50 Strategies for Communicating and Working With Diverse Families

"50 Early Childhood Strategies for Working and Communicating with Diverse Families "is a practical and easy to use book. It presents key concepts, discusses them in research-based, accessible prose, and provides useful strategies to facilitate communication and collaboration. The book focuses on family-centered care and education for young children and emphasizes partnering with families. Many of the strategies in this book address ideas about how to create a climate of trust by communicating in a collaborative way. The goal is to create inclusive programs that respect and honor differences in families and individuals. Teachers will love the fifty short chapters with information they can apply immediately. At the heart of all these strategies lies the welfare of the child. FEATURES:
Emphasizes the importance of partnerships between teachers and family members.Stresses the integral components of communication between diverse families and teachers or administrators.
Raises the important issue of respecting the various diversities and cultures that exist in today's classrooms.
Reader-friendly writing style and the alphabetic arrangement of the strategies-interesting, understandable, and easy to find what the student or teacher is looking for.
Interwoven, cross-referenced strategies-integrity throughout the book as the relationships between the strategies are highlighted; one strategy often mentions several other strategies that pertain to the same subject.
Broad coverage: spans ages 0-8 in a variety of different care and education settings-applies to early childhood educators at all levels-not exclusive to Pre-K; also includes child care, but not exclusively.
Goes beyond mere parent involvement and education-closely examines how a partnership may include both, but is different from the more common approaches early childhood educators often take to working with parents; promotes a family-centered approach instead of a child-centered one that is common practice.
Photos and artifacts illustrate the messages-these visual images are designed to help readers grasp information and enliven the book.
New to this Edition! Strategies organized by categories, rather than alphabetically. Emphasis on kindergarten and primary grade teachers. Diversity theme at forefront of strategies. New subjects covered include: working with families to maintain home language, holidays in the classroom, media issues, improving child nutrition, children playing outdoors, and dealing with death in the family.

Janet Gonzalez-Mena is Retired Faculty in Child and Family Studies, Napa Valley College, Napa California, where for 15 years she was on the full-time faculty until her retirement in 1998. Not only has she taught in the California community college system for 36 years, but also Gonzalez-Mena’s career includes being a preschool teacher in a bilingual program, child care director, and coordinator of a pilot program of therapeutic child care for abused and neglected children. A prolific author, her textbook achievements include: Child, Family, and Community, 6^th ed. (Pearson, 2013); Infants, Toddlers and Caregivers, 9^th ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2012); Foundations of Early Childhood Education: Teaching Children in a Diverse Society, 6^th ed., (McGraw-Hill, forthcoming); and Diversity in Early Care and Education: Honoring Differences, 4^th ed. (National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2008). Janet also co-authored Basics of Developmentally Appropriate Practice: An Introduction for Teachers of Infants and Toddlers (National Association for Education of Young Children, 2011). Currently self-employed as a consultant in early care and education, she also finds the time to write for Young Children and Exchange, and occasionally for publications in Canada and New Zealand.