Engaging
Families:
Partnering in
Meaningful
Ways
Melissa Summer
and Gail L.
Summer
Preschool Through Primary Grades
Creating Family Learning Communities
8
E
arly childhood educators have
long recognized that “the two most influential environments in which young
children develop are their homes and
their early childhood education programs” (Halgunseth 2009, 56). When working
together as equal partners, families and teachers come to know and support children more
deeply, allowing families, teachers, and children
to create meaningful learning opportunities
at school and at home. Similar to the Reggio
Emilia experience, family participation “does
not mean simply the involvement of families
in the life of the school. Rather, it is a value, an
identifying feature of the entire experience, a
way of viewing those involved in the educationYoung Children
September 2014
© Ellen B. Senisi
®
2, 3, 7
At home one Saturday, Melissa notices a
mysterious green bug in her house. Knowing that the kindergartners she teaches
are deep in their insect inquiry project, she
grabs her camera, snaps a picture, and uploads it to the class’s online photo-sharing
community, adding the caption: “I found
this one at my house. I’ve never seen one
like it! Any ideas?” A few days later a parent
comments, “Nora and I saw this one at the
park! It crawled across our hands,” and
posts a photo of the same kind of green bug
on her daughter’s finger.
al process and the role of the school” (Cagliari, Barozzi, &
Giudici 2004, 29). For Reggio practitioners, communication and family participation are a child’s and parent’s
right, and they are from where all child-centered teaching
flows (Rinaldi 2006).
Pursuing family engagement
Family involvement depends on a number of factors,
including
n The family’s understanding of their role in their chil-
dren’s education
n The family’s belief that they have the knowledge and
tools to be their children’s primary educator
n The school’s and the children’s willingness to have the
family participate in educational experiences (García &
Kleifgen 2010)
Often family involvement operates in a one-way, schoolto-family direction, with teachers providing guidance to
families about how to help their children at home, based on
classroom approaches. However, this one-way relationship
does not take into account families’ wealth of knowledge
about their children and about effective ways of helping
their children—ways that might not reflect school practices.
Reconsidering family involvement can renew teachers’
respect for the families they serve. Family involvement
includes any way that families support their children’s education, including two-way communication between home
and school (Morrison, Storey, & Zhang 2011).
It is important for educators to move toward family
engagement. This strengths-based approach respects and
values the expertise families bring and encourages family
collaboration in “meaningful ways that maximize their
children’s learning experiences” (Halgunseth 2009, 56).
Families who are simply involved, but not engaged, may be
more reactive, following teacher requests. Families who are
more deeply engaged often initiate interaction by sending
items from home that expand a unit of inquiry or inspire a
new unit of inquiry. In this spirit of collaboration, teachers can develop two-way family learning communities
in which practitioners, children, and families learn with
and from each other. “A learning community is a group
of people who come together to learn with and from each
other and then seek to act on what they learn. Their reason
for being is an ongoing inquiry for the sake of improvement” (Galinsky 2012, 21).
About the Authors
Melissa Summer, MA, teaches kindergarten at a Title I, artsbased school with a diverse student population in Spartanburg,
South Carolina. Melissa is a PhD candidate in language and
literacy at the University of South Carolina. Melissa and her
coauthor are daughter and mother. [email protected]
September 2014
Young Children
Creating a family learning community
Moving from a one-way relationship with families to family
engagement requires teachers to reflect on the effectiveness of their current practices. Teachers also need logistical support from administrators, who can keep learning
spaces open beyond traditional hours (for after-school and
weekend gatherings) and be supportive of teachers inviting
families to the classroom as visiting experts. For example,
during a unit on plants, teachers can invite parents and
grandparents to talk about their gardens and the vegetables
they grow. Most important, as emphasized in the Reggio
Emilia experience, all staff must recognize and value families’ knowledge and strengths (Cagliari, Barozzi, & Giudici
2004; Rinaldi 2006).
Moving from a one-way relationship
with families to family engagement
requires teachers to reflect on the effectiveness of their current practices.
Building trust is an important aspect of strong family–
school partnerships (Moll et al. 2005; Kahn, Stemler, &
Berchin-Weiss 2009). A policy of maintaining frequent,
open communication between teachers and families helps
build trust and strong relationships. “Families and teachers
who regularly learn about one another’s interests and cultures can develop a richer and more varied early childhood
curriculum” (Morrison, Storey, & Zhang 2011, 22). Teachers
may find the following suggestions helpful when creating
family learning communities that are grounded in trust
and that evolve into powerful curricula as family expertise
helps deepen practitioners’ breadth of resources.
Invite families’ expertise
Teachers can reflect on their practices to determine if they
are truly inviting families to contribute their expertise
and incorporating this expertise into the curriculum. For
example, in a study of families of children with hearing
impairments, the families were actively engaged in determining and enacting the learning goals for early intervention plans instead of simply accepting what the expert early
interventionists would have suggested for their children
(Kahn, Stemler, & Berchin-Weiss 2009). Families’ ideas
initiated the learning goals for their children. Staff also
supported families’ active engagement throughout the
early intervention process by coaching parents, observing
Gail L. Summer, EdD, is vice president for academic affairs at Ferrum
College, where she also serves on the Virginia State Head Start Association Board. Gail was a founding member of the North Carolina
Birth–Kindergarten Consortium, where she taught at the college level
for more than 20 years. [email protected]
9
Support families as their children’s first teachers
It is important for teachers to ask families how they can
help them support their children’s learning. One-way
approaches establish the teacher as the expert and family members as the learners. However, when families and
teachers are comfortable engaging in give-and-take, the
expert/learner roles become fluid and interchangeable. For
example, during the enrollment process teachers can send
families a questionnaire about their goals for their children
and use this information to shape the curricula.
Honor families’ unique home experiences
Family interest in literacy success is common in Melissa’s
classroom. Many teachers encourage families to support
children’s literacy learning at home by suggesting they
schedule family reading time, sing songs, say rhymes, and
play games with words that might involve alliteration to
support children’s phonological and phonemic awareness.
However, it is also important to acknowledge everyday activities that families do to promote children’s literacy skills.
Examples include watching and discussing age-appropriate
television programs together, storytelling of family traditions and experiences, as well as texting and making phone
calls together (Boutte & Johnson Jr. 2013). When teachers
10
are aware of families’ unique home literacy experiences,
they can recognize the ways that young children express
their home literacies in the classroom. For example, when
children draw on their cultural storytelling traditions,
teachers can recognize when a child tells a beautiful
circular story that does not follow a linear, chronological
pattern.
Family communication as a teaching
strategy
As part of a unit on famous landmarks, Melissa takes
the kindergartners she teaches on a scavenger hunt in
the school. They locate a Statue of Liberty snow globe,
a painting of Niagara Falls, and a replica of the Eiffel
Tower. To extend learning beyond the classroom walls
and engage families in the activity, Melissa uses the
weekly class newsletter to invite families to search
for representations of famous landmarks outside of
school. Families post photos online of landmarks that
their children spot in their homes, neighborhoods, and
communities, for the entire class learning community
to see. Some families choose to participate by engaging in the activity with their child, and then the child
excitedly shares their family’s observations at school.
In this way, Melissa uses a traditional tool for home–
school communication—a weekly printed newsletter—
to engage families in a learning community, as well as
in using technology.
Morrison, Storey, and Zhang (2011) note, “When teachers
offer a variety of ways for families to actively communicate
with them, including electronically, family time constraints on participation become
less of a factor” (24). Internetbased communication strategies
for involving families include creating and sharing a class website
with information, pictures, and a
forum where families comment
(Mitchell, Foulger, & Wetzel
2009). Educators can investigate
innovative uses of technology
and social media to enrich family
learning communities so that
“technology and media [can] be
used to support learning, not an
isolated activity” (NAEYC & Fred
Rogers Center 2012).
Melissa supported a two-way
family partnership with photojournalism through an online
image-hosting website. During
conferences at the beginning of the
school year, Melissa asked families to join the website’s private
Young Children
September 2014
Courtesy of the authors
children together, and creating group play sessions for
families to interact with their children and other families.
This strengthened families’ skills by “building on what
they could already do” (280), an approach that recognizes
families’ funds of knowledge (Moll et al. 2005) and engages
them through their areas of expertise.
classroom community and to grant
permission for their children’s collaborative work to be posted there.
Families knew that the site would
allow them to follow their children’s activities in class. The photos
help families to see their children
engaged in learning and to share in
their child’s learning. In addition,
this method of sharing provides a
conversation point for families to
discuss the school day with their
children.
It is important for
teachers to validate
families as important
resources for their
children’s learning.
Image-hosting websites also
help families share the learning
that happens at home. Inviting
families to post photos of independently planned and implemented
home activities gives them choices
about how to interpret and value
what children learn at school, and
it returns power to the children’s
first and constant learning environment: home. By using the Internet via a smartphone, tablet, or
computer or at the public library,
families can post photos to their
personal photo streams and then
notify classroom staff. To make
sure technology is a bridge and
not a hurdle, families may choose
instead to bring in hard copies of
photos to classroom staff, who
then scan and upload the pictures.
Classroom staff choose family
photos from each family’s photo
stream by simply clicking on the
“add to group” link so all families
can view the photos.
This approach has created
a powerful two-way learning
community. In the classroom,
Melissa and her assistant log on
to the classroom community site
about twice a week to review
family posts. They use the posts to
draw children into conversations,
September 2014
Young Children
P
Considerations When Using
Photo-Sharing Websites and Apps
rivacy and equal access to technology are important factors to consider.
Before launching the online learning community, Melissa met with each family to learn how they access the Internet. Only two families had no Internet
connection at home; they went online at the public library. In addition, Melissa
featured one picture relating to the topic of study in the weekly newsletter, which
students received in paper form each Friday. Another component of equitable
access is linguistic diversity. One strength of using photo-based documentation
to create family learning communities is the power of photographs to transcend
linguistic barriers.
To ensure each family’s privacy, Melissa set up the site as a private group, meaning
members could join only after Melissa invited them. Only members of the group
can see the photos that are posted. Families chose their own screen names and
referred to the children by their initials.
With these special considerations, using an image-hosting website opened a
two-way learning mechanism for families in rich, rewarding ways. Melissa used
Flickr (www.flickr.com), but teachers might also consider using Instagram (www.
instagram.com), Fotki (www.fotki.com), or Photobucket (www.photobucket.com),
or creating blogs to achieve similar results.
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strategies to support
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Including families as resources
It is important for teachers to validate families as important
resources for their children’s learning and as experts by
focusing on what they know, not what practitioners think
families know. The trust and communication developed
through the image-sharing community extended to other
means of family engagement. For example, during a unit
called All About Me, the children asked a lot of questions
about hair—how to braid and cut it, and about texture
variations—and they began to realize that not everyone had
the same experiences with hair. This led to an extension of
the unit to study hair more deeply.
Classroom staff invited families to collaborate with
their children to write a book describing their home hair
care practices. Melissa sent a booklet home that had leading
sentence starters (“First, I. . . ,” “Next, I. . . , ” “Last, I. . . ”) that
allowed stages of hair care to be shared and described. Because hair care practices could be described in steps no matter how they varied from family to family or by gender, it was
inclusive of all children and families. Children completed
the booklets with family support. To extend family learning,
children read the completed booklets aloud to their families
before bringing them to school to read to their peers.
12
In addition, families can help foster a sense of community in the classroom. Teachers can ask families to select
books that reflect children’s home cultures, invite family
members into the classroom to be featured experts on topics of inquiry, and involve families meaningfully in extending classroom topics at home through activities (DermanSparks & Ramsey 2011; Derman-Sparks & Edwards 2012).
For example, teachers can ask families about their favorite
local grocery stores. Teachers can use this information in
the classroom, working with the children to create a list of
favorite stores and then illustrating families’ preferences in
a classroom graph.
Families of children whose home languages do not
include English can be resources when they are invited to
share bilingual children’s literature or even just come to the
classroom and talk with children in their home language
(García & Kleifgen 2010). These various strategies involve
using families’ areas of expertise in classroom settings to
enrich the learning opportunities for children, families,
and educators.
Practitioners as anthropologists
It is important for educators to learn about the home lives
of children and families and use this to shape how they
approach family engagement (Compton-Lilly 2007). This
is especially important when the cultural backgrounds of
the educator and family are different. Teachers can validate
children’s home languages and literacy practices in the
classroom, for example, by including books in children’s
home languages in the classroom library and using home
languages on signs, labels, and other environmental print.
Often, young children communicate using tools and means
Young Children
September 2014
Courtesy of the authors
usually during group time. For
example, Shamia is an active contributor in the classroom, but she
rarely initiates talk of her home life
and what she learns there. During
a unit on early Native Americans,
a discussion about how the Crow
and Cheyenne nations procured
food when they didn’t have
grocery stores resulted in a rich
series of photos from Shamia and
her mother exploring the hunter–
gatherer culture. Shamia and her
mom had worked together at home
to collect berries and nuts, as discussed at school. Her experiences
enriched discussions and allowed
her to feel greater comfort in sharing what she was learning at home
and to see its value in school.
Later in the school year, during a snowstorm that led to four
missed days of school, website postings enabled children,
families, and teachers to stay connected. One family posted
a photo of deer in their yard and tied this to school-based
discussions of animals foraging for food and their winter
survival needs. To bridge from school back to home, Melissa posted a photo of the playground as the snow began
falling, which allowed the children to see their playground
covered in snow like their backyards.
learned from home. Teachers use this information to better
Family learning workshops
support children and their families.
In classroom family-learning workshops, teachers and
Early in the school year, kindergartner Maya would
families collaborate to support learning beyond the classclimb in her cubby and refuse to participate in classroom
room—helping everyone get inspired to be lifelong learners.
activities, especially upon arrival. During group time, she
In these two-way learning communities, families detertended to engage in co-narration (Boutte 2008), meaning
mine the workshop topics. Teachers gather family input in
she didn’t always follow the one-speaker-at-a-time guideseveral ways, including through a questionnaire distribline. Instead of viewing these behaviors as disrespectful and
uted at the Meet the Teacher event before the school year
refusing to follow directions, Melissa interpreted them as a desire
to negotiate for power in a setting
where power is sometimes limited
to adults only. However, it was
important to understand Maya’s
experiences at home as well.
To learn about Maya’s home
life, Melissa engaged Maya’s
mother as a co-researcher into the
ways Maya was using language
at home and at school. After
planning this partnership via a
permission-granting phone call,
Melissa and Maya’s mother began
exchanging frequent emails.
Melissa recorded her own communication documentation from
school in a note-taking program,
resulting in Maya’s mother opening an account that she used to
capture communications at home.
The two shared their notes with
one another.
Furthermore, to build trust
with the family and to be engaged
as a part of the child’s home language world, Melissa met Maya
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begins. Included is the question “How can I help you as an
adult learner: using technology, helping your child learn,
learning English, and so on?” Workshop topics emerge
from families’ responses. One finding was that families
were interested in literacy skills and how to support their
children’s literacy development, so this was the focus for
the first family learning workshop.
Inviting children’s home cultures into
the classroom as resources to be used
in their learning helps build bridges
between home and school.
Patterns of home literacy emerge during the workshops.
At the initial workshop, the goal was to develop ideas for
ways families could support children’s reading and writing abilities at home. Unlike traditional parent–teacher
conferences, families and teachers were part of a community of learners in which everyone was an expert, not just
the teacher. Responses indicated that families valued the
variety of perspectives in the session and expressed interest
in meeting again.
Learning community interactions were not limited to
group sessions. For example, when Anjy needed to miss
school so she and her mother could apply for a travel visa
to return to India for a wedding, Melissa (who was about to
be married herself) and the mom shared cultural wedding
traditions with each other. As a result, Melissa learned that
Anjy was worried about flying, so Melissa added books
about India and about airplanes and flying to the book
center to help Anjy learn more about her home country and
what flying on an airplane is like.
Conclusion
For young children, the most important community is
their family. Learning communities strive for genuine
family engagement by recognizing that “teachers who tie
community-based participation into the curriculum extend
children’s learning far beyond the classroom” (Morrison,
Storey, & Zhang 2011, 25). Inviting children’s home cultures
into the classroom as resources to be used in their learning
helps build bridges between home and school. In doing so,
teachers extend the learning beyond the school day and
validate children’s home experiences.
Families become collaborators in their children’s learning when teachers validate the children and families’ life
experiences and implement strategies that respect diverse
families and cultures. Teachers can work to create family
learning communities in which educators, children, and
their families learn cooperatively and collaboratively.
14
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