In this assignment, you will develop a family and community engagement policy for an imagined early childhood setting. The policy will include transition plans and support as well as demonstrate your understanding of family engagement theories, evidence-based/best practices for collaboration, and reflect professional standards.
As readings from this semester point out, family engagement needs to be systematic, integrated and sustainable. For this assignment, you are to imagine an early childhood setting of your choice and develop a family engagement policy. The policy has two purposes: 1) providing families a statement about engagement and 2) for this course, additional information that provides your reasoning for decisions.
For this assignment, you need to include:
Include an explanation piece that details the family and community engagement policy. This piece needs to explicitly demonstrate that you have integrated course material. You need to include connections through specific citations (these don’t need to be direct quotations).
The explanation piece should include the following:
Briefly describe the setting. Assume you have families from multiple groups including various socio-economic status and ethnicity.
Pew Research (2010) argues early childhood settings need to provide families information on a variety of topics, including child development and the importance of play. Identify a minimum of 4 topics you would stress and share with families during the academic year. Provide at least 1 resource that families could use at home related to each topic. For each topic, provide a brief descriiption of how you would deliver the information to the families and why you choose these topics using research to support your selection.
Define ways families could be involved in this setting giving examples. Don’t forget about cultural differences, school-home relationships. How will you explain roles and expectations? Explain what framework or theory influenced definition. Remember that you want to develop and encourage reciprocal relationships.
Provide information on how this childcare setting will communicate with families. Provide ways the setting will keep families informed of curricula, events, community news or opportunities, etc. At least one technology means of communicating needs to be included and the policy should indicate any options families have regarding communication.
Provide information about transitions to the next educational setting or grade level. What would be expected of children? Families? What deadlines and/or paperwork are involved? Provide a rationale for what you’ve included.
Any additional information that you may want to include
2. Develop a document about family engagement that would be provided to families involved in the setting. There in a variety of ways (pamphlet, brochure, letter, handbook, etc.). Write this in family friendly language.
The document should include the following:
Identify the setting by name and the mission statement. [This should be a 3-4 sentence statement.] Write the mission statement in family-friendly language.
Include a list of the parenting topics you would stress during the academic year (from your explanation piece)
Bullet ways that families can be involved in the setting (from your explanation piece)
Provide transitional Information
Any additional information that you would want to provide for parents in this format.