Confession: Even after spending 10 years working in a variety of Wisconsin public schools, I never felt my bag of tricks for engaging parents and families was quite as full as I wanted/needed it to be. This was especially true for techniques to connect with families who were dramatically different than mine.
So, I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking and talking about what it means to connect school with home culture - especially as it relates to literacy.
If you're interested in similar ideas, I would recommend Bringing Literacy Home edited by KaiLonnie Dunsmore and Douglas Fisher. This edited volume includes sections about:
- Supporting Families in School-Based Literacy Practices
- Connecting School with Home Culture
- Implications for Family Literacy Research and Scholarship
I found Geneva Gay's chapter ("Teaching Literacy in Cultural Context") particularly helpful. Gay asserts that "underachieving marginalized students of color" (p. 161) need to simultaneously develop academic knowledge and skills and cultural competencies. A teacher's journey to develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to teach litearcy in a cultural context is complicated and on-going. Gay suggests teachers begin by packing a "metaphorical suitcase of things that they will take on their multicultural education journeys" (p. 168). The suitcase can be packed, unpacked, and repacked as a teacher's understanding develops.
Gay suggests several key messages (p. 180 - 181):
- Acquire cultural knowledge about your students (including "cultures, histories, and contributions of ethnic groups")
- Use diverse "examples, materials, experiences, and perspectives"
- "Apply academic literacies in the process of teaching and learning about cultural diversity" (p. 181)
- Access students' "cultural literacies, or funds of knowledge" to scaffold academic, school-based literacy
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