In our final week at the Boys and Girls Club, we went into the club thinking about two articles. During our seminar, we discussed Family Partnerships by JoBeth Allen and Why Some Parents Don’t Come to School by Margaret Finders and Cynthia Lewis.
In the article, Family Partnerships, the author examines how schools can engage parents in supporting student learning. The author proposes a few strategies to help bridge the gap between school and home. One strategy that the author talks about is to have an understanding of the families’ funds of knowledge. This talks about what families value and how that can impact the classroom, (Allen, 2008).
In the the next article, Why Some Parents Don’t Come to School, the authors discuss the barriers between parents and school. The authors outline those barriers as prior experience in the education system, cultural and linguistic differences, and economic and time constraints. The authors go on to discuss how teachers can express that they value the language, culture, and knowledge of all of our students’ parents and not just the ones who are able to show up, (2002, Finders & Lewis).
Connecting it to the Boys and Girls Club, I have had the privilege of building a relationship with with an ESL student named Julia. Julia sat down and talked about her family with me. She talked about how her mom doesn’t like to come and do things at her school. She told me that her mom doesn’t speak English as well as she does and she liked to talk to her teachers in Puerto Rico but not here. This makes me think about the article Why Some Parents Don’t Come to School Julia’s mom values her education but she struggles with how to overcome that language barrier and her teacher could probably work more to extend the invitation for parents who have those extra barriers.