Families and Schools

Type 1: Parenting

Parenting involves schools helping families with basic needs such as housing, nutrition, and understanding developmentally appropriate practices. Schools that conduct parenting activities for diverse parents can solicit information from those families about their different cultures to help teachers work with students in productive and meaningful ways. One challenge that many schools indicate they face when implementing these types of activities is getting information to all families who want and need it, not just those families who attend workshops in the school.

One example of how a school implements parenting is from Howe Elementary School in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Although the boundaries of Howe Elementary span only 2 miles, teachers found that many parents did not know their neighbors. At Get to Know Your Neighbor Night, families ate dinner with others from their neighborhoods and participated in activities led by some of the school's different ethnic groups. Teachers circulated to help keep conversations lively. The school displayed a large map of the area so that families could see where others lived. Teachers used the map in class to teach reading and geography skills.

Type 2: Communicating

Communicating consists of two-way communication—school to home and home to school. Schools currently use a wide array of communication [Page 874]methods to keep families involved with their children's academic progress, including e-mail, newsletters, phone calls, report cards, and home visits. A challenge that some schools experience is communicating in a form (language and grade level) that parents can understand. Some schools use bilingual parents as translators and solicit advice from families about types of communication that are most beneficial.

Phalen Lake Hmong Studies Magnet School, located in St. Paul, Minnesota, serves many new immigrant families and is one of first schools focused on Hmong culture. As one activity, the school combined two established practices—Hmong New Year and Hmong Studies Showcase (focused on the school's core knowledge curriculum). The team scheduled the event twice—day and evening—to accommodate busy parents. Each grade level presented a song, dance, poem, or skit that highlighted new knowledge about the Hmong culture to share what they were learning with more than 700 attendees.

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