Thesis on family literacy with LEP adults and reflective journal keeping

Essential to program success is considering why parents/caregivers come to participate in the first place. Additionally, it is important to note that although “parents” are referred to most often in discussion, “the concept of nuclear family (the parent-child unit) doesn’t always fit the reality of immigrants and refugees’ living situations. Within their own cultures, family units include much wider circles of relationships” (Auerbach, 1990, p. 74). Programs need to be open to any adult associated with children who desires to learn. Therefore, for the purposes of this project, when the “parents” are referred to, it can be understood that all potential adults (caregivers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.) are included in that title.

Understanding the participants’ motivation will give focus to the day-to-day activities that the teacher implements with the students. This understanding also makes developing and implementing family literacy programs much easier, and more worthwhile. Paratore continually emphasizes that although parents initially participated in her program because they felt a desire to support their children’s learning, it was also clear “that they were motivated to participate by very explicit personal goals. For these immigrant families, the most frequently stated personal goal was to ‘read, write, and speak English’” (2001, p. 58). Too often parents feel humiliated and frustrated, for example when children take over English-speaking encounters (Weinstein-Shr & Quintero, 1995). Experiences of this nature confirm that there is still a gap between research and practice. Auerbach (1995a) pinpoints the reason behind this gap by recognizing that “there are widely diverging perspectives on parental roles and program models, and, most importantly, the voices of language minority parents are largely absent from the debate” (p. 63). The solution that is in the literature, yet not to a wide enough degree, is to learn about literacy as it occurs in the homes of these immigrant families.

Edwards, a faculty member in the Michigan State University Department of Teacher Education and family literacy program developer herself, researched parents’ vs. teachers’ perspectives of literacy activities that occurred in the home. She concluded that parents “wanted their children to succeed in school, but they did not have a plan for helping them succeed” (1995, p. 57). These observations are of the exact nature that supporters of the anti-deficit approach assert when they declare that programs need to be developed surrounding participants’ voices and needs. Parents need to be taught that they have skills and ideas from their own culture that they can (and should) transmit to their children. Teachers and family literacy supporters “need to empower [parents] with new skills that will enhance their understanding of literacy development” (Morrow, 1995b, p. 73). Accordingly, part of the role of family literacy programs should be to help parents develop a plan to teach their children that is based on what they are already know.

There is often friction between classroom teachers and parents because of the assumption that parents are not supporting literacy in their home environment, creating a dissonance that has very negative consequences. When parents do not react to family literacy in a way that teachers expect, they often misunderstand parents and categorize them as being lazy and uninterested in their child’s learning (Paratore, 2001). This attitude waves a red flag to all interested parties that something within the establishment of these programs, as well as within the relationship immigrant parents have with their children’s classroom teachers, needs attention. As Paratore concludes, there are two sides to this dilemma and both need addressing. “In sum, our experiences and our evidence lead us to conclude that special practices and programs can enhance parents’ understanding of the classroom and classroom literacies and, as well, can expand teachers’ understanding of families and family literacies” (p. 111). Clearly, each individual family involved in family literacy programs comes with individual concerns and needs.

In order to better address these concerns, time must be spent studying family literacy from inside immigrant families and then responding respectfully to the research findings. Handel (1999), upon doing research of this nature, learned that “sometimes the family practices support or inform school or conventional literacy; other times they seem unrelated. Common to all these studies—and to the experience of adult and family literacy practitioners—is the strength of parents’ motivation to foster their children’s welfare” (pp. 12–13). Truly authentic learning about this motivation comes from spending time with the parents themselves, in an environment that is safe and comfortable to them. Family literacy programs should exist to empower parents; they must support parents as they struggle. Practitioners and program developers need to determine how the literacies that are developed in these homes can assist school learning, and vice versa. Instead of categorizing, prejudging, and labeling these parents, time needs to be devoted to learning what it is they already know, how they want to grow in supporting their children’s (and their own) academic learning, and what strengths they have to offer from their own cultural background (Morrow, 1995b). Perhaps Edwards’ comment is most appropriate: “Blaming the parents or the school for failure in students’ literacy achievement is a waste of time and energy: we should support parents and teachers by helping them become border crossers” (1995, p. 67). By listening to parents’ voices and creating programs whose curriculum centers on their needs, family literacy loses its cookie-cutter shape, empowers these adults, and molds itself to the needs of specific families.

Within the literature, positive reports of programs are given that tried to better understand parents’ perspectives and then involved them in the decision-making—programs unrestrained by national mandates/requirements. An example of the positive results that can be achieved with this system is found by observing the Partnership for Family Reading program in Montclair, New Jersey. Throughout the implementation of this program, Handel (1999) noticed mothers bringing books home more often, taking children to the library more often, and developing a new understanding of what it means to be an educational support within the home. Auerbach’s classic guide to family literacy curriculum, Making Meaning, Making Change, includes additional anecdotal success stories from those who use participatory curriculum. She attributes part of her success to not treating family literacy classes as “a magic bullet which will solve these problems [whether families have an adequate place to live, adequate jobs and health care],” (Auerbach, 1990, p. 241) but rather as another instrument in helping immigrant parents learn, cope, and progress as they best see fit. Clarifying the roles of both parents and staff within family literacy programs is likely to create stronger links to public school systems, and parents in turn will be more likely to want to participate in these programs (Nickse, 1990). Parent involvement in the development of these classes—supposedly designed for parental benefit in the first place—will magnify the effectiveness of time spent creating, teaching, and evaluating these classes on behalf of both the teachers and the parents themselves.

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