Instructor’s Resource Manual
for
Child, Family, and Community
Family-Centered Early Care and Education
Sixth Edition
Janet Gonzalez-Mena
Napa Valley College, Emerita
Prepared by
Ruby Willey-Rendon
West Texas A&M University
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Instructors of classes using Gonzalez-Mena’sChild, Family, and Community: Family-Centered Early Care and Education, may reproduce material from the instructor's resource manual for classroom use.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1ISBN-10: 0132902648
ISBN-13:9780132902649
1
Table of Contents
Introduction
Using Early Childhood Principles with Adult Learnersiv
Authentic Assessment of College Studentsvii
Creating a Syllabus or Contractix
Some Useful Activitiesxi
Chapter-by-Chapter Ideas and Suggestions
Chapter 1: The Child in Context of Family and Community1
Chapter 2: Societal Influences on Children and Families4
Chapter 3: Attachment, Trust, and Parenting6
Chapter 4: Supporting Families with Autonomy-Seeking Youngsters9
Chapter 5: Sharing Views of Initiative with Families12
Chapter 6: Working with Families of School-Age Children14
Chapter 7: Understanding Families’ Goals, Values, and Culture18
Chapter 8: Working with Families on Guidance Issues21
Chapter 9: Working with Families on Addressing Feelings and Problem Solving23
Chapter 10: Working with Families to Support Self-Esteem27
Chapter 11: Working with Families Around Gender Issues29
Chapter 12: Stress and Success in Family Life31
Chapter 13: Schools and Early Care and Education Programs as
Community Resources 35
Chapter 14: Other Community Resources38
Chapter 15: Social Policy Issues41
Appendices
Appendix A: Ideas for Projects44
Appendix B: Magazines, Newsletters, and Journals48
Appendix C: California Competencies52
1
INTRODUCTION
I am writing this manual based on my experience of teaching a class by the same name on and off for thirty years. The text grew out of my need to have specific information on socialization of young children to share with my college students, who were mainly early childhood preservice and in-service teachers, parents, and general education students. This manual represents my ideas on how to use the material in the text.
The manual starts with some general suggestions to the instructor including information on
• Characteristics and teaching approaches appropriate to adult learners
• Authentic Assessment of adult learners
• Creating a syllabus or contract
• Useful activities for the beginning of the term and closing activities
• General teaching/learning strategies
Those are followed by ideas and suggestions for each chapter, which includes
• A summary
• In-class activities
• Outside-of-class activities
• Ideas for portfolio artifacts related to the chapter
• Suggestions for using the personal-reflection items related to the chapter
Appendix A contains ideas for student projects
Appendix B is a list of relevant magazines, newsletters, journals and videos
Appendix C is the set of minimum competencies for the course, Child, Family, and Community,
required by the State of California as one of the core courses for Assistant Teacher or Associate teacher under the Child Development Permit.
USING EARLY CHILDHOOD PRINCIPLES WITH ADULT LEARNERS
I taught children before I taught adults and when I changed jobs, I decided to try in my new adult classroom the principles I followed in my work with young children. They worked! This guide is built around those principles, such as active involvement, the use of multiple modalities, learning from experience, provocation, empowering students by giving them choices, and taking a holistic approach to teaching/learning.
Active Involvement
Although young children need a number of hands-on experiences with concrete materials, active involvement for adults makes use of fewer concrete objects and more use of intra- and interpersonal opportunities to talk, listen, think, read, write and draw. Active physical involvement is also included for adults in this manual in such ways as role-plays and moving around for discussions in pairs or small groups. Guided imagery is an example of active involvement. Even though the body is still, the mind is experiencing in ways that make it seem as if the body is actively involved.
Multiple Modalities
Although lectures may be part of the delivery system of the material, this manual offers activities for students beyond listening and taking notes. As you read through it, notice the different ways that students are asked to use their bodies and senses (if not in real life, in imagination) along with observing, listening, talking, reading, writing, and drawing. Having a variety of learning activities helps address the various learning styles of students in the class.
Learning from Experience
Another early childhood principle is that students learn from their own experience. This is one way that students construct knowledge and incorporate new concepts. They also need help to sort out and make sense of those experiences, which can be done with their peers during small group discussions and also by the teacher if the class isn’t too large or the course load too big. Many of the exercises and activities in this manual ask students to share their personal experiences with others. These activities provide an important way of constructing knowledge, but they also give practice in self-reflection, an important skill for anyone working or living with young children. What we do today is often greatly influenced by what happened to us in our childhood. For that reason many of the suggested activities and discussion questions ask the students to go back to their own childhoods. Also, a “personal reflection” section is included for each chapter.
Provocation
One way to stimulate learning is to provoke the students with a variety of intriguing problems or engaging tasks. A single assignment won’t engage every student. When students are questioned, either by the teacher or by another student, they may feel challenged to go deeper. Leaving them questioning, concerned, or facing an issue that is left hanging, may well lead to research or soul searching on the part of the student. Provoking students is a delicate matter that needs to be balanced with respect and sensitivity for differences.
Observation
Just as children learn through observation, so do adults. Some students come with natural ability and others need to learn how to focus and pay attention. Observation is an important part of the teaching/learning process. For that reason a number of suggestions for observations are found throughout this manual.
Choices
This manual is based on choices, for instructors using it and for the students in their classes. Students are more highly motivated when they are engaged with something that has deep meaning or value to them personally as individuals. Giving choices is the way to make it more likely that every student will engage. Only by having enough choices can the learner can dig into areas of study that are personally meaningful.
A Holistic Approach
Consider the importance of putting learning in context in ways that puts knowledge to use, rather than expecting the student to collect isolated pieces of information. The more students can practice and process what they learn within the context of varied real-life situations, the more they will gain. Help them to perform authentic tasks and reach an understanding of how what they are learning applies in real situations. Authentic tasks in an area of true interest are a winning combination over workbooks, drills, tests, and other simplistic learning exercises and activities.
AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT OF COLLEGE STUDENTS
Just as early childhood professionals wish to assess children in holistic and authentic ways, so should adult educators consider the limitations of objective tests and other traditional devices for assessing knowledge. Teaching goes beyond the delivery of information and the evaluation of the students’ grasp of the material. That’s the “lecture, assign, and test” method and it is not the only way. For those of you who are teaching this class for early childhood education students, who are on their way to becoming teachers of young children, think of yourself as a role model. Teachers of adults who use multiple ways to approach and assess the teaching-learning of their students demonstrate good early childhood practice. Using only limited approaches such as lecture and reading assignments to teach about multiple ways to facilitate the learning process is far less effective. Teaching isn’t merely telling and assessing shouldn’t be merely testing.
The Project Approach
An approach used by early childhood educators that works well with adults is the project approach. The project approach is a time honored, in-depth teaching-learning process that has been applied equally well to children and adults. A project can be collaborative or individual and can last over days, weeks, or months as students pursue the study of something of particular interest to them. Both product and process can be emphasized, that is, if students set out to learn something, the learning itself can be documented as part of the product. Sometimes the documentation of the process becomes the whole product. Or the project can de-emphasize the process and let the product stand alone. A research paper assumes a process, but the process is not a visible part of the end product. The most effective projects are the ones students choose themselves, although teachers who are good at provocation can sometimes send students in a direction they might not have gone on their own. Using a project approach as an assessment device allows students to be evaluated in areas of study that most interest them. Projects can be done individually or collectively. Portfolio assessment and the project approach provide an answer to the problem of how to treat everyone fairly but not exactly the same. A list of ideas for projects can be found in the Appendix.
Portfolios
Portfolios are collections of samples of the student’s work that assess both product and process. The portfolio is a common assessment tool of early childhood educators and can be used with equal success for adults. Student portfolios with samples of work done for the class provide a wider range of ways to demonstrate knowledge and skills than do tests. Portfolios can be used as ongoing assessment devices, as well as a way to document the student’s best work, serving as an ending record of what the student accomplished in the term. In the following section each chapter contains suggestions for items to be included in the portfolio.
Journals
Encouraging or assigning students to keep journals increases their self-reflective thinking, which furthers their learning. Journals can be purely for the students’ own use and never read by the instructor, or they can be part of either the grading/feedback system–or both. If used as part of the grade, the instructor’s expectations should be clear as to how the journal will be graded. In my own experience, I want students to feel free to write what they want, so I grade on the amount of time spent and/or number of pages turned in each time. I do not correct journal writing unless a student asks me to. I never grade on the quality of the journal writing or make judgments about it. When the quality is so low that I can’t understand what is meant, I simply say or write that I don’t understand. Or I explain what I do understand and ask if it is correct. I have a different mind set for reading journals than for reading student papers.
My own purpose for using journal writing is to create a dialogue with individual students by reading what they have written and writing back to each on a regular basis. My responses include: giving feedback, personal reactions, asking questions, or sometimes making suggestions. I often ask students to look further or deeper into their experiences recorded in the journal. I sometimes ask them to analyze. This works well with some students and not so well with others. With large classes journal writing doesn’t work because there’s simply not enough time for me to do all that reading and writing. In a large class, I either have students read and comment on each other’s journals or I use journal writing as one choice among other assignments. Some students hate journal writing and are delighted to have a choice about it. The “personal reflection” suggestions connected to each chapter (see the next section) lend themselves to journal writing if you choose to use them that way.
CREATING A SYLLABUS OR CONTRACT
The purpose of a syllabus is to inform the students of the teacher’s expectations. It is more than an outline of topics, a calendar of dates, and list of readings. All those are part of the syllabus. The syllabus should include the requirements of the course and the kinds of evidence, which document that the students have met the requirements. The syllabus serves as a written agreement between the teacher and students and it binds both students and teacher. A flexibility clause can be written in to allow for changes that may come up. In some cases the teacher and students develop individual personalized contracts instead of using the teacher-produced syllabus. If a syllabus is used, it should include:
1. Basic Information such as course name, code number, number of credits, location, days and times when class meets, the instructor’s name, office location, office hours and telephone numbers.
2. Text and other materials should be listed and it should be clear what is required and what is recommended, and where to find them.
3. Course description, which can be out of the catalogue or paraphrased and personalized by the instructor in accordance with the description in the catalogue.
4. Course goals, which can be general and, if necessary specific objectives, which can be stated in terms of what the students are expected to achieve. Some programs require performance objectives which detail what students are expected to be able to do by the end of the term.
5. Course calendar, including dates for assigned topics, lectures, readings, projects, etc.
- Course requirements and grading system which should be clear about exactly what is expected of the student and how teacher and student will know if the requirements have been met satisfactorily and how they will be translated into a grade that conforms to the grading system of the institution. Goals, objectives, requirements and grades should all relate to each other.
When I teach a class using this text, I give students choices within set boundaries. I expect them to read the text and base much of the class work on activities and discussions related to the chapters of the text. I also expect them to choose a second book to read related to a topic of interest connected to the material in the text and in class. I sometimes create the book list as the class proceeds by gathering ideas from the students as well as sharing my own. Other times I give out a book list and insist that student stick to it. A recent discovery of what to do with the information students have after reading a book came from Marion Cowee who introduced me to the idea of a “book club.” We team-taught together and created a list of 7 books from which students could choose. Then we formed “book clubs” and scheduled discussions using a circle-within-a-circle format. The members of the particular book club sat in the inner circle and discussed what they had read in terms of what they found useful and how it related to their lives, work, or studies. The outside circle, which was made up of the rest of the class, observed their discussion. After a period we opened up the discussion to the outside circle too. The book club sessions were lively–much more interesting than regular book reports!
For student assessment I use the project approach, which means that some students work all term on a subject of interest either coming up with a product or with the documentation for a process. I test students, but am more playful than serious about it. I don’t take test scores as true measures of student learning but rather as ways to augment learning and involve students in the material. For example, I give quizzes and then have students correct them and discuss them the same day. I also encourage students who are good test takers to share some of their secrets with students who aren’t. I often give collaborative quizzes where groups of students work together. Sometimes I have groups of students make up quizzes and give them to other groups of students. It’s as useful to think about the material in terms of what questions are worth asking, as it is to figure out the answers to somebody else’s questions. I’m much more interested in collecting portfolio artifacts than test scores. I am always thinking of how early childhood principles apply to adult learning. I worry that real learning goes out the window when testing is taken too seriously. Also some subjects lend themselves to testing better than does the subject of the socialization of young children.