Week 4: Working with communities, families and stakeholders

View
Previous
Next

2. Creating community connections

2.2. Working with stakeholders - parents, carers and families

Just as every child is unique so is every family and their circumstances.  Teachers may not know if “family” means a step-parent, grandparent or other relative or migrant worker as care giver but they may see the impact positive or negative on the child in their classroom.

We asked a focus group of global educators to contribute their experiences to this course. They said teachers have to be prepared that some parents might be positive and proactive in working together for their child’s needs, but others might have low expectations, negative attitudes or be in denial about what can be done.  Whether positive or negative, educators believed it is important to attempt to reach all families and to give an individualised approach.

You might want to think about reasons why some families are  hard to reach. For example, is it because they are too busy working or too ill due or too poor or too afraid to approach teachers?

A leader of a school may have to work hard and take time to build trust with some families. When  the aim is to develop a  real dialogue with a two-way flow of information and work together then there may need to be training for teachers to overcome stereotypes about a language minority or poor parents. It is important to make use of facts and data and to work beyond “a deficit mode” or negative view  of a poor or stigmatised community. As part of this access to data can help to target specific groups including children who are missing from school.

Next please work through two activities about improving work with families and communities.

Activity 4.2 Working with families

Allow approximately 20 minutes for this activity.

Read this short case study of leadership of a primary school in Jamaica and then write in your notebook. 

The new headteacher is keen to welcome parents into the school to support children’s learning.  He believes the school belongs to everyone in the community and that everyone should have a place and a voice. Since arriving in post, he has made several changes to increase family participation.

  1. Firstly, the school has an open-door policy. This means parents are welcome to visit at any time to discuss any issues about their children. Teachers leave their classroom doors open and at any time the headteacher can hear the rhythms and atmosphere of the day to day work in the classrooms and corridors.  This is change because previously there was a lot of fear in the school
  2. Before school there is a breakfast club providing free food and social support for children who need it. This is a change because previously some children were too hungry to concentrate
  3. The parent teacher association is active in the community and parents speak up at meetings. This is a change because previously the meetings were very formal and poorly attended.
  4. Parents receive regular newsletters with aspirational stories celebrating children’s learning. This is a change because previously the only information shared was administrative.
  • Imagine you are a governor at this school, or a member of the school management committee, what questions would you ask the head teacher about their strategy for communicating with parents? Make some suggestions for a further change to develop two-way information .
  • After studying this list, decide which of the strategies might be easy or difficult to use in your own context and how long it might take to establish these changes
  • Now think about a context known to you. Write a short post in the Week 4 forum giving another example of ways in which schools can work with families.
Previous
Next