The Parent Role in Curriculum Development
Michele Plutro, Ed.D., Education Specialist, Head Start Bureau

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Curriculum in Head Start encompasses much more than the selection of a given model or approach. Although Head Start grantees may have a curriculum or curricular model in place, curriculum is more than selection. Selection, however, is a very important first step and should involve parents. A simplified check list adapted from the National Association for the Education of Young Children's (NAEYC) model is included on pages 7 and 8 as a sample guide for staff and parents involved in re-examining a previously selected approach.

Curriculum needs to include much more than the "naming" of an approach or model such as Montessori, High/Scope, the Creative Curriculum, Piagetian, or a locally designed approach. It is much more appropriate to describe curriculum in Head Start as everything that children participate in, and everything planned as part of their Head Start educational experience. Such a comprehensive yet practical view of curriculum is documented in the videos and Users' Guide, "Curriculum in Head Start," and "Individualizing in Head Start," as well as being supported in "A Guide for Education Coordinators." Curriculum, in its most simple form can be viewed as a comprehensive plan for learning.

Given this position, there are endless ways for parents to make curriculum decisions and contributions, including long after the initial model or approach has been identified. Parents can easily be involved in planning daily, ongoing, and special activities within the curriculum during the year of program operation.

Some examples of ways parents can be involved in the curriculum process are listed here for consideration. Parents can be involved through:

• Planning, implementing, or creating art and movement experiences;
  
• Planning and executing field trips or nature walks in the neighborhood or local community;
  
• Sharing stories with children and helping children share stories with adults and each other;
  
• Planning and/or carrying out a wide variety of literary experiences, such as book making and writing down stories which children dictate;
  
• Participating in evaluation, maintenance, and selection of classroom materials and equipment;
  
• Participating in indoor and outdoor space and equipment evaluation, maintenance, and selection;
  
• Assuring cultural diversity, cultural sensitivity, and cultural inclusion in the total curriculum and in the over all Head Start learning environment. This is particularly important since most prepackaged curriculum guides frequently fail to be this inclusive;
  
• Planning appropriate special non-holiday celebrations such as the birth of a sibling, the first snow fall, the blooming of the first spring flowers, the installation of a new piece of playground equipment, but not including child graduations which are developmentally inappropriate for preschool children;
  
• Participation in child screening and assessment to support appropriate planning and to help focus attention on changes and adaptations needed in the curriculum; and
  
• Each parent, at a minimum, should be encouraged to participate actively in their own child's Head Start experience by providing staff with information about their child (interests, skills, likes, collections, family involvement), and through the parent's sharing of personal skills and time to augment, enrich, expand, enliven, individualize, and diversify the local curriculum.

Each year the contributions of every parent, or other family member, are important since the classroom configuration and composition change. Along with these changes come parent changes which programs need to recognize and plan for. As with each new group of children, the curriculum, both in general plan in the day-to-day individualized context, needs to change. Parental contributions  to this process are vital from the beginning and throughout the year.

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