Creating Family-Community Partnerships to Meet the Diverse Needs of Young Children

Creating Family-Community Partnerships to Meet the Diverse Needs of Young Children

ECE611: Early Childhood Curriculum and Methods (MSB1719A)

Introduction

When students first enters the classroom it is essential that you create a warm welcoming environment for both students and their family. It is important that teachers build a positive relationship with their students families so that they can work together to provide an overall learning experience for the young children. In this paper, I will be discussing a comprehensive plan of partnership that includes family engagement strategies, child guidance strategies, and an ongoing communication process that I would use to support and guide Lucy with her struggles and explaining why I chose these specific strategies and the success of the strategies.

Family Engagement Strategies with Reasoning

When working with Lucy’s family the two strategies to create family engagement I chose to implement is establishing a relationship with families and integrating families into the program(Kostelnik, Soderman, Whiren, & Rupiper, 2015). When establishing a relationship with Lucy’s I will create an ongoing, positive, goal-oriented relationship. It can allow me to help the families, and share struggles for improvement. Iwill encourage participation in decision making, build a two-way communication, and collaborate and provide experiences that Lucy is undergoing so we can modify her actions.

Integrating families into the program will allow families to feel welcomed to come to the classroom when they feel like it, participate in the classroom, and working with families (Kostelnik, Soderman, Whiren, & Rupiper, 2015).I could invite Lucy family to come into the classroom to help out with Lucy when they can or create home activities when Lucy interact in activities that come help her overcome her struggles with her family members. I could work with the family to determine possible solutions that can be implemented in helping Lucy while in the classroom.

The reason I chose these two strategies is that it will allow me to communicate with the families so that we can come up with a solution to Lucy’s separation anxiety so that she could feel comfortable in the classroom, therefore she would maybe stop crying for the first 30 minutes of the class, none participation in in-group activities, hitting other students, and taking classroom materials home that supposed to stay at school. It would help in building a cultural curriculum, provide a better understanding of Lucy needs, and a meaning learning experience.

Child Guidance Strategies with Reasoning

The child guidance strategies, I think that would help Lucy with her struggles is developing self-regulation through instructions with on-the-spot coaching and modelling. Learning self-regulation skills will allow Lucy to acknowledge what she is doing is either right or wrong. She will understanding the hitting other students are wrong, start treating others the way she wants to be treated, and understand moral concepts which is a form of internalize(Kostelnik, Soderman, Whiren, & Rupiper, 2015). There will be instructions throughout the classroom both written and spoken that children must follow. This may include picture poster of what students should or should not do and we can create classroom policies together with her native language as well as others.

On-the-spot coaching will allow me to help her make positive decisions.She can gain a sense of competence and confidence while overcoming her struggles, build strengths, develop potentials, guides her through her change while correcting any issues. Modelling will allow Lucy to learn from her peers as well as from myself. We can show Lucy how to positively interact with other students without hitting and interacting into activities can be fun and engaging. It is important to draw students’ interest so that they are willing participants into the activities.

The reason why I chose thee two strategies is that Lucy needs to understand what she is doing is appropriate or in-appropriate classroom behavior. She needs to learn how to self-regulate so that she would know what is wrong and what is right when interacting with peers and her actions while in the classroom. Lucy will learn about control and get a sense of accomplishment when she have overcome her obstacles. It will help in bringing out her best, develop new skills, and build a caring learning environment.

Ongoing Communication Plan with Success

I will create an ongoing communication process whereby the family members and I will communicate in a genuine formal manner of listening and responding, taking consideration from the family members, asking questions, and coming up with strategies that would help Lucy with her current strategies. Since Lucy family speaks Mandarin Chinese, I would provide an interpreter that would help me in communicating with her family so that they were be no misunderstanding while providing a positive communication between both family members and myself. Hong, (2012) cites that having an interpreter would help families and teachers communicate in an effective way because it allows both teacher and parent to understand and comprehend what is being spoken so that they can create a plan to help the student effectively (p 2).

The success of these strategies will be measured through planning and communication. By planning my actions of how to help Lucy and effective work with the families, I can create a barrier of positive two-way communication with the student, families, and community to get Lucy the support she needs while at home and in school. I can determine how and why Lucy is acting out and determine ways to assist her in improving these barriers.

Reference

Hong, P. (2012). Intercultural Awareness in Professional Translators: Examples from Technical and Non-technical Documents. Translation Quarterly, (64), 20-31.

Kostelnik, M., Soderman, A., Whiren, A., & Rupiper, M.L. (2015). Developmentally appropriate curriculum: Best practices in early childhood education (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.