Families And Schools Together

Learn how to work with and relate to the family of each child in an early childhood education program. Includes ideas about transforming the way schools and programs relate to families - each one according to their unique assets and needs with the goal of enriching and enlivening the school community and ensuring better outcomes for each child and the entire program. It will emphasize strategies for getting to know each family the way you get to know an individual person, and learn about their interests, their strengths, their style of interacting and their needs/challenges to encourage programs to move away from one-size-fits-all approaches to family engagement.

For courses in Parents/Home-School Relations in Early Childhood Education and Elementary Education. Parents as Partners in Education: Families and Schools Working Together, seventh edition, is the most comprehensive book on the market covering the history of parenting and parent/school collaboration, current issues and population trends affecting American schools and communities, diverse family structures, and techniques for establishing a connection with parents and encouraging involvement with their child's learning. Many chapters also feature sample case studies of children. Throughout, students will find useful illustrations, summaries, review questions, and Web links. Following the introductory chapter that provides a rationale for strong family involvement, Chapter 2 provides an overview of population and immigration trends, diverse family structures. Chapter 3 discusses ways to understand the community with which professionals work, cultural diversity, and the diverse ethnic groups that compose American communities. An historical overview of family life and parent involvement follows in Ch. 4. Methods of working with diverse families are covered in Chapters 5-7: effective home-school-community relationships, communication and parent programs, and developing collaborative relationships with parents. Presentation on school-based parent involement programs and home-based parent involvement programs follow in Chapters 8 and 9. The text ends with three chapters on working with parents of a child with disabilities (to understand processes in schools, parents' rights, and laws in special education), child abuse (including bullying and ways to spot and intervene in abuse situations), and children's and parents' rights and advocacy.

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.

This volume will address major frameworks for understanding family involvement and government support of family involvement projects in the initial chapters. The following six chapters present a theoretical base for understanding school, family, and commu-nity partnerships and research supporting promising practices. Included within each chapter are examples of research in action, focusing on spe-cific interactive activities or programs designed to bring families and schools together. Such promising practices are organized into chapters dealing with two-way home-school communication, family literacy projects, school-site parent centers, parent- school collaborative governance, and family-school education programs spanning infancy through young adult-hood. The monograph concludes with a chapter on teacher preparation for work with family, school, and community partnership issues. Besides their research expertise, each author brings a unique back-ground as classroom teacher, parent, and community social advocate to their writing. Individually, most of us have spent our early professional years within the classroom, acquiring the value of connecting home with school for the benefit of the children. As parents and grandparents, we have advocated for parental interests within the school. As community advocates, we strive for collaborative communication across groups who serve children and their families. We invite you to share our passion for working with families and community groups within our schools.

Parents as Partners in Education, Eighth Edition, is uniquely the most comprehensive book on the market covering the history of family/school collaboration, current issues and population trends affecting American schools and communities, diverse family structures, and techniques for establishing connections with parents and encouraging involvement with their childês learning. Based on the notion of funds of knowledge, the knowledge that children acquire from their families, this best-selling textbook helps the reader differentiate between culture and diversity as they relate to culturally and linguistically diverse families. This edition, with a new co-author, emphasizes on understanding families' funds of knowledge, discusses culturally relevant pedagogy to work with families and children, particularly those who are English language learners and/or immigrants, and provides an expanded section on working with families who have children with autism. A special focus on culturally and linguistically diverse children with special needs is a remarkable aspect of the book. Key additions and changes to this edition include: more practical ideas and tips for teachers on how to work with culturally and linguistically diverse children and their families in a classroom setting; applicable information on how to build parent involvement programs; strategies for working with culturally diverse students who have Autism Spectrum Disorder and their families; emphasis on the value of pre-school and pre-K programs methods for working with English Language Learners and their families, including a section on second language acquisition. Rooted in the premise that once educators understand the value of families for healthy development they can begin to create strong partnerships to assist children in successful experiences in school. Parents as Partners in Education: Families and Schools Working Together, Eighth Edition will be a key component to teachers gaining this knowledge and using it in the classroom for the betterment of all children and their families.