Friday 7 October 2016

Engaging Parents and Families: The Importance of Relationships in Reading Recovery


As we begin our school year and start working with our Reading Recovery students, we not only start to establish and foster relationships with our students, but also with their families. As we consider those initial conversations and meetings with our families, we invite you to think about how we build relationships of reciprocity and trust. Research demonstrates that when strong, consistent, and reciprocal linkages exist between home and school, it has a positive impact on the developing student’s well-being and subsequent academic achievement (Garbarino: 1992, 27). Furthermore, when we reach out to our students’ families we learn so much more about the little person who is sitting beside us for 30 minutes every day!

 Debbie Pushor, Professor from the University of Saskatchewan, considers the optimal relationship between home and school to be bidirectional; she considers it to be mutually beneficial and for information and communication to flow freely between home and school. In her article, “Looking In, Looking Out,”  Pushor discourages educators from adopting the stance of “If only these parents would…..” or “These parents just don't care enough” (Pushor: 2011, 1) Instead of “looking out” and focusing on the challenges in our families and communities, Pushor encourages us to be “looking in” and to learn about our families and community and appreciate the “richness and complexity” of their daily lives (2). Therefore, when you meet with your Reading Recovery families, it is helpful to not only share information about Reading Recovery and how they can support home learning, but to also learn about what home literacy practices their family might engage in at home and about their child’s strengths and interests. For example, by communicating closely with families, the Reading Recovery teacher might learn that the family approaches literacy by engaging in an oral tradition of story-telling rather than a traditional format of reading story books aloud. This discovery allows teachers to recognize the rich resource that the student can draw from.  We can celebrate and honour the student’s sense of story and oral language as a starting point to build upon.

Accessing parent knowledge and getting to know children and families at the onset of the lesson series further supports a successful Roaming Around the Known period during which the teacher and student transition into lessons and “get to know one another and develop useful ways of interacting” (Clay: 2005a, 32). This will support the development of what Clay refers to as the “keynote” of Roaming Around the Known: “confidence, ease, flexibility, and with luck, discovery (32).”  Parent knowledge is such rich resource for us to help us glean more information about our students while fostering that relationship between home and school!

What  might  we do to foster parent engagement and support our Reading Recovery families?

Oftentimes, we become frustrated when we learn that families aren’t engaging in the home-school practice as we had hoped. Instead of  considering this as a contributing factor to the student’s lack of accelerated progress, we might consider thinking outside the box to encourage other ways in which to support families for whom home practice is a challenge. When Clay talks about home and school practice, she states that “[s]chools may sometimes need to ensure in some way that someone listens to the Reading Recovery child read his take-home book, even providing for this to happen at school” (Clay; 2005b, 99).  Perhaps we can take Clay’s statement as an invitation to set up alternate supports for children at school such as reading with an older student, a support staff member, or perhaps a volunteer. Questioning children if they have read their stories at home when we suspect they have not, may cause undue stress for students that will get in the way of their learning. The reason for which home practice is not occurring is oftentimes outside the control of the family and we need to support families rather than contribute to their stress.

Comparably, some families may find it difficult to come into the school to observe a Reading Recovery lessons during the instructional day. This might present another opportunity to think outside the box and think of alternate ways for a parent to view a lesson. Instead, a lesson observation might occur after school, or during a Meet the Family Evening, or perhaps the Reading Recovery teacher might videotape a lesson to share with the family.

Thinking about this important topic and writing this post has helped me consider the importance of what we can learn from families, and not just what we can “teach” them. It is my hope that you might be inspired to consider parent engagement through this revised lens in order to best support our learners and their families.

References:

Clay, Marie. (2005a) Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals: Part One, Why? When? And How? Heinemann, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

 

Clay, Marie. (2005b) Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals: Part Two, Teaching Procedures. Heinemann, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

 

Garbarino, James. (1992) Children and Families in the Social Environment. Hawthorne, NY Walter de Gruyter Inc. 1992.

 

Pushor, Debbie. (Sept 2011) Looking Out, Looking In. Educational Leadership. Vol 69, Issue 1, pp. 65-68.

 

Further Reading:

 
http://www.etfo.ca/Resources/ForTeachers/Documents/Research%20for%20Teachers%20-%20Number%201%20-%20Parent%20Engagement.pdf