We are Equal Partners:
Recommended Practices for Involving Families
in Their Child's Educational Program

Edited by Margaret Hallau, Ph.D.

Contributions by Janice Berchin-Weiss, Connie Best, Melissa Caballero, Catherine Carotta, Mayra Gomez, Mary Harvey, Sacheen Hernandez, Sharon Hewes-Feulmer, Patty Ivankovic, Janet Johanson, Peggy Kile, Mona McCubbin, Cindy Murphy, Janice Myck-Wayne, Valery O'Brien, Julianne Reble, Ann Katherine Reimers, Carol Robbins, Christine Santana, Lori Seago, Sophorn Sim, and Diane Wagoner

It's "Back to School Night" and the meeting room is crowded with children, their families, and school staff members. The anticipation of a new school year is in the air. Families want their children to succeed. School staff members want their students to succeed, and they know that this is more likely if students' families are involved. For a variety of reasons, not every family is present at this meeting. The response of the school staff members to the families who are not here is critical in ensuring that all families have the opportunity to be full participants in their children's educational program.

The familiar scene described above is pivotal in understanding how families and schools can work together to enhance the education of children who are deaf or hard of hearing. When Gallaudet University's Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center began exploring areas of critical need for involving families in the education of their children, we were struck by one of the clear messages from the parents: "Ask us." Through this message, parents were expressing their frustration with programs that designed family involvement activities without much input from them and then expressed concern when the families did not show up for the activities. Maybe they were held at a time that was inconvenient for families, maybe there were transportation problems, or maybe the topics were not a priority for those families.

We wanted to find programs where families were actively involved in the education of their children so that these programs could identify strategies they used. We also wanted to find programs that helped families learn how to support their deaf or hard of hearing child's full participation in the life of the family. Through a competitive process described below, parents with deaf and hard of hearing children and educators from eight programs from around the country were selected for a National Forum on Family Involvement. This paper describes the results of the intensive, four-day forum. The results of the forum have been summarized into recommended practices for involving families in their children's educational program. We hope that educators and families can use these recommended practices to develop insights into the effectiveness of their own programs and of their interactions with deaf and hard of hearing children. For a more comprehensive description of the results of the forum, see the summary in Appendix A. For further information from the forum participants, e-mail addresses are provided in Appendix C.

This paper is organized into three sections:

Section I: Background
This section includes the background of the Clerc Center, an overview of the National Forum on Family Involvement, and the process for developing recommended practices for family involvement. It describes Partners for Progress, the process by which the Clerc Center develops collaborations with schools and programs from around the country. An extensive description is provided in Appendix B. This section also includes a brief overview of the forum and a list of participating programs. A more comprehensive description of the forum is provided in Appendix A; Appendix C describes the participating programs in detail. The multi-step process used to synthesize and verify the information shared in the forum is also described in this section.

Section II: Recommended Practices for Family Involvement
The practices are arranged into six categories:

1. Collaborating with Families
2. Program Goals/Overview
3. Resources
4. Program Structures
5. Families from Diverse Cultures
6. Student Progress

Each category contains general statements about the practices, followed by examples of the practices in action (specific strategies and activities used by the programs to implement the practice).

Section III: Appendices

A. Summary of Information Provided by Parents and Educators at the National Forum on Family Involvement
This appendix includes session notes and excerpts from transcripts of the forum. These are the source documents for the recommended practices (Section II).

B. National Agenda-Setting Process, Critical Needs, and Requests for Collaboration in Family Involvement
This is an extensive description of the process used by the Clerc Center to identify critical needs in the three priority areas of family involvement, literacy, and transition from school to postsecondary education and employment. Also included is a description of the critical needs in family involvement that resulted from the national agenda-setting process. Finally, the Request for Collaboration process is described.

C. Participants and Programs in the National Forum on Family Involvement
This is a description of the eight collaborating programs and the names of participants, a description of their roles, and their contact information. Readers are encouraged to contact the programs to learn more about the practices in action.

D. Other Resources
This section includes references from the excerpt of How Public Input Shapes the Clerc Center's Priorities: Identifying Critical Needs in Transition from School to Postsecondary Education and Employment, as well as on-line resources from the KidsWorld Deaf Net Useful Links library.

Go to Section I: Background

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