INVOLVING PARENTS AND THE COMMUNITY
المؤلف:
Jane D. Hill Kathleen M. Flynn
المصدر:
Classroom Instruction that works with English Language Learners
الجزء والصفحة:
P111-C12
2025-09-19
338
INVOLVING PARENTS AND THE COMMUNITY
Numerous outside factors contribute to a student’s potential for academic success. It is especially critical that school staff gather information from parents of ELLs about their backgrounds. Of particular importance are the students’ native languages and cultures, the length and quality of prior formal education in their native language, any previous education they have received in U.S. schools, the amount of time they have been in the United States, and the extent of their exposure to English.
Knowing the native language and culture of students will help you tap into possible support resources for teaching these students in their native language. It will also reveal the educational customs and expectations of both the students and their parents. Remember that parents of recent immigrants may be unfamiliar with the U.S. education system. They may not know their rights, they may not understand what is expected of them, and they may not be familiar with academic concepts such as “standards-based education.”
Information about a student’s prior education in his native language can help you gauge the challenges the student will be facing. Students who arrive in U.S. schools with appropriate grade-level achievement in their native language will make the transition to learning in English more easily.
Parents whose children attended school consistently in their native country may have a very different perspective about education and parental involvement than mainstream U.S. parents. Homework policies and expectations for parental involvement may differ from those in their native country, for example.
You need to determine what exposure a student has had to the English language, even if he has lived in the United States for some time. A student’s English could be very limited—even for a child who was born in the United States—if his family speaks only its native language at home and in the neighborhood.
Involving parents and the community is not just the teacher’s job. School and district leadership teams need to develop comprehensive plans for parent and community involvement that include the parents of ELLs, as well as members of the community who share their ethnicity and language. Therefore, in addition to the model presented below, we provide an example of a plan to involve parents and the community from a district with a growing number of Spanish-speaking ELLs.
الاكثر قراءة في Teaching Strategies
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