Engaging Parents as Coteachers

Teacher and leadership preparation programs may now better equip future educators to address diversity, but current practitioners struggle. A national survey found that only 32 percent of in-service teachers felt "very well prepared" to meet the needs of culturally diverse children. Only 27 percent felt "very well prepared" to meet the needs of students with limited English proficiency (Parsad, Lewis, & Farris, 2001). These figures highlight the urgency of the issue; many teachers don't feel prepared to meet the needs of children they teach every day! In addition, statistics show serious achievement gaps among different cultural groups.

The Promise of Parent Involvement

In response to this situation, schools are exploring initiatives that promise to boost achievement—including getting parents involved. Research supports greater, more strategic parental involvement as a way to lift achievement. Yet, when diverse family histories, traditions, and languages are represented in a classroom, teachers may feel unsure of what parents' role and potential contributions should be. What does "parental involvement" connote among immigrant groups? Will all parents understand and be able to implement teacher-suggested activities at home?

One challenge is designing initiatives that both engage diverse families and directly affect student achievement. Schools should not rely solely on traditional strategies, such as hosting activities for parents during school hours, and they should not define parental involvement so narrowly that a mother who cannot read nightly to her child is seen as uninterested.

Many immigrant Latino families have high aspirations for their children's education but have difficulty maintaining the levels of involvement that schools value (Behnke, Gonzalez, & Cox, 2010). Language barriers or lack of basic knowledge about U.S. school systems can inhibit the participation and visibility of Latino parents, despite their interest. Cultural beliefs often contribute to these parents' belief that their support is best provided at home.

As classrooms become more diverse, schools will need to find culturally relevant approaches to parental involvement. Fortunately, as we discovered, adapting programming for culturally and linguistically diverse parents can help parents support their child's learning at home and increase their participation in school activities (Cooper, 2010).

Designing a Parents-as-Coteachers Program

In September 2013, we implemented a program that helps parents from differing cultures support young children's STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) learning. Our experiences in early childhood education settings, as a principal and as classroom teachers, informed our thinking about the elements such a program should include. Our proposed approach included four guiding principles that build on insights from our work as educators and researchers:

1. Engage the entire family. Because our approach targeted the parent-child interaction to promote student learning, we had to be sure parents would attend activities. To prevent losing participants to child care issues, we welcomed younger siblings to each event, promising a pizza dinner for all.
2. Position parents as coteachers, not adult students. Our approach aimed to be intensive and replicable. We didn't want to bring parents together to give them a laundry list of ideas they could implement at home. Instead, we had both parents and their kids come to our evening sessions and invited parents to assume the role of coteachers. We clearly articulated the goal that parents would replicate at home what they experienced in those sessions. We highlighted simple activities that promoted fundamental STEM behaviors—observing, recording, and experimenting. All were well within the reach of families with limited means. We stressed the importance of giving the child attention and exposing him or her to the surrounding environment over purchasing expensive materials or attending special events.
3. Model activities explicitly. We aimed to expose parents to the process of facilitating a child's learning. We hoped to demystify STEM learning by demonstrating the underlying logic and goals, as well as the procedures, of lessons we demonstrated. Although teachers and parents have distinct roles in children's learning, both groups share the goal of making them successful. Parents, like teachers, can strategically expose their children to specific experiences and vocabulary that contribute to classroom learning.
4. Use the home language. We wanted to encourage participants to use their home language for all learning so children would have varied, enriching experiences in the language of their home and family. Parents are best able to support children in the language they speak, not the English they're trying to learn. We encouraged parents to focus their coteaching efforts in the home language while the school exposed their children to the English words describing their experiences. Research encourages us to trust linguistic interdependence, meaning that if a student learns a concept in any language, that learning will transfer to English once the student gains English vocabulary (Cummins, 2001).

Trying It Out

With these principles in mind, we piloted our program with kindergartners at a local elementary school that serves diverse, low-income families. Forty parents were invited to participate; the only requirement was a commitment to attend two evening sessions, along with their kindergarten children, and complete "homework" between these sessions. We ended up with a diverse group of 40 parents and children; 20 parents were Latino, 16 were black, two were biracial, and two were white. Exactly half the parents were from English-speaking homes, and half were from Spanish-speaking homes.

We began the first session with a bilingual introduction for the whole group. We discussed the four disciplines of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and their place in the kindergarten curriculum. Parents learned what practices kindergarten "scientists" exhibit when they engage in STEM learning (as defined by the Next Generation Science Standards). We then reviewed the instructional goals of the first activity (warning everyone that it involved worms!), key vocabulary, and parents' role as coteachers.

At this point, Spanish-speaking parents went to one room and English-speakers to another, so all materials, discussions, and activities were in the parents' home language. A facilitator explicitly modeled the evening's activity, in which children would observe and record the behavior of worms, then asked parents to extend their children's learning with open-ended questions and encouragement as children conducted these observations. (See Figure 1 for an example of the bilingual materials used in this activity.)

Figure 1. Bilingual Materials for Activity Observing Worms

Our first surprise came when parents expressed hesitation to assume the lead in teaching their children about science. Such a lofty topic, some felt, was best left to professionals. We encouraged them to experiment with the activities and then see how they felt. We sang a song together about the senses and discussed how our senses are engaged when we observe. The facilitator then introduced the concept of causeandeffect by setting up experiments that monitored the worms' responses to stimuli like light or touch. Parents and children together documented their observations on forms we provided.

The whole group then reunited for pizza. As the evening concluded, we introduced the "homework;" parents would work with their child to methodically observe something in their environment, such as animals or trees. We gave each family a bag containing binoculars, a magnifying glass, a tape measure, and a clipboard for documenting observations. Parents were encouraged to have their children measure, describe, draw, or photograph the objects they studied, then to ask their children questions and discuss with them what they'd learned (using the words observation, stimulus, and response and their Spanish equivalents).

Curious Kids and Confident Parents

Families returned to the next session prepared to report on their homework and eager for a new activity. Everyone had conducted structured observations at home. Most parents reported confidently on their role in discussing their children's observations and linking them to key vocabulary.

One kindergartner had observed birds and noticed that some birds fed on the ground, eating worms, whereas others ate seeds from feeders. She recorded which kinds of birds did which and concluded that birds that eat worms rarely eat from feeders.

Our second session featured a lesson on sound waves. Repeating our format, we first introduced parents to our goals and the activities to prepare them to be coteachers. We highlighted the importance of questioning throughout the activity, using the senses to make observations, and allowing children to figure out what their observations meant. Using songs, musical instruments, and string-and-can telephones, we taught the concept of sound waves and modeled activities to explore how sound behaves. Then we set parents loose to help their children experiment with these materials and discover things about sound, guided by some open-ended questions on a worksheet. We noted parents' increasing ease with their role as co-teachers of STEM.

Tapping the Power of Parents

Our pilot program explored the possibilities of engaging culturally diverse parents in coteaching STEM-related learning objectives. At our second session, we surveyed parents about their experiences guiding their child's STEM learning through the sessions and at-home activities we'd set up. Most parents found the activities enjoyable and useful, and they were thankful for the structure we had provided. We found that once parents understood the rationale and procedure of an activity, replicating it at home became fun and productive.

When introduced well, STEM activities for young children didn't feel foreign or difficult; rather, everyone learned from observation and discovery. Parents understood the responsibility of coteaching the subject and learned that by guiding and satisfying children's curiosity about their environment, they could increase their STEM learning.

Now more than ever, educators need to tap into what parents have to offer. Teachers in diverse classrooms require approaches that will serve the dual purposes of engaging all families and making a real difference in achievement. The kind of collaboration described here presents a new opportunity—to look at the role of parents differently and maximize their contributions to learning‥

References

Behnke, A., Gonzalez, L., & Cox, R. (2010). Latino students in new arrival states: Factors and services to prevent youth from dropping out. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 32, 385–409.

Cooper, C. (2010). Family poverty, school based parental involvement and policy focused protective factors in kindergarten. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 25, 480–492.

Cummins, J. (2001). Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of bilingual children. In C. Baker & N. H. Hornberger (Eds.), An introductory reader to the writings of Jim Cummins (pp. 63–95). Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters.

Frey, W. (2011). America's diverse future: Initial glimpses at the U.S. child population from the 2010 census. Washington DC: Brookings Institution.

Suro, R., & Singer, A. (2002). Latino growth in metropolitan America: Changing patterns, new locations. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution.

Parsad, B., Lewis, L., & Farris, E. (2001). Teacher preparation and professional development: 2000 (NCES 2001–088). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics‥