This week, you will continue to develop your Children, Families, and Communities Guidebook by completing the Developing Family Partnerships section. This week’s readings include Chapters 4-7 of the Gestwicki text and focuses on building family partnerships. Chapter 4 presents the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct (Links to an external site.) and Statement of Commitment, specifically describing the nine ideals connected to family involvement. These ideals support an early childhood education professional’s ethical responsibilities and commitments to the families in their settings. Using this chapter, as well as the content in the Gestwicki chapters and the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct (Links to an external site.), complete the Family Partnerships section and add it to your text-based or electronic Guidebook using the following requirements. An example of this section and requirements can be referenced in the Instructor Guidance.

Guidebook Setup: Last week, you chose either a text-based or electronic format for your guidebook. This week, you will continue to develop your existing work by adding a new section titled, “Developing Family Partnerships.” You will continue to build your Guidebook using your chosen format from last week.

Guidebook Developing Family Partnerships Section: For this section, you are going to develop nine personal statements of commitment, including action plans for how you will specifically develop family partnerships in your future or current role. For each of the nine NAEYC ethical responsibilities, specific to the family partnerships section, you will:

• Summarize the NAEYC code of ethical responsibility statement.
• Compose a personal commitment statement, specifically detailing how you will follow this code of ethics in your current or future role as an early childhood education professional.
• Describe your specific plan, including action steps, of how you will address this commitment statement, referencing a source, book, website, article or community resource to support each statement.

Content Expectations:

• Children, Families, and Communities Guidebook: Developing Family Partnerships Introduction: Set up your Children, Families, and Communities Guidebook with a section titled “Developing Family Partnerships.” For this section, include an introduction that explains what is included and why partnerships are important for families.
• Developing Family Partnerships Ideals: Using Chapter 4 of the Gestwicki text, specifically page 104 as a guide for the nine NAEYC Code of Ethics responsibilities to families, address the following for each of the nine ideals:
  • Summarize the NAEYC code of ethical responsibility.
  • Compose a personal commitment statement, specifically detailing how you will follow this code of ethics in your current or future role as an early childhood educator.
  • Describe your specific action plan to address this commitment statement, including at least four sources that support these statements. Your supporting sources can be an Internet resource, book, website, article, or community resource.

Writing and Formatting Expectations:

• Resource Support: Writing is substantiated by at least four supporting sources.
• Organization: Demonstrates logical progression of ideas within the writing.
• Syntax and Mechanics: Writing displays meticulous comprehension and organization of syntax and mechanics, such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
• APA Formatting: Paper is formatted properly and all four sources are cited and referenced in APA style, as outlined in APA title and reference pages are included.

NOTES:

4-5. Mandated Parent 

Involvement 

4-5. Mandated Parent Involvement

When the powers that control funding mandate family involvement as a program requirement, there is no longer any debate about whether to have parent participation. Several legislative efforts have included parent participation as part of the required structure in schools and agencies providing services to children. In addition, recent policies and practice guidelines have proclaimed specific directions for programs to follow in relation to families—sometimes in order to win accreditation or professional status. Several examples of mandated parent involvement will be discussed next.

4-5a. Head Start

We have already mentioned Head Start as an example of the research linking family involvement with children’s school success. From the beginning, Head Start was required to have “maximum feasible participation” of the families served. Head Start Performance Standards for family support and parent involvement include the following:

• Building relationships with parents as early as possible from enrollment and creating ongoing opportunities for parent involvement throughout the time children are in the program
• Helping families work toward their goals and linking families to or providing necessary services
• Making programs open to parents at any time, involving parents in the development of program curriculum, and providing parents opportunities to volunteer or become staff
• Providing parents with opportunities to enhance their parenting skills
• Helping parents become active partners in accessing health care for their children, making community services more responsive to their family needs, and transitioning their children into school
• Involving parents in program decision making and governance (Head Start Performance Standards, 2010)

Parents are given a concrete means of doing something for their children. The major role of decision maker is emphasized to offer parents opportunities to become competent in running the program. Parents set the standards for the hiring of professional staff—often interviewing and selecting staff. They also participate in decisions on budgetary matters. Parent decisionmakers influence the agency to become sensitive to the culture and needs of the families served.

4-5b. Title I

More recent federal initiatives authorize funds as part of Chapter I of Title I (of PL 100-297), reauthorized by the Literacy Involves Families Together (LIFT) Act of 2000 and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. Called Even Start, the family-centered education program funds local efforts to improve the educational opportunities for the nation’s low-income children and adults by integrating early childhood education and adult education for parents into a unified family-centered Focusing on children and parents as a unit, with the parents becoming active in their children’s development—not relating separately to parents and children.  literacy program. The mandate calls for the following:

• Early childhood education
• Adult basic and secondary education and instruction for English language learners
• Parenting education
• Interactive parent–child literacy activities (see Figure 4-10)

Each program funded by Title I funds must have a plan to involve families. Sample activities and services for families that may be funded by Title I include the following:

• Family literacy activities
• Parent meetings and training activities
• Transportation and child care so parents can come to school activities or volunteer in classrooms
• Parent resource centers
• Materials that parents can use to work with their children at home

An example of the mandated involvement for parents can be seen in a Parent/School Partnership agreement signed by parents whose children were participating in a pre-kindergarten program funded by Title I resources. In this agreement, parents agree to the following:

1. Make sure my child attends school regularly.
2. Make arrangements for my child before and after school; for example, arrange for an adult to wait with/for my child at the bus stop in the morning and in the afternoon.
3. Keep immunizations/physicals up to date and handle any medical needs that arise.
4. Attend the orientation session for parents.
5. Attend conferences requested by my child’s teacher and be available for contact on a regular basis with staff (this may involve home visits, telephone conferences, or school/worksite conferences).
6. Participate in at least four parent/child/staff events during the year.
7. Read with my child and sign the reading log as required.
8. Participate with my child in regular at-home activities designed to promote literacy learning as requested by my child’s teacher.
9. Attend a minimum of five hours of family–school partnership workshops offered by the school.
10. Complete and return progress reports so there is open, ongoing communication between the teacher and myself.

Parents are informed that failure to fulfill these requirements may mean their child cannot remain in the program.