Standard 2: Building family and community relationships
Standard 2 focused on building family and community relationships. Standard two has the key elements of knowing about and understanding diverse family and community characteristics, supporting and engaging families and communities through respectful, reciprocal relationships, and involving families and communities in young children’s development and learning. This is something that is not only huge in early childhood education, but at every level of education.
The artifacts I have chosen to represent my understanding of this standard are an introduction letter, a permission slip I created, and our weekly newsletter, which I help write. These are the physical artifacts I have created throughout my practicum, but what I have found more valuable is the experience I have had with this standard. I cannot represent talking to my students and their parents through a piece of paper, but I will be describing some of the relationships I have developed with the families of my students.
In my practicum experience we have involved the families and communities in young children’s development and learning in many ways. Like I mentioned earlier we keep our parents involved in the class through our parent letters, and notes we have sent home but more importantly we have an open door policy in our classroom. Parents are able to visit us anytime their child is in our class. We especially encourage parents to come during our big parties such as Valentine’s Day, and Dr. Suess day. Parents are already involved in their children’s development and learning, but we help in the little ways we can. Depending on our students we do as little as sending home fun ideas that parents can do with their child at home, but if a parent asks for extra work to help their student with we send home work books, copies of things we are doing, and ideas for reading. In terms of development we help our parents see what is developmentally appropriate, such as phonemic writing in kindergarten, and what might be cause for concern.
Knowing and understanding diverse family and community characteristics mostly comes from us talking with our students and families and asking questions about what goes on at home. We learn as much as we can about our families to help us understand where they are coming from. My cooperating teacher and I understand a lot of the community characteristics because we have lived in the area for a while. My cooperating teacher has been in the area for 13 years, and I have been living here for 4 years (my grandmother lives in Ellensburg, so talking with her gives me a good idea of the community). The community has stayed involved in the learning and development of our students because of how much they come into the schools to help teach our students. The fire fighters came in to teach them fire safety, a sled team came in and we got to meet the dogs, and members of our community come in every Tuesday during Peer Learning Community (PLC) when all of the teachers are meeting up to discuss ideas for improving lessons and classrooms.
The most important point for this standard to me was supporting and engaging families and communities through respectful, reciprocal relationships. I have developed some great relationships throughout my practicum with the parents of my students. Many of them know me by name and write notes to me when they know there will be sub (such as when someone else is picking up their child). I have had to have conferences with parents about their child’s improvement and what else we can do to help them along. Every time I conference with a parent I also make sure that they know that we are a team; I am not going to make them work on things alone. I ask them what I can do to help them, and then tell them what we are planning to do at school to help their child. This approach has met with a lot of success so far, and I believe this is because I have spent time building relationships with my parents, even if the only thing I can do is smile and wave to them as they pick up their child.
The conversation that shows me I understand this standard is a relationship I have with a mother. Her child moved from the PM class to the AM class, and she came to me when he was complaining about it at home and talking about how he missed his friends. We developed a plan to help him feel more comfortable in the AM class, and I found other students that were very friendly to pair him with. He has since come a long way, and is no longer complaining to his mother about not being able to make friends.
I had another incident with this student and his mother while we were trying to build up his confidence in the AM class. One day he brought a knife to school, a day that I not only had a substitute teacher, but the principal was also gone. I was not completely sure what the approach to handling weapons in this school was, so I did what I thought was right. I confiscated the weapon, and when we sent them home I walked the boy out to his mother and told her about the knife. I told her that he was not in trouble, but I did want her to know that he was able to find a knife and bring it to school. I believe that the relationship I had begun developing with her really helped me when I had to have this conversation with her. She did not react as though she felt attacked, or was angry. She was surprised, but I believe that us discussing everything together was a help. I was not trying to accuse her, and I was not someone new that she had never spoken to before.
Family is a huge part of our student’s lives, and the community is a huge part of what makes up our school. I believe that is important to try and understand each family, and as much of the community as possible when you are trying to help and understand your students. Their families and communities are a huge indication of how they were brought up and will tell you things about them.
I believe that I have shown that I meet this standard because I have been able to build those relationships, and I celebrate when families or members of the community are able to make it into the classroom. We have never said “no” to anyone who wanted to come into our classroom, and we always respect the ideas and opinions of our families. As a teacher it is important to in cooperate as much of family and community as we can in our classroom. It helps develop the classroom community that we should be striving to build.
The artifacts I have chosen to represent my understanding of this standard are an introduction letter, a permission slip I created, and our weekly newsletter, which I help write. These are the physical artifacts I have created throughout my practicum, but what I have found more valuable is the experience I have had with this standard. I cannot represent talking to my students and their parents through a piece of paper, but I will be describing some of the relationships I have developed with the families of my students.
In my practicum experience we have involved the families and communities in young children’s development and learning in many ways. Like I mentioned earlier we keep our parents involved in the class through our parent letters, and notes we have sent home but more importantly we have an open door policy in our classroom. Parents are able to visit us anytime their child is in our class. We especially encourage parents to come during our big parties such as Valentine’s Day, and Dr. Suess day. Parents are already involved in their children’s development and learning, but we help in the little ways we can. Depending on our students we do as little as sending home fun ideas that parents can do with their child at home, but if a parent asks for extra work to help their student with we send home work books, copies of things we are doing, and ideas for reading. In terms of development we help our parents see what is developmentally appropriate, such as phonemic writing in kindergarten, and what might be cause for concern.
Knowing and understanding diverse family and community characteristics mostly comes from us talking with our students and families and asking questions about what goes on at home. We learn as much as we can about our families to help us understand where they are coming from. My cooperating teacher and I understand a lot of the community characteristics because we have lived in the area for a while. My cooperating teacher has been in the area for 13 years, and I have been living here for 4 years (my grandmother lives in Ellensburg, so talking with her gives me a good idea of the community). The community has stayed involved in the learning and development of our students because of how much they come into the schools to help teach our students. The fire fighters came in to teach them fire safety, a sled team came in and we got to meet the dogs, and members of our community come in every Tuesday during Peer Learning Community (PLC) when all of the teachers are meeting up to discuss ideas for improving lessons and classrooms.
The most important point for this standard to me was supporting and engaging families and communities through respectful, reciprocal relationships. I have developed some great relationships throughout my practicum with the parents of my students. Many of them know me by name and write notes to me when they know there will be sub (such as when someone else is picking up their child). I have had to have conferences with parents about their child’s improvement and what else we can do to help them along. Every time I conference with a parent I also make sure that they know that we are a team; I am not going to make them work on things alone. I ask them what I can do to help them, and then tell them what we are planning to do at school to help their child. This approach has met with a lot of success so far, and I believe this is because I have spent time building relationships with my parents, even if the only thing I can do is smile and wave to them as they pick up their child.
The conversation that shows me I understand this standard is a relationship I have with a mother. Her child moved from the PM class to the AM class, and she came to me when he was complaining about it at home and talking about how he missed his friends. We developed a plan to help him feel more comfortable in the AM class, and I found other students that were very friendly to pair him with. He has since come a long way, and is no longer complaining to his mother about not being able to make friends.
I had another incident with this student and his mother while we were trying to build up his confidence in the AM class. One day he brought a knife to school, a day that I not only had a substitute teacher, but the principal was also gone. I was not completely sure what the approach to handling weapons in this school was, so I did what I thought was right. I confiscated the weapon, and when we sent them home I walked the boy out to his mother and told her about the knife. I told her that he was not in trouble, but I did want her to know that he was able to find a knife and bring it to school. I believe that the relationship I had begun developing with her really helped me when I had to have this conversation with her. She did not react as though she felt attacked, or was angry. She was surprised, but I believe that us discussing everything together was a help. I was not trying to accuse her, and I was not someone new that she had never spoken to before.
Family is a huge part of our student’s lives, and the community is a huge part of what makes up our school. I believe that is important to try and understand each family, and as much of the community as possible when you are trying to help and understand your students. Their families and communities are a huge indication of how they were brought up and will tell you things about them.
I believe that I have shown that I meet this standard because I have been able to build those relationships, and I celebrate when families or members of the community are able to make it into the classroom. We have never said “no” to anyone who wanted to come into our classroom, and we always respect the ideas and opinions of our families. As a teacher it is important to in cooperate as much of family and community as we can in our classroom. It helps develop the classroom community that we should be striving to build.
family_friendly_letter.docx | |
File Size: | 12 kb |
File Type: | docx |
permission_slip.docx | |
File Size: | 12 kb |
File Type: | docx |