Standard 7

Standard 7: Family, community, and professional partnerships in a diverse society 

 Families and teachers need to work as one to help students as they learn. Teachers need to understand the children in their classroom; where they come from, struggles, successes, etc. Teachers need to have open communication with families so everyone in on the same page on what is happening in a particular students life. Teachers should also embrace the different cultures of their students and allow them to share aspects of their culture with the class. Parents and teachers need to also be made aware of any laws or policies that the school or government have about the students’ education. 

As a teacher, you need to understand the whole child. The child is only in your classroom for 10 months. In order for a teacher to understand a student, they need to get to know their families and where they are coming from. Parents and faculty should work together in order to help the student be as successful as they can be. This is done through letters to parents, parent teacher conferences, or family gatherings. Students should also have aspects of their culture in the classroom. This can be achieved by having books about different cultures, allowing students to teach each other phrases from their native language, or by having families bring in food or talk about their culture with the class. By teachers understanding students’ and working with families, they are able to teach more to the student. In order to be a successful teacher, you need to know what makes each child tick. 

In the book Black Ants and Buddhist, written by Mary Cowhey, Cowhey discusses how she reached out to families in her classroom. In one particular chapter, Cowhey decided that he students will do a food drive and gather food for a local soup kitchen for Thanksgiving. Cowhey didn’t stop there though, she wanted the children and families to be apart of feeding those less fortunate and not just put a can of soup in a box and be done. Families, students, and Cowhey worked together to make the food and deliver the food to the soup kitchen during a snow storm.  The collaboration of families, students and the teacher allowed for a greater learning experience then if the teacher and students were working alone in the classroom. 

As an educator, I see the importance in communicating with them in order to for them to know what is going on with their child inside the classroom. When conducting observations in my practicum classroom I first sent home a letter to get permission to observe and write about the student. After that I met with the parents in person to discuss what their concerns were for their child. I then sent home a family interview for the parents to complete. This allowed me to understand the child more. I was able to learn about her family, that she spoke a different language at home, her activities, etc. Attached is my permission slip and interview I sent home with this student (Artifact 7A).

Families along with teachers have goals for each child and it is good for them to share these goals with each other. Together, families and teachers can work to help a child reach those goals by the end of the year. Around November, we had parent teacher conferences inside my practicum classroom. I was part of the conferences for the four girls a lead a reading group with. I talked with their families about the strengths I see in them, what are some things they could work on, and other books they might find interesting. The parents were eager to hear my thoughts and stated things they wanted me to work on with their children, most of which was the same things I wanted the students to improve on. Having both of us on the same page really helped guide the group along. The families were made aware of what I was doing in the classroom and I was aware of what the parents were doing at home and the goals they had for their students. 

I also found it important to represent all the different cultures in the classroom. I created a greeting called “The Popsicle Stick greeting” How it works is a simple patten of clapping and snapping is created by the teacher. The students keep doing this until the teacher says pass. When They say pass, they have to pass the Popsicle stick to the person to the right. This pattern continues until the teacher says stop. Once that happens a starter is picked. The started reads the name on his/her Popsicle stick and gets up to greet that person in any language they want. If it is an unfamiliar language to the class, I would ask the student to repeat it and have the whole class try. Then the student would say what language it was in. By December, we learned how to say good morning in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, French, Gaelic, Hawaiian, Powhatan, and Ethiopian just to name a few. The students and myself found it so interesting to hear the other languages and after awhile, everyone was saying good morning in all different languages. The students loved hearing other students languages and learning them. Attached is the materials I used for this greeting (Artifact 7B).

One of the most important things to me is making sure students are safe both at school and at home. When children seem to be not safe in either location it is important to know the schools protocol on these issues and how they are handled. It is also important to know what the background and culture of the child is. Some families and cultures raise their children differently. In my classroom this fall, we had three Ethiopian students who were celebrating a holiday where they were not allowed to eat when the sun was out. If a student would have came in and said they weren’t eating, that would be reason to talk to someone at the school about it but by having good family communication, teachers are able to know the cultures of the students that they work with. 

Since I have yet to have my own classroom there is much that I still need to learn. I have been very fortunate to have worked in a classroom this fall where there was lots of family involvement. I want to learn how to make that happen in more schools. In the other schools I have worked in, the communication with families is lacking. Parents don’t come into the classroom, letters home don’t get signed, phone calls and emails not returned. My goal is to be able to understand those children and their families just like I understand the children and families who are at every school event. This way every student has an equal opportunity to learn. 

References

Cowhey, M. (2006). Black ants and buddhists: Thinking critically and teaching differently in the primary grades. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.