3.4: Working with Families

Documenting and assessment should be done collaboratively with families. Families are not just a recipient of information from educators. Parents and other family members bring a broad array of information, feelings, beliefs, and expectations relevant to the child’s experience in the program, including curriculum:

• the child’s temperament, health history, and behavior at home
• family expectations, fears, and hopes about the child’s success or failure
• culturally-rooted beliefs about child-rearing
• families’ experiences of school and beliefs about their role in relation to professionals
• families' sense of control and authority, and other personal and familial influences

Educators have unique information and perspectives that they can share with families. Program staff bring their own knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes to their work with families:

• developmental and educational information about the child based on observation and assessment
• information about the child’s performance in the program
• information about the curriculum and learning goals for the child
• knowledge about the child’s next educational environment
• staffs’ own unique personality and temperament, family history, and culture
• their job description, agency policies, and the supervision they receive
• their own training, experience, and professional philosophy

The goal of sharing information with families about their child is not to dictate to parents what program staff think needs to be done, nor to view the child through the lens of staff. Instead, this process helps program staff see the child through the family's eyes. This expands their understanding of the child and the family, allowing them to adjust their teaching and family support accordingly. When program staff can see the child through the same lens as families do, families know they can trust them. As a result, they are more likely to be open to program staff's perspectives about their child. Information about the child will more effectively flow from family to staff and from staff to families. Then, families too will have richer information about their child to add to their support of their child’s learning and development at home.

Respectfully sharing these different perspectives is an essential step toward healthy learning environments for children. Regular and purposeful supervision can help program staff recognize when their perspectives are influenced by personal reactions, biases, and cultural backgrounds, and guide them toward effective communication strategies.[11]

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