Module Two
Outcomes
As a result of completing this module, participants will:
- Interact with children and families using practices and behaviors which promote belonging and invite participation
- Practice adapting parent involvement activities to make them more inviting and accessible for individual parents
- The Head Start vision statement reaffirms parent involvement as a cornerstone of its programs. It challenges each program to ensure that every parent has the opportunity for a significant experience in Head Start as educator, nurturer, supporter and/or policy maker.
- One strategy to increase the involvement of all parents is for Head Start staff to individualize parent involvement opportunities. This process can begin by analyzing current program practices to determine if they are:
- Inviting, that is, are current program practices responsive to a variety of parent interests? and
- Accessible, that is, are current program practices tailored to meet the diverse needs of families?
Volunteering in the classroom, attending workshop sessions and serving on the Policy Council are just a few of the traditional opportunities for parent involvement offered by Head Start programs. However, because the interests and needs of Head Start families vary greatly, these activities alone are not enough to involve all parents.
Parents become involved and stay involved for a variety of reasons. What is seen as an inviting and accessible opportunity or activity by one parent may not be so for another. Culture, family traditions, personal beliefs about parenting, the amount of stress facing a family and other demands on parents' time such as work schedules or care of other children, all have an impact on an individual's level of involvement both in the home and in the Head Start center.
The challenge is to provide meaningful involvement opportunities for every parent. A first step in beginning to address this challenge, is for programs to analyze their current program practices to determine if they are inviting and accessible.
Activity 1: Why Become Involved?
Purpose: This brainstorming activity is designed to encourage participants to reflect on why individuals become involved and what supports help them stay involved in a program or an activity.
Materials: Easel, chart paper, pens, overhead projector, Overhead 3
Process: Begin by reviewing the key concepts on page 43.
Introduce the purpose of this brainstorming activity and ask participants to reflect for a moment on the following scenario (use Overhead 3):
| A new community center has just opened in your area and will be offering different types of programs for children and adults. The community center wants to provide family focused programs. They have asked for volunteers from the community to help them understand what this means for families in this particular community. |
After a moment or two for reflection, ask participants to consider the following questions in light of the scenario:
- What would motivate you to become involved in the center? That is, what would make the community center inviting?
- What could the center do to encourage you to stay involved over time? That is, how can the community center make programs more accessible?
Debriefing
Point out that people become involved and stay involved in a program whether it is a community center or Head Start program for a variety of reasons. Some parents become involved because they see benefits for their children. Others become involved because the program meets their own needs as adults. Different parents will choose to become involved in different ways. Often, parents become involved and stay involved because the program meets a variety of their interests and needs. Use examples from the brainstorming to reinforce this point.
Note that the reason why parents become involved, what activities they select to participate in and the intensity of their involvement varies by each individual. Therefore, when tailoring parent involvement opportunities to meet the needs and interests of different parents, the following factors must be considered (use Overhead 4):
Culture. Everyone has a culture. Culture is defined as the knowledge people use to interpret their experiences and to base their interactions with others. Values, priorities and beliefs are rooted in diverse cultures.
- A family's culture and traditions may affect how the parents define involvement, which family member(s) are most actively involved and what types of activities are valued.
- With changing demographics and expansion, more programs are facing the challenge of ensuring that families from all cultures are made to feel part of the Head Start family.
- Mobility, whether it involves migrant families, homeless families or families that move often, requires program staff to modify when and where services are delivered.
- As parents work or attend school, they have less time for volunteering in classrooms or attending meetings at the center. Finding new ways of getting information to parents is a challenge facing many staff members.
- Families experiencing stressful situations such as illness, disability, the birth of a new baby or family disruption may have difficulty seeing what they have in common with other families and be reluctant to join organized activities.
- Parents with younger children or responsibility for elder family members may feel uncomfortable leaving them to participate in Head Start functions.
- Parents themselves have different developmental needs based on their own age and life experiences and the number and ages of their children.
- Men, including single fathers, often need special encouragement to participate in programs that focus on their children.
Conclude by stating that what seems inviting and accessible for one parent, may not seem so to another. To increase parent involvement may require programs to review not only what opportunities they provide but how inviting and accessible those activities are perceived to be by parents with diverse interests and needs.
Activity 2: Working Effectively with Parents
Purpose: Head Start staff work hard to maintain an environment that promotes meaningful involvement for all parents. This requires that they continually examine their own interpersonal approaches. In this coaching activity, staff will reflect honestly about themselves by completing an inventory of their personal competencies in working effectively with parents. Participants will use writing and critical thinking skills.
Materials:
Handout 4
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Trainer Preparation Notes:
This activity requires the participants to be honest about themselves. Thus, establishing trust is very important. As coach, ensure participants that their responses in this activity will be respected and kept confidential. If you are successful in building trust, participants will be willing to take personal risks to share about themselves and be open with their ideas. And, you will be modeling the trust relationship that can be formed between staff and parents. |
Process
Distribute Handout 4, Working Effectively with Parents - Personal Competencies Checklist. Talk up front about the specific strengths that you have seen in the participants' dealings with parents. Share any ideas from self assessments that you have done in the past and how those assessments were helpful to you.
Make sure the participants understand the ranking task by practicing on sample questions such as, "I can fix cars" or "I can cook many different kinds of delicious meals."
Encourage the participants to think about all of their contacts with parents in the program when responding to each statement.
Direct participants to complete the exercise at a time when they have privacy and can concentrate.
Debriefing
Ask participants for their reactions to having to evaluate themselves. Have them describe the experience - was it difficult? revealing? fun?
Discuss these questions with the participants:
- Why are these competencies important? That is, how do they help staff meet parents' interests and needs?
- What are your strengths?
- Did you identify some places where you need support or more information?
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Trainer Preparation Notes:
Ask participants if they would be willing to repeat this exercise at a future date, after they have had a chance to work on specific competencies (for example, in three months). If they are agreeable, mark your calendar. At that future meeting, have participants review the checklist and explain to you what they have done to increase skills in the areas where they had previously given themselves lower marks. |
Activity 3: Analyzing Activities
Purpose: This activity will provide participants with an opportunity to identify elements that make parent involvement activities inviting and accessible.
Materials:
Easel, chart paper, markers, Handout 5
Process:
Introduce this activity by drawing from the Background Information for this Module. Stress that any contacts - whether a brief chat or an activity - that staff members have with parents can make them feel that Head Start is inviting and accessible.
Divide participants into small groups of six to eight. Ask for one person in each group to volunteer to lead the group and record responses. Provide each person with copies of Handout 5, Looking at Head Start from the Parents' Point of View.
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Trainer Preparation Notes:
Preview ahead of time the stories in Handout 5. If the characters and situations do not match well with the reality of your program, then create a new set of stories that better reflect your program's context. |
Post the following questions on chart paper so they are visible for all groups to see:
- If you were the parent in this story, would you find the opportunity at Head Start inviting? accessible?
- Are there other parents you can think of who would not find this inviting? accessible?
- How might the opportunity be adapted to make it more inviting and accessible to more parents?
Encourage the small groups to discuss all four stories if time permits. Limit total discussion time to about 20-25 minutes.
Debriefing
Reconvene the large group. Ask each of the small group volunteers to stand and recap one of their story discussions.
After each group has responded, ask the group at large to reflect on the different ideas that came out of the small group discussions and to identify some common principles or strategies that make opportunities inviting and accessible.
Activity 4: Strengthening Parent Involvement
Purpose: As staff work to provide opportunities for all parents, they need to continually examine their contributions to program practices. In this coaching activity, staff will take a realistic look at specific program activities and choose one to analyze for ways to make it more accessible and inviting for parents. Participants will use critical thinking and writing skills.
Materials: Handout 6
Process: Explain that parent involvement in Head Start occurs in many different ways at many different moments. The Head Start Vision Statement can be used as a framework to "take stock" of their program's many different opportunities for parent involvement; analyze these practices; develop ideas to improve them; and share these ideas with other program staff.
Distribute Handout 6, Parent Involvement inventory. Review the factors (below and on the instructions page of the handout) that affect how inviting and accessible the program is for families.
Factors having to do with Life Circumstances may include:
- Mobility (such as for migrant or homeless families)
- Work and school schedules
- Illness, disability or other physical factors affecting families
- Family disruption (such as divorce, separation or death)
- Life stages of family members (for example, whether they are teen parents or grandparents)
- Finances
- Values and belief systems
- Language
- Customs and community expectations
- Family structures and roles
- Practices and preferences
Direct participants to go to Exercise B, Building On Our Parent Involvement Strengths, only after they have completed all of Exercise A. In this exercise, participants take a deeper look at one statement from the inventory to determine the challenges to success in that area and to brainstorm on possible solutions.
Encourage them to think freely and not to worry about how "impossible" their ideas might be. The point here is to practice identifying challenges and seeking solutions. As all staff develop and feel free to use this skill, they can exchange ideas, mull over the options, select the ideas that are worth trying and work, as a group, toward those goals.
As a final step, direct participants to ask for feedback on their ideas from at least two other staff members.
Debriefing: Begin by stating that what seems inviting and accessible for one parent may not seem so to another. To increase parent involvement, the program has to take a look at the opportunities they already provide and also think about how inviting and accessible those activities are perceived to be by parents with diverse interests and needs.
Ask participants:
- Is the program providing meaningful ways for participation by all family members?
- Did you find the brainstorming a useful technique for identifying challenges to parent involvement, and ways to address those challenges?
- What ideas for strengthening parent involvement did you come up with that you think are workable? How did your colleagues respond to those ideas? What should you do next to pursue these ideas? Who would need to be involved? What resources would you need?
- How could you use the brainstorming skills practiced here for future reflection and planning?
Next Steps: Ideas to Extended Practice
Supervisors can encourage and support the transfer of ideas in this module from the training situation into practice. Some activities to extend practice are as follows:
Ask participants to become their own researchers. Have participants ask two or three parents what they think make opportunities inviting and accessible in your program (be sure that they ask the opinion both of parents whom they feel are involved as well as those they wish to involve more). What would make the opportunities even more inviting and accessible? Then have participants compare their findings to those of other participants gathering the same information. Are there any trends or issues creating common barriers to participation that should be addressed by staff?
Select one or two parent involvement opportunities that did not reach as many parents as you had hoped (for example, a meeting that took a lot of time and effort to prepare but drew few participants). At a staff meeting, analyze this activity by either applying the common principles that emerged from Activity 3 or asking:
- How many of our parents would find this opportunity inviting? accessible?
- How could we change or adapt it to meet more parents' interests and needs?
- How can we get more information from parents about their interests and needs?
- Are there some parents we reach repeatedly? Are there some who do not participate?
- Are there some trends we should consider? For example, are most of our opportunities meetings offered at times inconvenient to working parents?