DOCUMENT RESUME PS 028 207 ED 437 211 Tesfamicael, Ghennet AUTHOR Parent Observation of a Teacher-Parent Relationship in Early TITLE Childhood Education. 1999-00-00 PUB DATE NOTE 22p. Reports Research (143) PUB TYPE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. EDRS PRICE Case Studies; *Cultural Differences; Immigrants; DESCRIPTORS Kindergarten; Kindergarten Children; Limited English Speaking; *Parent School Relationship; *Parent Teacher Cooperation; *Parents; Preschool Teachers; Primary Education *Language Barriers; Parent Needs IDENTIFIERS ABSTRACT Building a strong relationship between parents and their preschool-aged child's teacher can be difficult when the parents and teachers speak different languages and come from different cultures. This paper discusses how a parent from east Africa with language and cultural differences dealt with a local school system to ensure that her young children with speech and language delay obtained the educational and developmental services needed. The paper describes lessons learned to immigrant parents of children who speak English as a second language facing similar barriers. The paper also notes the special needs of parents with language and cultural differences and provides suggestions for early childhood education administrators and teachers on how to handle such needs and concerns. Contains 14 references. (Author/KB) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. Parent Observation of A Teacher-Parent Relationship PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY in Early Childhood Education Ghennet Tesfamicael -"a'tcAYYNA cast L TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Abstract 1 This article is about a parent's observations of a teacher-parent relationship in early childhood education. It discusses how a parent from east Africa with language and culture differences deals with a local school system to ensure that her child with speech and language delay gets the educational and developmental services that he needs. The articles provides lessons learned to immigrant parents of children with English as a second language who face similar barriers. It also gives insights to early childhood school administrators and teachers on the special needs of parents with language and cultural differences and on possible ways to handle such needs and concerns. Introduction A solid relationship between the teacher, the child and the parent is a strong foundation for a child's learning and development. This tripartite partnership has been increasingly gaining importance in recent years. As many parents of different linguistic and cultural background send their small children to pre-kindergarten schools, they faced many problems that could be minimized through proper information and consultation between parents and teachers. By conferring with other parents, a child's potential delay can be 2 BEST COPY AVM detected and early intervention measures can be taken. In this case, a three year old boy's mother, from east Africa, found out from one of the parents of a child in her daughter's pre-k that a government funded therapy was available. From that time on, the parent start to fulfill all the necessary requirements and succeeded in enrolling him in a speech and language therapy program. This mother has been involved in her son's school for two years trying to convince the school of the special needs of her son. In the meantime, she got a lot of misunderstanding and discouragement from the school, but she persevered and prevailed using participation methods such as volunteering as a room mother. Later on she got a position in the school as a part-time special teacher's aide. This article describes the experience and lessons learned from a parent's endurance and dedication in ensuring her pre-k son's solid head start in his education. The purpose of this article is to help parents in the same situation, especially new immigrants from east Africa who have different linguistic and cultural background from the host country, to be advocates for their children's educational rights. Also, it attempts to inform the school personnel (both teachers, aides, administrators, psychologists, counselors, special area teachers and therapists) about the special needs of children of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. These educators can easily misunderstand problems related to language and cultural background with behavioral and educational disability. Why A Strong Relationship Between Parents and Teachers is Important The importance of parents' involvement in their child's education has been a subject of discussion of many writers and educators in the U. S. Some states, as in the case of 3 Tennessee, have recently mandated that parents who are not adequately involved in their children's education are subject to a fine of "$50 for PDD (which stands for Parenting Deficit Disorder)." A study that was carried out by the American Psychological Association in 1994, concluded that "parental involvement was a significant predictor of student achievement and behavior in school." ( Levine 1997, p. 27). As an African proverb puts it, "It takes a village to raise a child". The imperatives of parents' involvement in a child's educational and social development become even more decisive particularly for parents of different linguistic and cultural background to ensure successful educational and social development of the child. How Parents Can Develop a Sound Relationship With Their Child's Teacher A good relationship needs to be worked on from day one, starting the first day of school. This becomes crucial especially for children in kindergarten and those with special education needs. Parents with English as their second language have to pay even more attention, although being relatively new-comers to this country may burden them with many competing positions and livelihood responsibilities and put more demand on their scarce time. Unlike in the U. S., on the first day of school parents in Japan offer flowers to their children's teacher. This is to show their respect and their appreciation to the teacher; at the same time, to show the child that the teacher is a very important person in their lives. Parents may also need to express their goodwill and cooperation to the teacher, and they need to find out what the teacher's expectations from her students are. On the first day of school, some teachers distribute a survey sheet to be filled out by parents in order to know the students and have an easy transactional year. The parent needs to be aware of this survey and complete it diligently by providing all critical information about the child. For example, the survey may include: All concerns that you have and wish to share with the teacher about the child; - Home environment, culture, language and size of the family members; Child's strengths and weaknesses; Share any information that might help the teacher better understand your child (Newman, 1997-98). It helps a lot also to exchange telephone numbers. Some teachers may not feel comfortable in giving their telephone numbers; if they can give, ask for it. It is naïve to think that the survey could provide the teacher with all the necessary information about your child. In order to help you continue to confer with the teacher and understand more about her rules and expectations in class, the importance of exchanging telephone numbers should not be underestimated. Effective communication usually takes place when two parties, in this case a parent and a teacher, speak a common language; otherwise, a language barrier might pose great difficulty. As a matter of fact, for some languages such as Spanish and Japanese, schools may offer interpreters, but in the case of many languages from developing countries, it is hard to get such interpretation services. The absence of effective communication may put the teacher and the parents as well the child in a difficult situation, and seemingly trivial misunderstanding could flare up into antagonistic conflict between the parents and the teacher, and eventually the school. Because teachers have the most contact with families, they may be able to provide information on the families preferred methods of communication (Thompson & Jean 1997). Unless the teacher is highly experienced, and , able to use very simple English, the teacher may invite a bilingual teacher (for help) in the conference. Unlike the school system here, many other cultures do not expect a pre-k child to be self- sufficient and it is acceptable for a child to grow at his/her own pace. The pre-k here often puts a child from other cultures in an awkward position, and easily labels the child "slow" and not fulfilling the school requirements. In addition, the school looks at the parents as excessively babying the child and not letting him grow independently; thus, these parents are not fulfilling their parental duty. As a result, the parents start resenting the school and teacher's apparent extreme expectations from the child. For example, in a pre-k school, an east African mother who helped her child at the beginning of a school year unpack his back pack, sort out in his homework and lunch money in his folder every morning is considered inappropriate from the school's point of view, while this practice is perfectly all right in her own culture. Another important factor is that some cultures (such as Eritrea) forbid a child to look at adult's eye when speaking to adults or when adults speak to the child, while the pre-k school here may consider a child who avoids eye contact as a behavioral problem and at worst as impolite. Obviously, children from different cultural and linguistic background may not be expected to know how to interact in such situations which children from the mainstream may take for granted. Therefore sensitivity to cultural differences is important otherwise the "fit in or get out" mentality will not promote an effective partnership with the parents from culturally diverse background (Voltz,1994). Other barrier could be that the parent might not be able to read the messages sent home by the teacher and to respond and help the child promptly. Parents in particular may be embarrassed to be found to have less skill in reading and writing than their children (Litwak & Meyer 1974). Depending on the teacher's time availability, parents normally should be contacted by phone if they need any help, and explained the consequences that follow if the child fails to do an assigned home work or return papers sent home to be filled by the parent. Homework's possibilities for enriching a child's education are surprisingly far reaching (Harrington & Young, 1993 p.107). Observation Conducted on An Immigrant Family From East Africa The observation was conducted over the last two years on a family, who immigrated from East Africa about nine years ago. Their youngest son, Daniel, now five years old, was evaluated at the age of three as having speech and language delays. All the problems that the parents had to face in parent-teacher conference and while volunteering in the classroom will be further discussed. Student background Student: Daniel Age: 5 Grade: K Daniel's weight at birth was 8 lb. 13 3/41/i oz. He was a full term child and healthy child, but he has a delay in language mainly because his family spoke another language at home. He is a bright boy and as a result, after, taking a leiter ( a non-verbal) entrance exam, he has been accepted to the gifted and talented school. Family Data: The family includes four children, two parents and an uncle. Mom works in Daniel's school as a paraprofessional from 8:45 am 3:15pm, and dad works from 9:00am 6:00 pm as a professional. Efriem 15, Saba 14, Elsa 7. Uncle works day and night shifts. Parents have different cultural, linguistic and values background. Preparing for Parent-Teacher Conferences and Outcome As Canady & Seyfarth (1979, p. 12) indicated in their booklet "How Parent-Teacher Conferences Build Partnership" parents of handicapped children often look for specific help from the teachers, because the parents are unusually sensitive to the particular needs of their children. These parents often request answers to the following questions: i) How does a child get along with others in class? ii) Is the child's behavior acceptable? iii) How can parents teach particular skills to the child? iv) What is the child expected to learn? v) Is the child performing at or near to the level of his or her ability? Parents unlike teachers are more interested in school goals and organization and academic progress rather than the social adjustments of any other kind. In the case of the Daniel's parents, they were never satisfied by the answers they got from the teacher for the above questions. Their language and cultural difference was not put into consideration. Successful conference is when the parent and the teacher leave with a better understanding of what each other is trying to do.(Canady & Seyfarth 1979, p. 10). Parents can request for a conference or teachers can give a conference time and date whenever it is needed. They should be informed of who will attend the conference. Otherwise the parents could be intimidated when confronted with one or more school personnel. It is important that therapists and other special area teachers if possible be present in the meeting. For example, in Daniel's case, with a language and speech delay, the presence of the speech therapist and ESL teacher was important and played a big role in the discussion and contributed a lot to the conference outcome. Parents too should bring to the teachers' attention any concerns that they have prepared in advance of the conference. For instance, when Daniel's mom went to pick him up from school his teacher called him and asked him what he did that day. He answered that he read a book. And she continued asking him, "And eventually? And eventually" At this moment unable to comprehend the meaning of the word he walked away from his teacher. The teacher didn't seem to realize that she lost his attention because of the language problem. However, she interpreted it that he had a short attention span, and poor concentration. Instead, she should have given him the benefit of the doubt by changing the words around such as "And then what happened?" or using a simple word until he responded to the question at hand. The mother raised the issue at the time of the conference. This helped the assistant principal to realize that the teacher wrongly labeled Daniel with behavioral problem. In fact, in the child's home English is used only 10 20 percent of the time, while 80 percent the family spoke its own indigenous language. Clearly, the child's problem ended up being with English language comprehension, which regrettably started to project as if he had intellectual and social difficulties in school. Careful analysis and deeper understanding of causes of child's seemingly behavioral problem is second to none. Because of time constraints and other reasons, teachers may be tempted to jump into conclusions, which further worsens the situation and not helping the child in anyway. The goal should be to involve the child in positive social experiences and to be as encouraging and as positive as a teacher can be whenever she can. On the other hand, parents should foster casual conference, which can help them to exchange information on their child's daily progress. Parents and teachers should be very sensitive to each other and have to respond adequately. Especially parents need at times to remove themselves from subjective feeling about their child and try to be objective and listen carefully to what the teacher has to say. When the teacher see a behavior problem in a child, then the school administration should provide support to the concerned parent, 10