This document discusses several topics related to family engagement and cultural competence. It emphasizes the importance of seeing cultural differences as just that rather than as deficits. It encourages educators to allow parents to share their stories, understand parents' cultural beliefs, and consider parents' own contexts. The document also stresses the importance of welcoming diverse family types and gathering information respectfully about students' previous schooling experiences and how they may impact academic achievement. Overall, the document provides guidance to educators on developing cultural competence and strengthening engagement with students' families and cultures.

1. Family Engagement
Based on the Developing Caring Relationships among Parents,
Children, Schools, and Communities by Dana McDermot, chap. 5

2. Seeing
differences not
deficits
“ Often our idea of cultural competence is
understanding families so we can change
them, so they are more like us, and that’s
not what cultural competence is all about.
. . .We really need to be aware of our
tendency to attribute our personal
motivations to the behavior of others. . . .
[cultural competence involves] a clear
commitment to seeing differences as
differences not deficits.”
—BlancaAlmonte (1995/1996, p. 5)

3. Storytelling
Allow parents to tell their stories.
Really listen to their stories.
Stories are powerful tools for passing on
cultural understanding to children.
Creating space for parents to tell their
stories let’s them feel heard and gives
you a window into who they are as an
individual and as the family of your
student.

4. Understand
parents’ beliefs
 •To what extent does the family believe it needs to
place the collective interests of the family above the
interests of the individual?
 • Do the parents believe the family should be
characterized primarily by intimacy or by a certain
degree of emotional distance?
 • Do the parents believe it is important to work toward
family consensus, or do they believe parental
commands or directives are more appropriate for
solving family problems?
 • How much responsibility do the parents believe they
have to influence a child’s choice of friends, activities at
school or after school, or other situations and so on?
 • Does the family have beliefs about how conflict
should be resolved?

5. Parents’ beliefs
continued
 • Are the parents able or willing to change beliefs or expectations
of the child on the basis of new information they might receive?
 • Are the parents’ beliefs about parenting and children shared by
others around them?
 • Are the beliefs of parenting partners about their roles and
children’s needs similar to or vastly different from each other’s?
 • Do the parents believe it is acceptable to openly express caring
by hugging and kissing children, or is there a different way to
show love and caring within their family and culture?
 • Do the parents believe they will have different amounts of
influence on their children at different ages and stages?
 • Do the parents have fairly rigid beliefs about divisions of labor in
the family?On what are these views based?
 • Do the parents believe it is disrespectful for a child to look adults
in the eyes directly?

6. Parents’Own
Context
 •What is the work environment of the parent: Is it restrictive?
Allowing for autonomy? Supportive? Entrepreneurial?
 • Do the parents experience high or low degrees of role strain?
 • Do the parents feel supported by each other, family, friends,
community, and school?
 • Do the parents have an opportunity to observe other parents or
caregivers interacting with their children?
 • Are you as a professional taking into consideration parental
factors such as family and other social supports?
 •What about the number and perception of stressful life events in
the family?
 • How are the parents’ neighborhoods affecting their parenting?
 • How are marital relations or relations with a partner affecting
their parenting?
 • Are enough mental and physical health resources available for
the parents?

7. LGBTQA+
parents are
part of your
school even if
you don’t see
them.
LGBT parents often said that they felt invisible in their child’s school.
 15% said their child’s school didn’t acknowledge their family type at least
some of the time.
 32% said that their child’s school was “not at all” or only “a little” inclusive
of LGBT families (see chart below).
Some LGBT parents said that they felt less than welcome or
even ignored in their child’s school:
 16% said they felt they could not fully participate in their child’s school
community.
 12% said they did not feel comfortable talking to their child’s teacher
about their family.
Resources:
- Ready, Set, Respect!
- Welcoming Schools
 NYC DOE programs

8. Welcoming
and Including
DiverseTypes
of Families
Love makes a family:
- Foster parents
- Adoptive parents
- Single parents
- Aunties and Uncles
- Grandparents
- Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated parents
- Hospitalized parents
- Older siblings

9. Welcoming
and Including
DiverseTypes
of Families
- Make your support visible
- Diversify your classroom library
- Choose your language (and your clip art)
carefully
- Check your gender role stereotypes
- Let the student define their family
- (but cover all your bases) – protection orders,
pick ups, and protected student information

10. Takeaways
 Honor parents as experts in their child
 Reframe anger as advocacy
 Withhold judgements: parents are doing the
best they can in their current circumstances
and you don’t know what all of those
circumstances are.
 Mindset: teammate, partners in supporting the
student
 Parent voice and choice/ Student voice and
choice

11. HamayanCh. 8
Ch. 9
Previous
Schooling
Factors

12. Factors
 Amount of formal schooling in home language:
 Socioeconomic status in home country
 Civil war or foreign occupation
 Community/family needs – agriculture & other work
 Living in rural areas
 Gender expectations
 Lack of access to bilingual education in US

13. Factors
 Quality andType of Formal Schooling in Home Language
 Schooling model
 Curriculum
 Teacher quality
 Pedagogies
 Schooling was wholly or partially in a language other than their
home lanaguage

14. Factors
 Amount of Formal ESL Instruction
 Access to English instruction in home country?
 Access to English instruction through private tutors?
 Transferring from another state, district, or school?
 Quality of Formal ESL Instruction
 Evidence-based curriculum?
 Adequately trained teachers?
 Educational Experiences that are Consistent vs. Disparate
 Transition from one approach to another

15. Gather
information
 Ask the student
 Ask the parent
 Look at school records
 Gather information with awareness
 Keep it confidential
 Explain why you are asking and how the information will be used
 Don’t write it down or record it without explicit permission

16. Interventions
 UseTask Analysis:
 1. IdentifyTarget Skill
 2. Identify Prerequisite skills of the learner
 3. Break the skill into smaller parts/steps
 4. Check the steps/parts to make sure skill is
complete
 5. Decide how the skill will be taught
 6.Teach the skill and monitor progress

17. Interventions
 Connect learning to prior knowledge and
experiences
 Be flexible with your teaching style
 Use Sheltered Instruction strategies
 Backwards map to scope and sequence in
student’s home country

18. HamayanCh. 11
Ch. 11 Cross-
Cultural
Factors

19. TheCultureIceberg

20. Factors
- Considering all aspects of culture
- Considering all determinates of culture (race/ethnicity/country
of origin; consider other determinates as well)
- Considering that culture is constantly changing and developing
- Considering that the process of adapting a new culture is long
and complex
- Considering that culture directly influences learning

21. Adapting to a
new culture
STAGE TYPICAL STATES
Preliminary Cooperative, displays a desire to
please
Spectator Fearful, anxious, lonely
Increasing Participation/Uprooting Mixture of emotions in combination
Culture Shock Depressed, frustrated, insecure,
withdrawn, hostile, criticizes
everything
Instrumental adaptation Flight(Assimilation)/
Fight(encapsulation)/
Integration(Acculturation
Integrative adaptation Fear of embarrassment and lack of
acceptance of first culture in
mainstream culture
Structured adaptation Truly comfortable with second
culture; deep and integrated
connection with first culture

22. Interventions
 Capitalize on diversity and funds of knowledge within the school
community.
 Bridging strategy
 Contextualized instruction (relating instruction back to cultural
background and experiences)
 Strengthen home-school / teacher-family connections

23. Interventions
 Bridging strategy
 1.Teacher identifies underlying assumptions that guide their
teaching
 2.Teacher examines how these assumptions are actually
employed in the classroom and how they effect learners
 3. Make assumptions and learning expectations explicit for ELLs
 4. Learn how the assumptions and ELLs reactions to them affect
the home experience
 5. Build on ELLs cultural learning strengths and competencies
 6. Actively advocate for ELLs social, cultural, and academic
empowerment in the classroom

24. NextWeek

25. Preview
 Tuesday, July 30:
 Lecture & Learning Activities for Hamayan 9-10: oral and literacy
development and academic achievement
 Wednesday, July 31:
 Online, last day of new content
 Case Study, Flipgrid, and Journal due
 Parent Engagement topic choice due
 Thursday, August 1: ONLINE
 Lesson plan draft due
 You will participate in an online peer review
Note: I will be traveling and in meetings from 8/1 – 8/3 and may be
slower to respond to emails and texts.

26.  DueTuesday, July 30:
 Read Hamayan 9-10 (*Note the change from the syllabus)
 Get a head start:
 Read Harry Chap. 9-10
 ReadTranslanguaging guide (Pick TWO stragtegies from Part
2 to read. (Note:There are six strategies that include sub-
strategies. Make sure that you are picking two of the six main
strategies and reading the entire strategy.)
 Read Paris Chap. 7
Rubric for Parent Engagement Project is now posted on
Blackboard: Course Information  Assignments  Parent
Engagement Project