Encouraging Parents and Family

Encouraging Parent/Family 2 Parent and family involvement is very important and should be encouraged at all times. It can sometimes be hard to get parents and family to get involved, but as long as your trying and encouraging them to be involved, you are making a difference. I plan to include my students; families and parent’s in everything we do at school. Whether it’s story time, centers, field trips or a holiday my classroom door will be open to the families. Family and parents of my students are a main focus because they need to be involved in their children’s school life and know what’s going on. In this paper I will discuss and explain how I plan to involve and encourage parents’ and explain the six types of parent and family involvement. The six types of parent and family involvement are parenting knowledge and skills, communication between the home and school, volunteering at the school and in the community, supporting student learning at home, involvement in decision making and advocacy, and collaboration with the community. Parenting knowledge and skills assist families with parenting skills and setting home conditions to support children as students and also assist schools to better understand families. (Epstein, Joyce, 2002) My classroom will always be family oriented and at the beginning of the year I would sit with the families and find out information about their children so I will be able to make the child feel as comfortable as possible in my classroom. I will have workshops and parent meetings to let the family know the school and classroom’s policies, rules, procedures and programs available. I will give parents and other family member’s skills as classroom aides, club and activity sponsors, curriculum planners, and policy decision makers, when parents and other family members are viewed as experts, empowerment results. (Morrison, 2009) I will also encourage all parents to join the classroom to see what we do and how

References: Epstein, Joyce, (2002). School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, Second Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc. Retrieved from: http://www.csos.jhu.edu/P2000/nnps_model/school/sixtypes.htm Morrison, George, (2009). Early Childhood Education Today, Eleventh Edition. Pearson Education. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.