Preface

We, the authors, collaboratively wrote and designed this interactive, open access textbook to support personnel preparation across professional contexts. Each of us came to this work from different backgrounds. We grew up in different regions of the U.S. and Iran, spoke varied languages at home, experienced different levels of financial means and constraints, celebrated different holidays, and worked in diverse communities. As we began our professional journeys, we realized the importance of family partnership and collaboration, as well as our own perspectives and experiences. This book represents our journeys to the work of family and community partnerships and our hope for greater collaboration moving forward.

Adria Hoffman’s story

I remember well my excitement and anticipation as I prepared for my first year as a middle school teacher. Shortly before the school year began, I received an email on behalf of a group of parent organization leaders who requested a meeting with me prior to the start of the school year. They wanted to discuss their fundraising priorities and ensure that I understood their desire to see their children achieve high assessment scores and to feel challenged by the curriculum. I taught in a school community that encompassed both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, over 70 spoken languages, multiple races and ethnicities, and varied family structures. The distinction between families with the resources to provide extensive opportunities for their children and those who lacked the financial means to do so immediately struck me. I was also struck by the differences between those who knew how to navigate the school division policies and systems to advocate effectively for their children and those whose experiences with the local schools were limited or nonexistent. Some of my students’ families didn’t attend conferences or return permission slips, but seemed both surprised and comfortable when I asked if I could meet them at their workplace or somewhere else in the community to obtain signatures or touch base about their children’s progress. In these settings, they openly shared their goals, discussed prior challenges communicating with teachers, and expressed gratitude for my willingness to quite literally meet them where they were. As I met more students’ families who served at local restaurants and frequented the same parks where I walked my dog, received handwritten notes from those without consistent phone or internet service, and attended meetings with families, I wondered how educators might value informal communications as highly as formal communications. Where do we place value and whose voices are heard? For me, the most rewarding aspect of teaching was building relationships with families and seeing the results: students who felt seen and valued by the adults in their lives, resulting in greater learning and growth. The opportunity to contribute to this resource fills a need that I and many other novice teachers had as we began our teaching careers: a resource that zoomed in on our regional and local contexts, with interactive elements to practice the discrete skills that help create, strengthen, and sustain strong relationships with all families.

Christine Spence’s story

My professional career began when I worked in an outpatient therapy clinic as a pediatric music therapist, seeing one child each hour throughout the day. While parents or caregivers were always invited and welcome to join the sessions, several chose not to, preferring to stay in the waiting room or run errands during their child’s therapy session. I felt that I was able to really talk with the caregivers who were present during sessions, find out what went well during the week, and what they wanted to focus on during that day’s session. I had my goals, but adapted if caregivers had something else in mind. However, I still felt that the sessions were driven by my suggestions, even when asking for caregiver input. For the caregivers who did not actively participate in sessions, I always checked in with them during drop-off and then shared a written note and verbal summary of the session at the end. The input just wasn’t the same, and I always tried to discuss how important it would be for the caregiver to join. While working at this clinic, I started to see infants and toddlers who were enrolled through the state Part C Early Intervention system. Part C has a priority to provide services in a child’s “natural environment” which typically means home or other community settings such as child care, rather than an outpatient clinic. While some of the children did come to the clinic, I found that the conversations I had with families in their homes were much more in depth, full of rich information about their wishes for their children. I was also able to see specific examples of what the child could or could not do in their own home, with familiar people and in a familiar place. The session goals transformed from those I set in advance to how I could support the family’s goals for their child. This was particularly important in the racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse community that I worked, and specifically with families whose backgrounds differed from my own. I found that the philosophy of early intervention, with a parent coaching model, really fit with my own values. Even when I saw children in the clinic, I was more intentional about truly including the family and gathering information from them in a very different way than I had previously. The shift from What does the assessment and IFSP, IEP, or goal sheet say? to What does the family want for their child this week? really changed who I was as an interventionist. I think beginning with the family’s goals, rather than mine, paved the way for amazing interactions. Learning to really listen, being open to an idea or strategy that I hadn’t considered previously, and shifting the focus from what the professional can do to what the family wants transformed my practice. I thank all of the families who helped me on this journey, shared their hopes and dreams with me, and taught me so much. I hope that I can share some of what I learned from you. Thank you!

Judy Paulick’s story

Between my sophomore and junior years of college at a primarily white-serving institution in upstate New York, I had a job at what was then called Summerbridge (now Breakthrough Collaborative). The goal of the program was to get middle schoolers from diverse social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds more engaged with schooling and conventionally successful high school and college students engaged with and interested in teaching. Having grown up in suburban New Jersey in a community that was almost entirely white and Asian-American, it was my first experience working side-by-side with racially and economically marginalized children and colleagues. I assumed that my enthusiasm, creativity, and hard work would be enough to forge connections; I also assumed that my good intentions were enough. My lack of awareness of my own privilege and of my students’ and their families’ experiences of oppression was brought home during one staff meeting, when a Black colleague called me and my white coworkers out: “Who do you think you are teaching our children?” She was right: Who was I? How did I have the right to work with children and families if I did not know their stories and struggles? And what was an appropriate role for me as a teacher, given my background, in teaching and in social justice work more broadly? Thus began a lifetime of working to answer those questions. I read and listened and learned about issues of social justice and oppression and my own role and responsibility. That summer and during my time as an elementary classroom teacher in Compton, California, I spent as much time as possible getting to know my students and their families. I walked children home from school, attended soccer games and siblings’ quinceaneras, and often spent evenings on the phone with caregivers. Similarly, as a Peace Corps volunteer working as a lecturer at the teacher training college in Tonga, I got to know my students and colleagues in and out of the classroom. These trusting relationships not only made my time in those roles infinitely more enjoyable, they also made me a better human and a better teacher. Who am I and what is my role in social justice work? As a teacher educator at the University of Virginia, I work with future and current teachers as they unpack and understand their own cultures and positionalities, appreciate the enormous assets that all families provide for their children, begin to understand the systemic and oppressive forces that create challenges for many of their students and families, and use what they are learning to create more welcoming and responsive classrooms and curricula.

Maryam Sharifian’s story

On January 2nd, 2013, my plane landed at Buffalo International Airport. I came to the United States of America from Iran to pursue my dream to obtain my PhD in Early Childhood Education and become a professor. Less than a week after my arrival, I started my position as a Lead teacher in Toddler’s classroom at the Early Childhood Research Center (ECRC) of University at Buffalo. I had no idea how to be a teacher in America and how to communicate with children and families for whom English was their first language. It did not take too long to learn that a few families in ECRC also were from different countries and English was their second or third language. It was a relief at first to learn that I was not alone. However, almost all of my co-teachers and colleagues were English-speaking, native-born Americans. From my initial communication with families, I realized that immigrant families were more comfortable to approach me. Their toddlers in the classroom felt the same way and chose me as their favorite teacher to follow me around the room and sit on my lap during circle time. What was the rationale behind this relationship? Was it my skin color, accent, lack of experience, sense of collectivist culture that was unintentionally shared in my communication? It was a big question for me. After less than one semester, I found my voice and felt more comfortable in my position as a teacher. Now that I was more confident in my daily instruction as a teacher, I could observe the communication between my colleagues and families. My co-teacher always approached the English-speaking, white families and greeted them, shared the lesson plan for the day during the drop off and provided highlights of the day during the pick up. She never approached Salma’s mother who covered her hair and had a hijab on and barely spoke English. Was it because of an awkward experience that my co-teacher had when she reached out to shake hands with Salma’s father without realizing that in his Islamic practice he does not shake hands with females?  How about Edwardo’s dad who came from construction work looking exhausted in his uniform. I never saw my co-teacher talk to him more than a few seconds to obtain his pick-up signature. Was I a safe teacher who understood them or were they familiar faces for me? Did my co-teachers feel out of place the way that I did with American families? I use these examples in my work with future and current teachers and in undergraduate and graduate courses to challenge them, to have an honest discourse, to acknowledge our biases and address them in a professional manner.

Rachel Bowman’s Story

As a college student preparing for a career as a teacher of the Deaf, I kept hearing the same statistic over and over. 90% of Deaf children are born to hearing parents, most of whom never learn to sign. This fact frustrated me and my classmates. “Why wouldn’t they learn to sign?” we would ask our professors, who couldn’t seem to give us an answer we could accept. Deep down, I doubted that this statistic was true. How could a parent cope with not being able to communicate with their own child? However, one of my teacher educators said something that really stuck with me. “What would you do if, when your child was born, the doctor said, ‘I’m sorry, but your child will only ever speak Italian.’ Would you go learn Italian?”

“Of course I would!” I told him. “I’d go find a class. Whatever it takes.”

“And what if those Italian courses were only taught by a person who speaks Mandarin? How well do you think you would learn it? Is it possible you’d say, ‘I’ll just make sure to teach my child English’”?

This scenario stuck with me as I began my teaching career in a K-2 Deaf education classroom. Just like I had been warned, few parents knew any sign language, and most of my students had limited language of any kind and struggled to communicate even their basic wants and needs. But rather than approaching these families with the judgment I’d felt as a student, I saw where they were coming from. Most parents spoke Spanish, a language I had tried and failed to learn, and had children who were educated in English and ASL, two languages they did not know. They worked multiple jobs and had other children to care for. The ASL classes in the community were not accessible to Spanish speakers, and they were expensive. This language I had spent 10 years passionately studying had been thrown at them as the worst option when a doctor had suddenly told them, “I’m sorry, but your child failed their hearing screening. Your child can’t hear.”

The shared language barrier between teacher, parent, and child was challenging to navigate. I struggled to find a system for homework that worked. My students couldn’t tell their parents when they had a hard day at school. Once, a fifth-grader I taught, who had been resisting using ASL, said to me, “If I sign, then I can’t talk to my mom anymore.” That was the day I taught her what bilingual meant.

The other teachers of the Deaf in my district faced similar problems. We decided to try to implement change. We partnered with local Deaf counseling students, secured funding from the PTA, found interpreters who knew ASL, Spanish, and English, and got to work. We started having Family Night at our school for the Deaf students in the district and their parents and siblings. We provided dinner and childcare and gave them an opportunity to connect and engage with one another and see that they were not alone. The counseling students helped the families play communication games with their Deaf children. We taught some sign language. Later, I started teaching free after-school ASL classes in the community. The changes did not happen overnight. However, we opened the door for families to see that effective family engagement was possible for them.

Recently, I became a teacher educator and saw the same statistic I’d been taught as a teacher candidate about Deaf students and hearing parents in my students’ textbook. I decided to phrase it differently. “90% of Deaf students are born to hearing parents, and most of those families do not have the resources, time, ability, and finances to learn an entirely new language overnight. However, we as teachers can engage with those families to help them access services and connect with their children.”