Recently, educators pay more attention in parents’ involvement in the education process. Family plays a significant role as a source of information and support not only for children but for school also. The purpose of family-school problem solving meetings is to find consensus and elaborate action plan.
As soon as the educator indicates a problem and collect facts, the family should be informed about the need for their active participation in finding solution. For these purposes the teacher set up the meeting. First of all, the educator should inform parents about the aim of the meeting and procedure to avoid frustration. During the meeting the teacher should keep the discussion up to the point to solve one problem at a time. One of the key steps in the process is application of communication techniques. Including eye contact, positive non-verbal messages, correspondence of what the teacher is saying and body language. Being a good communicator forces individual not only receive and send messages but, what is more important, listen to understand. An emphatic response is the best way to show others that they are heard and acknowledged. In certain cases it is better to use reflecting feelings phrases rather than concise statements of the speaker's message. Diverse families may actively participate in the discussion and vice versa. Thus, the teacher should be experienced in encouraging family members in conversation and decision making process by asking to share their view and suggestions. However, the questions asked by the teacher should be sensible and relevant. The facilitating strategy helps to encourage student and family to consider their own ideas and to focus participants on the topic. In order to block blame, as it can make conversation irrelevant and purposeless, the educator may refocus the discussion on solutions or reframe negative attribution by illustrating facts in more positive meaning. “Validating and checking consensus about shared concerns” as well as “Expanding solution ideas” are extremely important steps as it is a fundamentals for future collaboration in the achievement of aims of decision made. Obviously, to ensure the success the action plan should be elaborated. The result achieved and overall progress is reviewed during follow-up meeting.
All in all, the procedure of conducting family-school problem solving meeting, presented in the book Building Culturally Responsive Family-School Relationships by Rai and Amatea (2008), is especially useful while communicating with diverse families. The techniques described above help to find key moments in successful problem solving with each family. With no doubts, collaborative everyday routines such as phone calls to the family, back-to-school night, family–school conferences, and family visits together the right communication strategies can show each family that their beliefs and values understood and respected that in its turn resulted in deeper family-school collaboration.
References
Amatea, E. S. (2009). Building culturally responsive family-school relationships. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education. (IF YOU WANT INCLUDE THE PRINEDBOOK CHECK IF THE DETAILS IS CORRECT. IF ELECTRONIC VERSION-CHANGE THE CITATION.)
Redding, S., Murphy, M., Sheley P. (2011). Family and Community …