Amatea (2013) suggests when teachers acquire culturally responsive skills for assessing parent engagement and facilitating parent participation, parents are more likely to become active within the sch
Week 4 Discussion 1 Culturally responsive Skills
Amatea (2013) suggests when teachers acquire culturally responsive skills for assessing parent engagement and facilitating parent participation, parents are more likely to become active within the school community (p. 145). Research your local school district. (Or use the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, CMS Fast Facts (Links to an external site.).)
Respond to the following:
Summarize all pertinent information that makes up the district; student ethnic distribution, number of schools, percentage of economically disadvantaged students, etc.
Research the community itself (Can be found on the district website)
What unique student characteristics did you discover in the data?
What unique resources might exist in the community that this school serves? List at least (2) and explain how these can enhance student learning and academic achievement.
Instructor Guidance
Week 4
Welcome to week 4 of our class. In this week we take a little turn from looking only within our school or classroom and start to consider larger units of influence. Specifically we will consider district demographic data and community resources that can help us to create culturally responsive schools. We will also look at our individual communities to find support that exists for families and children.
In order to address culturally responsive classrooms, we must accept the idea of a collaborative relationship between the school and families. This sounds like a great theory; however, we have to put that theory into action. Nieto (2004) described four areas that promote good learning. Using this figure below along with Amatea’s (2013) collaborative paradigm, we can find ways to build a culturally responsive school.
In the first discussion for this week you are asked to review demographic data on your school district. If you do not currently work in a school district or if you have difficulty finding the data, you may use the example posted in the discussion prompt. With the data, you are asked to summarize the demographic information about student and a little bit about the community. Then you should identify at least one unique student characteristic that you found in the data and the resources in the community that might serve that particular type of student. Please review the discussion prompt thoroughly when you construct your response.
In the second discussion for this week, we are working with partnerships. Continue reviewing the data about your school system and compare it to figure 7.2 in the text (Amatea, 2013). You should provide examples from your own community for at least three of the seven partnerships listed in the model.
The written assignment for this week is where we start to build a relationship between the school and the community. Please review the list of websites that describe different types of relationships with national organizations. Then you are asked to explain services provided to children and families using the asset-based approach. Following that, you can choose one cultural event that interests you or your students at school and describe the event, explain how the values of the community are evident in that event, and the potential impact that event may have on your students. As always you must include appropriate scholarly sources of information, one of which must be your textbook, in order to support your analysis of the event.
References
Amatea, E. S. (2013). Building culturally responsive family-school relationships (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
Nieto, S. (2004). Affirming diversity: The Sociopolitical context of multicultural education (4th ed). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
Readings
Read from your text, Building culturally responsive family-school relationships:
Chapter 6: Equal Access, Unequal Resources: Appreciating Cultural, Social, and Economic Diversity in Families
Chapter 7: Understanding the Impact Communities Have on Children's Learning
Annenburg Learner. (n.d.). The learning classroom: Theory into practice: 6. The classroom mosaic--culture and learning (Links to an external site.). Retrieved from http://www.learner.org/courses/learningclassroom/session_overviews/culture_home6.html?pop=yes&pid=1863#
Recommended Resources
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. (2017, November 5). CMS fast facts (Links to an external site.). Retrieved from http://www.cms.k12.nc.us/mediaroom/Documents/CMS 2017-2018 Fast Facts.pdf
National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. (Links to an external site.) (https://www.nalac.org/index.php)
National Urban League (Links to an external site.). (http://nul.iamempowered.com)
USC Rossier School of Education. (n.d.). Asian-Pacific island resources (Links to an external site.). Retrieved from http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~cmmr/Asian.html
USC Rossier School of Education. (n.d.). Native American resources (Links to an external site.). Retrieved from http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~cmmr/Native_American.html
