Standard 7: Family, community, and professional partnerships in a diverse society

Standard
7: Family, community, and professional partnerships in a diverse society
Educators
should view their students’ families as partners in their work. They should understand that children’s
academic success is fostered by strong communication, shared goals, and
mutually reinforcing practices, and that children’s motivation and sense of
well-being in the classroom is supported by the setting’s affirmation of the
child’s home and culture. Educators
should define their professional responsibilities to include a commitment to
their colleagues, their settings, their profession, and their communities. They should be familiar with legal, ethical,
and policy issues, and understand the importance of advocating for children,
families, and themselves in a variety of professional, political, and
policymaking contexts.
7.1 View
students’ families as partners in their work with students.
7.2 Understand
that children’s academic success is fostered by strong communication, shared
goals, and mutually reinforcing practices.
7.3 Understand
that children’s motivation and sense of well –being in the classroom is
supported by the affirmation of their homes and cultures.
7.4 Define
professional responsibilities to include commitment to growth/development of
colleagues, settings, profession and communities.
7.5 Familiar
with legal, ethical, and policy issues.
7.6 Understand
importance of advocating for children, families and themselves in a variety of
professional, political and policy-making contexts.

Standard 7 is very important in the sense that it is one
of the main standards that truly defines what is special and unique about
Wheelock College. Ever since I entered the college as a freshman, Wheelock has
constantly promoted a strong relationship with community. From the
extra-curricular activities on campus to the athletics, almost every
organization at Wheelock is dedicated to giving back to the community, creating
a diverse society, and creating professional partnerships with families.
Throughout
my time at Wheelock, I’ve expressed and engaged myself in activities and
programs that preach to the components of standard 7: Fostering family,
community and professional partnerships in a diverse society. Through my
engagement in activities and programs, I’ve come to understand that being a
part of the community is extremely important and can be achieved through a
variety of ways. As part of Wheelock College’s chapter of Pi Gamma Mu, a social
science honor society, I’ve learned how creating a professional partnership in
a diverse society and giving back to families in local communities is
incredibly rewarding. Through activities created by Pi Gamma Mu such as the
Cheerful Giving Wheel, we as an organization gave back to local families in
Roxbury and surrounding towns who were in need of presents during the winter
holiday season. As a cross country runner at Wheelock College, our team also
participated in and promoted community involvement as evidenced by our annual
volunteer work at the Boston Marathon.
Through
my involvement in Pi Gamma Mu and the Cross Country team, I’ve learned what it
means to truly be involved with the local community and interact with local
families through programs. Now, as an elementary major at Wheelock College,
I’ve taken what I’ve learned about family, community, and professional
partnerships through my activities at Wheelock, and applied them to my work as
an elementary educator. Standard 7 is
essential for me to incorporate into my future classroom. I believe that family
and community involvement is incredibly important to a classroom, especially in
terms of creating a close classroom community. Incorporating students’ families
and cultures into many aspects of the classroom will allow students to feel
comfortable and familiar. Students will
become interested in other students’ cultures. It is important to listen to
parents and families and individual children as they define and identify their
memberships in social and cultural groups.
This will enrich the diversity within the classroom. The Racial and
Cultural Identities (RCI) course at Wheelock was the defining class that made
me think of family and community completely differently. In that course, we
embraced Ooka Pang’s (2004) broad definition of culture and her view that parents
are the first teachers of culture. Ooka
Pang explains, “Families are holders and
teachers of culture. Your parents were some of your most important
teachers. They taught you how they expected you to act and how to talk to and
work with others. When you were young, you learned from your parents, siblings,
friends, and neighbors” (p. 43). As a future teacher, it is essential that I
continue to learn about culture, family,
and community in order to understand my students’ different backgrounds and family
histories.
I
have also learned from the ideas of Mary Cowhey, author of, Black Ants and Buddhists: Thinking
Critically and Teaching Differently in the Primary Grades (2006). Cowhey retells her experience as a teacher by
explaining the most genuine, heart-felt, interesting and engaging lessons that
captivated me while I was reading them. Each lesson, activity, project or
morning meeting was filled with ways for the students to think in culturally
diverse ways that promoted classroom community. To do so, Cowhey incorporated
her students’ families into the classroom by honoring families’ beliefs. When
one student questioned whether or not it was right to stomp on ants that came
around during snack time in the classroom, Cowhey realized that the question was
packed tightly with diverse cultural beliefs. When Cowhey asked the students
what to do, each one had a different opinion. Cowhey decided that instead of
letting the problem go, and instituting a single solution, she would require
her students to use research to solve the problem. Cowhey and her students surveyed the students’
families and brought in guests from the community. Cowhey delineates the
concept of thinking critically by explaining that, “Instead of forcing
assimilation and acceptance of dominant culture, it reexamines cultural
assumptions and values and considers their larger ramifications. Every
student’s voice was heard in this process, through philosophical discussions,
meetings with guests, reflecting on books, listening and talking with visitors,
and writing to friends and elders to ask their opinion” (p.13). Cowhey used
family, friends, guests, visitors, and community members as resources for her
students. She demonstrated how to solve
a classroom issue in a culturally-responsive way.
Cowhey
also provided a variety of ways for her students to interact with the local
community. She encouraged her students
to donate time at the local shelter. These donations did not include a can
drive, but rather a critical discussion and understanding of poverty while
determining the best way as a class and community to give back. Also, in order
to see her students outside of the classroom environment, Cowhey visited her
students at their home during the summer before school started. This allowed
her to know her students on a different level, which helped her teach them more
effectively and personally. In my future classroom, I also would like to visit
each student’s family before school starts to see them in their home
environment.
In
my pre-practicum at the Lawrence School in Brookline, I was a part of a third
grade class from January to May. This experience was very rewarding, and I
undoubtedly learned that the third grade classroom I was a part of would not be
the same if it were not for the parental involvement that occurred. My
supervising practitioner at the site believed in family and community
involvement so much so that she created what she called, “Secret Reader.”
Secret Reader was a reader that she would secretly assign to read a book to the
class in the morning every Friday. She would plan in advance who would do each
week, and mostly she would call parents, grandparents, or any family friend of
the students that were in her class. The parent, grandparents, or any other
person would have to keep it a secret to the student they were related to in
the class, because the students would be surprised every Friday with who the
secret reader could possibly be! This was very exciting for all students, and
especially exciting for the student whose parent was in the chair. Having the
class get to know each student’s family was very special for all of the
students and enhanced classroom community. I thought that the Secret Reader was
such a great family-based activity to have as a part of the classroom each
week, that I decided to record each Secret Reader in an album that was
displayed outside of the classroom. During my time there, I took pictures of
each parent, printed the pictures, and described what book they read. The scrapbook was displayed outside of the
room for other students and staff to review. The scrapbook was a good example
of how to incorporate family into the classroom.
Also,
in my pre-practicum classroom, my supervising practitioner had the students
write about their special places in a form of a poem that they had or they
shared with their family. These special places could be about anything the
student liked to be with his or her family and why it was special to him or
her. These special places were a great way to show the diversity among family
in a fun and creative way. The students in the classroom would read each others
poems and learn about each person’s family and their special places that they
shared together. This special place activity was displayed out in the hallway
of the classroom, and serves as artifact 7.1.
My
supervising practitioner always invited parents to come in as guest speakers if
they had knowledge about the unit of the month. During the time I was in the
third grade classroom, the students were learning about the science of building
bridges. Therefore, my supervising practitioner knew that one of the student’s
mothers was an architect, so she invited her to talk to the class about
architecture and some of the buildings or bridges she has worked on around
Boston. Similarly, the students were learning about number systems in math, and
so my supervising practitioner invited in one student’s fathers who worked at
Google in Cambridge to talk about how he uses numbers to work with computers.
These discussions that the parents had with the students were enriching and the
students seemed so interested and engaged. I will definitely bring in family
members to my future classroom that are familiar with or can relate to the
subject matter that the students are learning. Also, inviting in guest speakers
is another great way to incorporate outside resources and the community into
the classroom.
The
second part of standard 7: Understand that academic success is fostered by
strong communication, shared goals and mutually reinforcing practices (7.2) is
also something that I believe I have achieved through my pre-practicum. My
supervising practitioner had 3 students with Individualized Education Programs
(IEPs). One student in particular that my supervising practitioner worked very
closely with was on an IEP. He had a behavioral problem where he had to take
frequent breaks in a certain area of the room.
My teacher and his family discovered that by allowing this student to
use weights during stressful times, he became more relaxed. This was part of
his IEP, and my supervising practitioner would have bi-weekly meetings with his
mother to discuss the techniques that were working successfully, and to address
what my supervising practitioner and his mother could do to help him become
more comfortable and his behavior more regular in the classroom. I believe this
was a fantastic example of strong communication between home and school and
serves as artifact 7.2. My supervising practitioner as well as the student’s
mother created shared goals to ensure a better learning environment for the
student. Because they met bi-weekly, this showed they were mutually invested in
reinforcing ways to make his IEP as successful as possible.
Standard
7.3, Understand that motivation and sense of well-being in the classrooms is
supported by affirmation of students’ homes and cultures is also something that
I understand and have had experience with. A student’s home and culture is
definitely related to how he or she performs or interacts daily inside of the
classroom. Therefore, it is very important for teachers to gather an
understanding of each student’s individual home life and culture. In my
pre-practicum classroom, there were four Japanese English Language Learners
(ELLs). Each student could understand verbal direction in English, but had
difficulty working individually. Therefore, my supervising practitioner would
make alternative worksheets for the ELL students. She would translate some key
concepts into Japanese to provide them with a background of what they would be
learning. Also, my supervising practitioner invited the parents of some ELL
students in to share with the class stories and tales from their culture, and
to share food such as seaweed. All of the students loved hearing the Japanese
tales, and enjoyed trying different food from another culture. Also, when one student went to Argentina, she
displayed the items she brought back including a map and brochure along one of
the classroom walls for the other students to learn from. Because my
supervising practitioner modeled how to incorporate different cultures into the
classroom, I feel that I have several examples to draw on as I prepare to lead
my own classroom in the future and this serves as artifact 7.3.
Component
4 of standard 7 is related to professional development. I am particularly excited about this
component. Throughout my time at
Wheelock, I have become increasingly interested in literacy. In my Teaching
Non-fiction Literacy course, I fell in love with the learning and teaching of
literacy. Literacy is an area in which I
want to continue to explore and develop. A book I plan to read is Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry
Circles in Action (2009) by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels. Harvery
and Daniels’ ideas on leading small-group discussions to help with developing
students’ comprehension skills is something I would like to use in my future
classroom, this is shown as artifact 7.4.
I would also love to attend lectures by Howard Gardner (1983) to learn
more about his Multiple Intelligences. I
feel that his learning theory can easily be incorporated into the inclusive
classroom.
I
am familiar with the legal, ethical and policy issues associated with
elementary education (standard 7.5). I have been informed by my supervising
practitioners ethical and policy issues that are present in their school
systems. Also, through the course, Meeting Diverse Learning Needs, I also know
ethical and policy issues concerning IEPs (Individualized Education Plans). I
understand the process that goes into creating IEPs, and also analyzing IEPs. I
also know that as a future teacher, it will one day be my responsibility to utilize
an IEP in my classroom if one of my students has an IEP. My process of learning
these ethical responsibilities can be shown through an IEP analysis I created
that shows that I am aware of policy issues. This is shown through artifact
7.5.
Lastly,
the final part of standard 7 states that it is necessary for prospective
educators to understand the importance of advocating for children, families and
themselves in a variety of professional, political and policy-making contexts. In
one of my courses, we learned about the process of advocating for children with
special needs or children we needed an IEP. This process is very complex and
long, but through a guide that we received, the referral and IEP process seemed
more achievable. This guide and my notes that I took about advocating for
children is shown through artifact 7.6.
In
closing, not only is it important for me, as a prospective educator, to meet
all of the components that make up standard 7, but it is also important to
ensure that I have a positive impact on my students in regard to this
standard. I believe that by
incorporating the students’ family members into the classroom I will make
students feel comfortable in their learning environment. School will be an extension of home and home
an extension of school. By bringing in
family members, I will introduce students to different backgrounds and cultures
that create our diverse classroom. Similarly, by having Secret Readers and
community members come in to the classroom, students will understand that
learning is forever and that teachers surround them in the communities in which
they live. This will make learning more
memorable and exciting.


References
Cowhey, M. (2006). Black ants and buddhists: Thinking critically and teaching differently
in the primary grades.
Stenhouse Publishers.
Harvey, S. (2009) Comprehension and collaboration: Inquiry circles in action.
Portsmouth, NH: Library of
Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication-Data.
Ooka Pang, V. (2004). Multicultural education: Chapter 2, Why is culture important? The power of culture. Missing Publishing
information