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All Publications & Resources WORKING WITH TEACHERS AND FAMILIES DEVELOPMENT PERIODS |
COMPLEMENTARY LEARNING CONNECTIONS
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Incorporating Latino Parents' Perspectives Into Teacher Preparation
Latino parents share their perspectives on what teachers should know in order to teach children more effectively and emphasize that Latino parents care about their children's education.
Valuing Parents as Co-Educators: A Teacher-Parent Partnership Project in Cyprus
A classroom-based family involvement project in Cyprus offers multiple roles for parents in the classroom, and benefits students, parents, and the teacher.
University–Community Partnerships
This FINE Forum features the Jane Addams School for Democracy, a university-community partnership in which Hmong and Latino immigrants, professors, high school teachers, parents, and students all work together on public issues.
Supporting Parents of Learning Disabled Children: Creating a New Norm
The purpose of this module is to explore an understanding of how parents of learning disabled (LD) children make sense of their parenting experiences and the ways in which they might be better supported within school communities. Students will also become familiar with the principles of dialogue, a form of communication that values the multiple truths that parents and educators bring to discussions about a child's learning.
School-Based Services: Traditional and Emerging Models to Address Barriers to Learning
This course will survey various models of community-based services that support students in schools. It will also cover implementation and evaluation of services.
Parent-Teacher Communication
Class sessions introduce the student to communication techniques that are essential to parent-teacher collaboration. After essential skills are defined, the course reviews important options for parent-teacher involvement available within schools. The strategies for involvement are considered within the context of selected issues affecting public education. Finally, the content considers legal/ethical and professional issues surrounding involvement with parents.
Documenting Progress and Demonstrating Results: Evaluating Local Out-of-School Time Programs
A collaboration with the Finance Project, this brief provides practitioners of local out-of-school time programs with techniques, tools, and strategies for improving their program and tracking their effectiveness over time.
Beyond the Head Count: Evaluating Family Involvement in Out-of-School Time
This brief offers an overview of how out-of-school time programs can evaluate their family involvement strategies and practices. It draws on findings from our OST Evaluation Database, interviews, and email correspondence.
Culture Clash at Intermediate School #91
Disciplinary problems at an intermediate school in the Bronx are compounded by the lack of experienced teachers whose race and class backgrounds differ from their students'. When two students get into a fight, the new teachers seek solutions that sharply contrast with the norms of the students and their families. How can teachers come to understand the families and communities in which they teach?
Foundations and Multicultural Aspects of Parenting
This course focuses on developing competency in a variety of areas surrounding parenting education including the following: understanding of parental issues and concerns within diverse family systems, understanding the dimensions of parenting from birth to adolescence, family literacy, and knowledge of multicultural perspectives in parenting.
Teaching for the Commonwealth: Linking Schools With Communities
This course is taught at the Jane Addams School of Democracy as a summer institute for teachers. This field-based course will examine broad strategies to link schools with communities to improve access, expand the learning resources, and strengthen or create structures that make formal and informal learning contiguous. An attentiveness to neighborhood as “place” will include the history of St. Paul's West Side in Minnesota, discussion of the public work initiatives underway, and interaction with neighborhood resource people. Participants in the course will have opportunity to reflect on their teaching as vocation and the civic dimensions of teacher.
The Transition to Kindergarten: A Review of Current Research and Promising Practices to Involve Families
This brief offers a synthesis of findings based on a review of current research on the transition to kindergarten, especially the important role that families play in the transition. It focuses on promising transition practices and how schools can get involved in their implementation.
Early Childhood Education
As we celebrate the Week of the Young Child, the FINE Forum presents some innovative ideas and practices in family involvement in early childhood education.
Family Support
The Spring 2002 issue looks at family support evaluations and their role in moving the field forward. This issue features a conversation with Michael Quinn Patton about historical and emerging trends in evaluation practice, descriptions of national and local evaluations that are underway, a discussion of using “effect size” to measure program effectiveness, advice on how to bring family research to legislators' attention, a look at how data can help parents assess schools, and much more.
Getting Parents “Ready” for Kindergarten: The Role of Early Childhood Education
This research brief presents preliminary evidence that family involvement in young children's education may contribute to a smooth transition to elementary school for children, and also helps parents remain involved in their children's learning in school.
A Special Education Plan for Anabela: Does Supporting Her Needs Mean Holding Her Back?
A mother advocated strongly for her daughter's special education placement at a new school, but now appears under-involved to the teachers. The classroom and resource room teachers disagree about whether to retain the girl in second grade, and the classroom teacher must make a recommendation to the principal, knowing the family has opposed retention in the past.
Promoting Involvement of Recent Immigrant Families in Their Children's Education
The purpose of this article is to present a conceptual framework and promote promising practices for involving Hispanic, immigrant parents/caregivers of students in their children's education. Toward this end, the article presents a model for how teachers and immigrant parents/families can be trained and encouraged to work as partners to improve student performance.
Bilingual Voices and Parent Classroom Choices
Ines, a Spanish speaker feels responsible for her daughter's trouble in an all-English first grade classroom. Based on advice from her daughter's teacher, who believes a bilingual placement might be best, Ines reads with Nina in Spanish, but is uncertain this is the right thing to do. How can parents and teachers reconcile their differences about bilingual education?
Family, Child & Teacher Interaction in Diverse and Inclusive Educational Settings
We will examine the role of the teacher in the classroom and school community with the intention of developing insight, understanding, and personal style which will support the teacher in his/her interaction with families. The class will study the techniques of family-school collaboration, constructive methods of evaluation, and the parameters of the federal law (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).
Teacher, Family & Community: Relationships and Resources
Examination of how the relationship between schools, families, and communities impacts the school adjustment of children during middle childhood and early adolescence as well as the roles of school personnel, parents, and community agents. Models and methods for facilitating positive relationships are considered. Resources for the education of children within families and communities are investigated.
Home/School/Community: Systems Interventions
The purpose of this course is to provide the student with information on a broad array of issues relating to school and community collaboration with families. Systems interventions within the home, school, and community contexts will be considered. Emphasis is placed on system-level consultation theories, research, and practice. The course prepares school professionals to function as consultants in school and community settings.
Academic Achievement
This issue of FINE Forum explores new forms of and strategies in family involvement, all of which share a common goal: expanding and deepening family and community roles to help students meet high standards.
Research and Advocacy Collaboration: A New Jersey Case Study
Too often vital research in the early care and education field does not get used effectively for advocacy purposes. While researchers and advocates often share the same goals, they tend to operate on separate tracks. This brief explores how research and advocacy can be bridged for greater effect using strategic communications. By definition, strategic communications means a deliberate plan or tactics for using communications as a channel for achieving a certain result. Collaborative work in the state of New Jersey around the goal of achieving a comprehensive and quality early care and education system is used as a backdrop for learning about effective practice.
Defining “Fine”: Communicating Academic Progress to Parents
Molly is surprised when her son's teacher recommends he attend summer school. She thought he was doing just fine and the family had been doing a lot to make the home a rich reading environment. How can teachers better communicate academic progress with parents? How can administrators support teachers in this effort?
Setting Standards at Porter Road School
A fourth grade teacher weighs the advantages and disadvantages of a mandated state educational test on her students. She must weigh the conflicting perspectives of parents, students, community members, and her teaching colleagues to define her own stance in regard to the test and to present her thoughts to the school principal.