Planning for Success through Strong Partnerships with Families | ECM Element 9

Session Description: All families care about their children and just like teachers, want to support their learning. It’s essential to plan to establish strong partnerships with families from the beginning.  This element examines how sites position families as partners, endeavor to build trusting relationships with them, and provide multiple opportunities for them to engage and actively participate in their children’s language and literacy development. Strong family and teacher partnerships involve open communication, respect for and celebration of differences, commitment, trust, and shared power and responsibilities. Families are active collaborators and play a critical role in their children’s learning. Opportunities for engagement are driven by families’ needs and desires.

Why does it matter?
Families are children’s first teachers and key partners in their development. Right from the start, young children’s language and literacy are nurtured in the home through interactions with the meaningful adults in their lives – parents, grandparents, older siblings, and other family members. All families teach their children many things – interests, skills, values, traditions, chores, and activities –and all of these lessons contribute to a child’s learning and development. Research demonstrates that family support for language and literacy activities at school and at home positively impacts children’s outcomes in these areas. When families and teachers form strong partnerships, young children make significant gains in their language, vocabulary, concept development, early literacy, and all learning. This paves the way for the development of solid reading and writing skills, and to a life filled with voice, self-determination, and personal empowerment.