Assignment: Serving as Advocates for Families/Engaging Families in the Assessment Process
Early childhood educators serve as advocates for children and their families. You are a teacher leader in your school. You have been asked to develop a presentation on how and why families should be involved in the assessment process, how to communicate assessment results to families, and how to advocate for families. Your audience will be your colleagues at your site.
Fostering family engagement in the assessment process is not always easy. Engagement of families can vary widely from site to site, city to city, and district to district. How can we engage families? How can we serve as advocates for the children we teach and their families? How can we help others engage in good practice? Often, this is a matter of taking the first step forward. As a teacher leader, you must consider the local environment, the educators at your site, and current procedures in order to encourage change.
To prepare:
• Review the Learning Resources for this module.
• Then, consider what your colleagues at your local site need to know about serving as advocates and about engaging families in the assessment process. Think about the process or sequence of events that would need to occur. What background information from your research should you share? How can you support what you are presenting with research? Think of the PowerPoint presentation as a "how to" for early childhood educators. Conduct independent research to find two new resources for this presentation.
Develop a PowerPoint presentation with a voiceover, YouTube video, or Kaltura podcast for this training that outlines the following:
• The importance of assessment at the selected grade level (choose from infants/toddlers, preschool, kindergarten, primary)
• How teachers can involve families in the assessment process.
• The information families can provide about their children
• How to communicate results of assessments to families
• Supporting diversity and multiculturalism
Your audience consists of fellow teachers at your selected level (infants/toddlers, preschool, kindergarten, primary).
Conduct independent research and include a minimum of two resources not previously used in the assignments for this course. Include six resources minimum for presentation and include a final reference slide.
Seefeldt, C. (2002). Assessment: Partnering with parents. Scholastic Early Childhood Today, 17(1), 15-18.