School and Family Partnership

Summary of the interview 

From the interview, strong school-family partnerships are made through effective communication and education. Clear communication between the school staff and families is important in shaping the partnership between school and families. Educating staff on family needs and habits, and parents about age-appropriate educational activities, behavioral guidance techniques and health and safety are also central in strengthening the partnership. The interview indicates that common ways of communicating to keep families informed include personal connection, fliers, letters, and communication applications like Bloomz. The interviewee notes that no one method of communication works for all families. A survey to identify parents’ preferred means of communication could help identify the most suitable methods to use. 

As regards engaging families in the school, the interview has highlighted strategies like parents’ meetings, quarterly conferences, field trips, parties, and home visits. Encouraging parents to help in the classroom if and when they were available, and family-school joint activities to identify children’s talents have been excellent ways of engaging parents. Besides, parents learning activities such as bringing in an expert to educate parents about issues like safety, nutrition, challenging behaviors or other topics of interest to parents is a productive way to engage families. The interviewee points out the need to visit families to identify family needs that could affect children performance at school and try resolving them if they are within school means of assistance. She emphasizes communicating children’s successes and areas of concern during drop off/pick up and at conferences. 

The interviewee portrays the education field as one with minimal conflicts. She alludes tat the best strategy to handle conflicts with families is ton forward the cases to the director of the learning center. She orates that conferring parents and guardians an opportunity to give inputs into lesson plans through instruments like surveys and conferences makes them feel essential value of family in a child’s success. The interviewee underscores the need to study family cultures to identify proper and respectful ways of communicating and engaging them in school. 

Discussion: whether or not the information I learned during the interview aligns with the readings I have completed for class 

The information I learned from the interview aligns with the class readings that I completed. In a nut shell, the interview points out the components of building a strong school-family partnership to enhance children’s learning process. The interventions highlighted in the interview that are part of what I learnt in class include family engagement strategies, the role of teachers in family engagement approaches, communicating with families, and linking home and school learning processes. Family engagement can be described as described as the processing of bringing in families into children development and learning programs to form a partnership that value each shareholder’s contribution ( Couchenour & Chrisman, 2013) . The engagement is called a partnership as it brings in the strengths of teachers, children and their families into the relationship. The process entails inviting parents to participate in making decisions, developing learning programs and setting goals for their children. Family engagement encompasses the general principles, and strategies used by educators to create meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships with families with the intent to collaboratively support children education and growth. What is more, the process results in family members becoming mentors and nurturers having obtained skills and knowledge that can help their children ( Couchenour & Chrisman, 2013) . For an engagement process to yield positive results, it has to be reciprocal, strength-based, individualized and participatory. 

Family engagement strategies that teachers can adopt include seeking to know family interests, needs, and expectations for their children’s time while with teachers, practice of continued care programs, creating family space, and engaging families in decision making ( Swick, 2016) . Notably, family engagements are not always successful as parents may resist teachers’ suggestions and prefer to guide their children based on what they deem fit, in such situations, teachers need to be persistent and patient continuing to engage family and supporting children. 

From my class, I learnt the importance of reciprocal communication between teachers and family in enhancing educational outcomes for children. This strategy resonates the communication approaches highlighted in the interview. Honest, clear and reciprocal communication between teacher and family is an integral factor in strengthening school-family partnership as it allows sharing of dreams, hopes for children and establishing ways that families can engage in children learning ( Seitzinger, 2004) . According to Kraft (2017), e ffective teachers develop plans to overcome communication barriers like language differences, dialects, meaning nuances, cultural differences, and communication styles to improve their relationship with families of their students. With communication, the sender and recipient must have a precise plan of what to share and receive during communication platforms like conferences and parents’ meetings. The communication pathway in this case deducts that teacher connect families to school programs, families to other families, and families too community. Additionally, good communication helps solve conflicts when they arise either by ending the disagreement or preserving the relationship ( Seitzinger, 2004) Where communication is deliberate, considerate, well structured, and all-inclusive, family engagement thrives. 

Also learnt in class is linking home and school learning activities. The connection entails teachers helping families to support learning at home, and families aiding teachers in the school learning program. This connection fosters children learning while at home with family, and builds on their experiences with activities of the school program. While families are viewed as children’s first educators, not all families have the knowledge to promote learning ( Higgins & Cherrington, 2017). There are several strategies in which teachers can encourage family learning. For instance, a teacher can develop and share a video through the school program website illustrating child-adult interactions the lead to learning at home. Family learning activities could also include parents’ classroom visits to observe how teachers relate with children and replicate the same at home ( Higgins & Cherrington, 2017) . Besides, less knowledgeable families can visit more confident and knowledgeable families to learn how home teach their children through peer family relationships. 

How I will utilize the ideas I learned in the interview to build partnerships with the families I will work with 

I will use the ideas I learnt from the interview to build strong partnerships with the families that I will be working with. Often, families particularly those with infants do not get enough information regarding the activities and experiences of their young ones ( Swick, 2016) . Parents need long conversations to exchange information about daily activities of their children in addition to staff like toileting, feeding among others. In such situations, I will use the drop and pick up time to share information with families. In circumstances where this time is not enough due to the needs of whole group, I will design a newsletter combining daily child development activities and observation photos. The newsletter will explain each child’s experiences, what they do and what they have been learning in images and texts. I will be documenting the newsletter after every two weeks and sending to the family through email. This strategy will serve to communicate, and to allow parents contribution to learning and development of their children through feedback. 

Another strategy that I will use to enhance family communication with families is introducing optional breakfast club where families will have breakfast at the center ones a week. Given that drop off and pick up times could be inconvenient as parents and other family members have daily schedules and places to be, having a conversation with families could be hard. However, once in a week families can accompany children to the center enjoy a relaxing breakfast as I inform them on their children’s progress. This will benefit the family as they will get to observe their child’s behavior and confidence or lack of it while interacting with others. Also, the goodbye will be less distressing for the children who will tend to leave the tables after breakfast to engage with peers and play materials. An additional benefit to the breakfast club is that families get to interact and create a community of support where they are free with each other and can organize playdate for their young ones or plan birthday parties 

In the center where I will be working, most parents are millennials who prefer using digital media and a small portion of end of generation X who use the media but, prefer written or verbal communication methods. To build strong teacher-family partnership, and having known the preferences of communication, I will use both virtual and physical strategies in engaging families in school program extension. I will ensure that communication when raising concerns is done through print, interpersonal interactions and communication applications such as class What’s up group, Facebook page, class zoom meetings and other platforms that support text, videos and photos. With regard to solving conflicts, I will use the strategy outlined in the interview. Complex conflict matters involving families and staff or complaints about operations will be forwarded to the center director. However, I will handle minor conflicts through engaging complaints in effective, honest communication, and dialogue. 

Parent communication sample and whether or not I would use a similar tool 

Expanded Transitional School’s prekindergarten is a center where progressive learning strategy is implemented from preschool to grade eight. The center’s fraternity encompasses teachers, diverse families, and the administration, all encouraging communication and learning through hands-on delivery approach ( Couchenour & Chrisman, 2013) . Valerie, the prekindergarten teacher realized that children she taught had robust skills in use of digital apparatuses than in language, science, and social development, with some having no interest on the environment around them. Through communication, the teacher needed to engage the preschoolers’ families in supporting children’s development through outside class learning, social, and fun activities beside digital tools. 

A newsletter was sent to families inviting them for a parents’ meeting where the concerns were raised. The teacher deliberated with families on strategies that could enhance comprehensive learning of children. The strategies included school visits, supporting families to engage children in science in community and at homes, and introduction of book bag programs curated to extend literacy and language learning t5o a home setting. Families were also to accompany their children to a field activity of collecting and naming insects. Upon testing the children after these activities, there was significant improvement in the science, language and social development subjects. The teacher invited the parents to a conference to share the outcomes of the strategies and further deliberations for continuity. In the end, it was agreed that the teacher would organize for academic clinics once per term to exchange information about children progress in learning activities, their strengths, and weaknesses with a focus to suggest and implement improvement strategies ( Couchenour & Chrisman, 2013) . 

I found the communication strategies and family engagement activities used in the discusses sample effective. Given the same situation, I would use similar approaches to communicate and connect with families. The fact that the teacher identified a weakness among children and engage families in finding solutions and implementing them is indicative of the importance of collaboration of education stakeholder, especially the school-family partnership in children’s learning and development. The effective, clear communication exhibited by teacher Valerie shows the imperative role of proper communication in family engagement and strengthening the teacher-family relationships. 

References 

Couchenour, D., & Chrisman, K. (2013).  Families, schools and communities: Together for young children . Cengage Learning. 

Higgins, A., & Cherrington, S. (2017). What's the Story? Exploring Parent–Teacher Communication through ePortfolios.  Australasian Journal of Early Childhood ,  42 (4), 13-21. 

Kraft, M. A. (2017). Engaging parents through better communication systems.  Educational Leadership ,  75 (1), 58-62. 

Seitzinger, K. H. (2004). Building culturally and linguistically competent services to support young children, their families, and school readiness. 

Swick, K. J. (2016). Families and educators together: Raising caring and peaceable children.  Early Childhood Education Journal ,  33 (4), 279-287.