Home-School Connections in a Multicultural Society

Educators everywhere confront critical issues related to families, schooling, and teaching in diverse settings. Directly addressing this reality, Home-School Connections in a Multicultural Society shows pre-service and practicing teachers how to recognize and build on the rich resources for enhancing school learning that exist within culturally and linguistically diverse families. Combining engaging cases and relevant key concepts with thought-provoking pedagogical features, this valuable resource for educators at all levels: - Provides detailed portraits of diverse families that highlight their unique cultural practices related to schooling and the challenges that their children face in school settings - Introduces key sociocultural and ethnographic concepts, in ways that are both accessible and challenging, and applies these concepts as lenses through which to examine the portraits - Shows how teachers and researchers have worked with diverse families to build positive relationships and develop learning activities that incorporate children's unique experiences and resources Disrupting deficit assumptions about the experiences and knowledge that culturally and linguistically diverse children acquire in their homes and communities, this book engages readers in grappling deeply and personally with the chapters' meanings and implications, and in envisioning their own practical ways to learn from and with families and children.

Maria Luiza Dantas is Educational Consultant and Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Patrick C. Manyak is Associate Professor of Literacy Education, Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education, University of Wyoming.

Contents Foreword - Sonia Nieto Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction - Patrick C. Manyak and Maria Luiza Dantas Part I: Home School (Dis)connections 2. "Lost Boys", Cousins and Aunties: Using Sudanese Refugee Relationships to Complicate Definitions of "Family" - Kristen H. Perry 3. The Impact of Social Dynamics on Immigrant Children's Language and Literacy Practices: Learning from Asian Families - Guofang Li 4. A Mother and Daughter Go to School: A Story of Strengths and Challenges - Catherine Compton-Lilly 5. Discontinuities and Differences among Muslim Arab-Americans: Making It at Home and School - Loukia K. Saroub 6. Building Connections between Homes and Schools - Melissa M. Schulz 7. Fostering Academic Identities among Latino Immigrant Students: Contextualizing Parents' Roles - Lilia D. Monzó Teacher Commentary - Simeon Stumme Part II: Curriculum Transformations: Learning with Families 8. Do You Hear What I Hear?: Using the Parent Story Approach to Listen to and Learn from African American Parents - Patricia A. Edwards and Jennifer D. Turner 9. Home Visits: Learning from Students and Families - Maria Luiza Dantas and Michelle Coleman 10. Networks of Support: Learning from the Other Teachers in Children's Lives - Susi Long and Dinah Volk 11. Issues in Funds of Knowledge Teaching and Research: Key Concepts from a Study of Appalachian Families and Schooling - Ellen McIntyre 12. How Knowledge Counts: Talking Family Knowledge and Lived Experience into Being as Resource for Academic Action - Elizabeth Yeager and Ralph A. Córdova, Jr. 13. Respecting Children's Cultural and Linguistic Knowledge: The Pedagogical Possibilities and Challenges of Multiliteracies in Schools - Maria José Botelho, Sarah L. Cohen, Lisa Leoni, Patricia Chow, and Padma Sastri Teacher Commentary - Christine Kane and Kim Douillard Part III: Conclusion 14. Home-School-Community Collaborations in Uncertain Times - Francisco Rios List of Contributors Index