Curriculum as a Collaboration with Families and the Community
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Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
- Explain the importance of a collaborative approach to working with families.
- Summarize accepted principles, effective strategies, and typical challenges for understanding and working with families.
- Explain how teachers can help families understand the current standards-driven environment.
- Describe ways in which teachers can help families understand the curriculum.
- Describe how the community can be incorporated as a resource for your curriculum.
Introduction
After completing your home visits, you realize that you now have a lot of additional information about the families of the children who will be in your class. You know which children have a single parent as the household head and have some information about family occupations and work schedules. You now know who lives with siblings and/or an extended family and which children have pets. You have also identified the parents and children with limited English proficiency, and you have some information about what steps have been taken to support the two children with special needs.
But you also have many remaining questions about how the families will respond to you as the teacher and how to create and sustain productive and satisfying relationships. You want the families to feel like partners in the adventure of early childhood education, but you also realize that there may be many factors that could complicate your efforts.
What can you do to learn more about the values, traditions, hopes, and wishes of your families? What strategies to include them in their children’s school lives will be most successful? How will you help them understand the curriculum as partners in their children’s learning?