Blog #2: Family-School Connection

I feel that students have more chances at being successful in school when there is a strong family-school connection. I would like to welcome families into the classroom by having positive communication and positive relationships with the parents. I would want to reach out to parents and make myself available to them through phone calls, emails and website like edmodo. I’d also like to know what their ideas are when in comes to their child’s education. I think I could begin to build these relationships by scheduling home visits the first few weeks of school to get to know the children, their families and their communities as it was proposed in “Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms” (Gonzales, Moll, & Amanti, 2005).

I would like to be sensitive to the students’ home environment by following a set of homework guidelines that I found on the Race to Nowhere website. The three guidelines are that homework should advance the spirit of learning, be student-directed, and promote a balanced schedule. I think this is a great way to re-envision homework as I have seen homework (and classroom) assignments drain children and impede their natural creativity. How would it work in a real classroom? Now that’s something I’d like to find out. Yosso (2005) talked about the cultural capital that communities of color posses. I want to create an environment where students and families know that they all have cultural wealth and that we can use these different funds of knowledge in the classroom and to solve real world issues.

Finally, I would like to invite parents and family to participate in their children’s literacy development by providing an allotted time for classroom readings. For example, I could have 15–20 minutes available once a week for parents and family members to bring in a book and read in the classroom. I think this would be a great way to connect literacy in the home to the classroom. I can only imagine how excited children might be to have their loved ones come into the classroom to read their favorite book.

Gonzales, N., Moll, L.C., Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms. New York, NY: Routledge.

Yosso, T. J. (2005) Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education. Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 69–91. doi:10.1080/1361332052000341006

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