My Work As A Family Advocate: Community Analysis

In my work as a Family Advocate, I am working with children and families from culturally and linguistically diverse. The families in the community I serve often have the same culture as mine, but it has not always had the same beliefs and values. I see that without respect for cultural differences and understand other’s cultural values this can hinder positive relationship with many families. In order to develop positive relationships with diverse families, I first take a close look at my own assumptions and find a ways to reach out to families. That means I work together with families and teachers for children success. I begin to bridging the gap to establish a partnership and build relationship with all the families.

I find that chapter

It mentioned parents need to be more involved in the education of their children. We always encourage parents to be more involve in their child’s learning because parents are their child’s first and most influential educators. Tertell et al. states, “We strengthen parents’ capacity to support their children over a lifetime” (p. 141) when we work closely with the families. Teachers and parents find common goals for their children. We all understand the importance of parent involvement and participation in their children’s education, but we actually are not making it easy for the parents. I feel that the difference between involvement and partnerships have made primarily to those with power and authority. Most family involvement activities are determined by school staff or administrators and allow them to maintain control and power. It should be involved sharing power, and that is the nature of

If they did not come, we make an assumption that the parents have no interest in their child’s education. We assume that parents probably have a mindset that teacher’s responsibility for student learning. Therefore, they did not want to do anything. The authors remind that we sometimes are not particularly considerate of parents’ situation and already jumped to conclusions about them. We wanted to believe that parents “don’t” want to but not “couldn’t” come. We rarely consider all the hardships the families may face this, such as, work/school schedule, transportation, child care, and so forth. When I conducted a parent meeting or workshop, childcare was provided for the families. However, the meeting date and time was to a more convenient time of the staff’s schedule. At first I have many parents attended the meeting, but then less and less parents would come to the meeting. I was frustrated, but I could not change the meeting when parents have expressed their needs. In order to have a successful turnout, we need to consider if the families’ situation and adjust things to accommodate their