Blog 4

Early Literacy Development

 

Observing and Interacting with Families of the Children in Your Setting.

 

I observed a Head start classroom, there are two teachers. I am going to identify the lead teacher as Ms. Maldonado, and the assistance teacher as Ms. Reyes. I observed the P.M. class, and the interactions between parents and teachers. Both teachers interact with parents every day from Monday to Thursday; the children do not have school on Fridays. Teachers have the opportunity to interact with parents because parents can go into the classrooms to drop off their children.

 

When parents and children arrive, Ms. Maldonado greets them, and parents can talk to her if they have any questions or concerns. Ms. Maldonado approached one of the parents in regards and her concern over one of her students about an evaluation they had done on the childat a public school, then Ms. Maldonado invited her to talk in private, but the parent just said that the school was going to send the evaluation results by mail. I asked Ms. Maldonado what kind of support they offer the parents when they need to go to a public school for evaluation. Ms. Maldonado response was that they offer to go with the parents to the evaluation, especially if they do not speaks English, but sometimes the parents prefer to go by themselves Moreover, the teachers and the staff administrators communicate with parents to make sure they do not miss any appointments regarding their child’s evaluation.

 

I also had the opportunity of interviewing one of the parents in Ms. Maldonado classroom. She speaks Spanish only, I asked her what the administrators do to support the Spanish speaking parents, she told me that they have an English class on site twice a week, she is attending this class, because she said that learning English is very important to her because she wants to understand what her children say to her in English, and she can communicate with other people. I also asked her if she thinks that early literacy is important, she said that early literacy helps children understand books and teaches them how start writing, she noticed that her daughter has more interest in books since she has been in the program.

 

What I learned from this experience is that daily communication between parents and teachers help build good relationships and trust.  Children benefit from the good communication because parents and teachers can work together to find the best resources for children. Another insight that I gained is that it is important to make parents feel comfortable when they come into the classroom, it can be by just saying hello, how are you? Teachers can open doors to good relationships.

 

 

Observing and Interacting With Program Director and Other Administrative Staff in your Setting

Early Literacy Development

Observing and Interacting With Program Director and Other Administrative Staff in your Setting

I was interacting with Ms. Elsa Galan; she is the site director of Incarnation Head Start. Ms. Elsa has been working for this site for about a year and a half. I told her that my topic for my research paper is Early literacy, and what she thought about it. She said that it was a good topic that once a month parents have a literacy workshop, provided by the staff of the University of Illinois in Chicago, but parents’ participation is very low and they do not attend the workshops. She also said that parents learn how to make reading fun to their children, through these workshops, and at the end of these workshops parents received books.

One insight I gained is that Ms. Elsa talked to parents at the moments they are dropping off their child, and she invites them to the different workshops she organized for them. She has good relations with the parents. Another insight is that Ms. Elsa is a bilingual site director, and most of the families in the program are Hispanic, she said that it is very important to talk to parents in their native language if it’s possible, because talking to them in their own language, develops trust between parents and staff.