Involving Families as partners

My message this week will be short, yet extremely relevant to the reading. I'm leaving tomorrow for a week long conference in Atlanta, GA. The conference is a Family Strengthening Summit, which will be attended by hundreds of programs throughout the nation that offer "exemplary" practices. The practices are focused on preventing child abuse and neglect.
In 2003, my program was assessed by individuals representing the Center for Social Policy. The end result of a one week review was a letter congratulating the program for meeting criteria necessary to be considered exemplary. My goal in attending this conference is to gain ideas from other programs that I can bring back to Maui and implement, or share with other partners. It's amazing how we, as professionals, connect and share ideas with the intent to spread a positive message throughout communities.
I attended this same summit in San Diego back in 2007. I learned that many states have changed the "Child Abuse and Prevention Month", to "Family Strengthening Month". I liked the feel of this title much better and offered it as a suggestion to some state representatives connected to supporting families. Unfortunately, they were not ready to embrace the same level of understanding that I had - so it remains child abuse and prevention.
Family Strengthening requires a high level of family involvement. The exemplary practices that we as a Head Start program implement all connect to partnering and communicating with families. I regard parents as their child's first teacher. I believe that parents know their child much better than I do, and hold the key in impacting their child's education. I only have the child for one to two years - parents have them for a much longer time. My goal is to create lasting positive practices with parents to promote support, time, care, and nurturing for attachment with their child. The relationship of the family is enhanced when these factors are present.
It's extremely difficult to be supportive when you have parents that seem to have their priorities out of sync. I find it challenging to work with parents that are abrasive, loud, angry, and mean to their children. As a teacher, I think about the long term affects on the child from living in this kind of an environment. Trying to assist a parent to see life from their child's perspective is not an easy task. Many times, the parent is repeating life based on the kind of parenting received as a child. Breaking that cycle takes a great deal of support, reflection, trust, and learning that other options do exist.
Parents usually are blown away when they witness their child following through on tasks in the classroom. A common one is "I can never get my kid to clean up at home. How come in school she always help out?". This is my opening to take this parent into the world of possibilities. We talk about setting up routines, organizing the environment so children can assist to put things away independently, and providing a reminder that clean-up time is happening in five minutes so we can clean up before dinner (or whatever activity comes next). The time and energy put into this interaction can be the start of this parent opening up their mind to realize that there is another way to deal with the child. Parents can see that we do not use physical punishment in school in order to encourage children to do daily tasks.
The October 20 Exchange article titled "Bonnie's New Blog" touched on some of my thoughts shared about the Family Strengthening Summit. Debra Sullivan offered some thoughts about community, and asked the question, "How do we create these communities in our world today?", in reference to creating communities that are strong. Bonnie felt that the blog might be one of the ways to share information. The summit is another. Any possible way that programs can share their thoughts, practices, ideas, and successes with each other brings light to a number of people. We are all partners in this field of supporting children and families. I find great joy in learning something new...and have the same level of pleasure when I can share something in return.
On the October 22 Exchange, the quote from Mother Teresa summed the thought of family involvement perfectly. She stated "To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it." I see the lamp as being the family and the oil as being the support provided to help them to keep "burning" bright.
One area that I find extremely interesting in Head Start is the effort places on leader development. Parents are welcomed to be involved in program design, approving policies and other vital areas of management. Parents make up the overall membership of Policy Council, a governing body of Head Start. Our program just had the first Policy Council meeting of 2009-10 school year this past week. The newly elected Chairperson already had one activity connected to her new role - we had a Risk Management meeting yesterday (Friday, Oct. 23) where she was part of a team teleconference with the San Francisco office. I was so impressed by her articulate manner and professionalism. I'm really excited to work with her during this term (one year). This is a federal monitoring year for my program, so her involvement as well as all the other parents, is critical to succeeding in the area of Governance. I'm really proud of her!
One more story to share regarding Policy Council. We had a mother last year on Policy Council as a center representative. She attended most every meeting and was extremely involved. Her life goal was to complete her GED. She completed this goal, and is now enrolled at Maui Community College working on a degree in Human Services. I wanted to feature this person as a success story in our agency Annual Report. When I asked her for an interview to draft her story, she very humbly could not believe why I selected her. After listening to her story ( which she disclosed personal information linked to various abuse in her lifetime as a child and adolescent) I was even more impressed at her tenacious spirit of survival. She credited her success to the Head Start program. She shared that is was "amazing and brilliant" to use parents in the capacity as decision makers for the program. She felt important, that her voice truly mattered. As a director, I felt a great sense of accomplishment for this mother and her family.
Some parents are not ready to walk through that door and give time and energy for the purpose of being involved. Others continue to give, regardless of their energy level. Our goal as program staff is to keep that door open and continue inviting parents to join in and participate. You never know when the oil will strike and the light goes on to say "yes, I'll be there" and actually show up, ready to engage.
In response to the comment from Jeanne: Yes - time is an issue for my staff as well. Disrupting the beliefs will take a great deal of effort, however I feel that teachers may not clearly see the value (lack of by-in) regarding the project approach. Many teachers gained knowledge in thematic approach - I'm one of them. Watching the Lillian Katz video offered me a different way to look at the project approach. I realized how valuable the entire process was for the child. Time constraints are more adult problems, not children problems. If the idea is framed in a way to allow teachers to see the overwhelming benefit for children, they might have better acceptance of this approach. Additional to this, administrators need to be supportive to say "the process of learning outweighs the product". This mantra would give teachers a clear message to take your time - like quality vs quantity. It's the quality of the curriculum and learning that matters most.
Regarding Head Start moving out of the thematic approach - I believe we're ready to make that move. Head Start support programs to individualize their own curriculum and have it reflected in their program. Parents approve the program curriculum - we use Creative Curriculum in my program. We can easily adopt the project approach and still use the Creative Curriculum model. I think it would enhance the classroom and celebrate learning of young children.
In this generation of immediate gratification, I think the project approach is most appropriate as a system to slow down and explore, discover, analyze, and learn.
The Lillian Katz video was shown by Julie Powers in her ED 264 (Inquiry with Young Children) class - I'm a student in her class. I'm enjoying the experience and learning so much! My education as a preschool teacher took place in 1988 - 1991. Today, there's new information to digest and I'm taking it all in. It's a celebration of learning!