Families for the First
with Diversity Time 82
15 34
Understanding and Appreciating Thinking about Meetings in
Cultural Differences 36 General 85
16 35
Establishing Culturally Responsive Holding Conferences 87
Education and Care 39 36
Considering Cross-Cultural
17
Working with Conflicts Around Conferences 90
Education and Care Practices 41 37
Talking with Families when Concerns
18
Considering Cultural Differences in Arise 92
Guidance and Discipline 43
19 Section 7 Working with Parents
Working with Families Around what You
around Specific Issues
Believe Are Harmful Practices 45
20 Thinking about Differing Ideas Related 38 Helping the Child Enter the School
to How Children Learn 47 or Program 94
21 Managing Conflicts 50 39 Maintaining Home Language 97
vii
viii CONTENTS
40 Easing Children Through Section 8 Challenging Conversations
Transitions 99 47
Working with Parents who Constantly
41
Bringing Nature into Children’s Complain 115
Lives 101 48
Working with Parents who Appear
42
Addressing Obesity with Hostile 117
Nutrition 104 49
Talking with Parents about Behavior
43
Dealing with Media Issues 106 Changes 119
44 50
Maintaining Stability During Referring Families for Abuse
Divorce 109 or Neglect 121
45
Coping with a Death in the References 123
Family 111
Index 129
46
Finding Community Resources and
making Referrals 113
1 APPRECIATING ALL KINDS
OF FAMILIES
WHAT TEACHERS NEED TO KNOW
Families come in all kinds of sizes, shapes, structure, configurations, and makeup. For example, there
are two-parent families, single-parent families, and extended families with several generations in one
household. There are stepfamilies and blended families, biracial families, gay families, and straight
families. Transnational families may live in two countries. Migrant families may move where the work
is. Children may have been born into the family or come by other means, such as foster care, adop-
tions, or kinship networks. Some children live in more than one home and are members of more than
one family.
There are many definitions of family. Those definitions may focus on genetics, residence, emo-
tional ties, rules, or legal status. The American Academy of Family Physicians (2003) defines family as
“a group of individuals with a continuing legal, genetic, and/or emotional relationship.” One teacher
defines family as “the people living in the children’s homes who love and care for them,” and this
same teacher also makes sure that all families are welcomed and respected (Rieger, 2008). She lets
children and their families know that if they care to, they can talk about family members who may not
be with them, recognizing that military duty, divorce, incarceration, and death can separate family
members from the child.
Not all families have homes. The general view of the homeless population may be of city-
dwelling, single adult men with mental illness, alcohol, or drug additions, but the truth is that
homeless families are everywhere and many of them have children. This group needs the same
respect and consideration as any other group of families and often needs more support and services
than most families in the school or other early childhood setting. Homelessness disrupts every
aspect of family life including the health and wellbeing of the members and the education of their
children (Thoennes, 2008).
In a workshop, Linda Brault (2007) asked participants to categorize their families in terms of size
by raising their hands when she asked, “How many grew up in a large family? A small family? A
medium-sized family.” There was wide disparity in their concept of large, small, and medium families.
Some counted only their parents and siblings. Others counted extended family members. When the
presenter questioned individuals further, it became clear they had very different definitions of families
and membership in them. For example, some counted dead people as family members and deemed
them as important as live family members. For other participants, nonrelatives had the same status as
blood relatives. This was a racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse group, which showed the many
different concepts about who makes up a family.
One of the problems in working with diverse families arises when the teacher’s notion of family
gets in the way of understanding and respecting all kinds of families. The problem is magnified when
a family who doesn’t live up to the teacher’s picture of an ideal family is suspected of child abuse
while the same teacher overlooks signs of abuse in an “ideal” family. Since teachers and other early
childhood professionals are mandated reporters, the repercussions could be serious, not only for the
children and the families but also for the teacher.
While looking at all the different kinds of families who teachers and other early educators can
work with, recent immigrants are in a special category. Immigrant status may have a huge influence
on how the family operates. It’s important to recognize that all Americans, except for the Native
Americans, were once immigrants. It’s also important to realize that at one time or another, most
1