Relationship between school and families

We want to talk about the relationship between family and school because we think that it is an important way to help the children learning’s process. According to Sandra L. Christenson, psychologist of education at University of Minnesota, family-school partnerships are a viable and essential way to increase the opportunities and supports for all students to enhance their learning progress.

Others authors talk about the importance of constructing family- school relationships. For example: Powell noted that family involvement during early childhood had moved from the orientation of how to get parents involved to how to support families to promote positive child development. Similarly, the most interesting questions regarding school-age children have moved from how to get parents involved toward what schools can do to promote positive child and family development (Smith et al. 1997). Pianta and Walsh (1996) emphasized the importance of establishing shared meaning across home and school to interrupt the cycle of failure for children.

The education of the children is determined by his family, the community and the school. For this reason it’s important to the children learning’s process that these three contexts, where the children will live, have to work together. The students whose families are involved in their education are more likely to:

• Adapt well to school
• Attend school more regularly
• Complete homework more consistently
• Earn higher grades and test scores
• Graduate and go on to college
• Have better social skills
• Show improved behaviour
• Have better relationships with their parents
• Have higher self-esteem

In other way, if the school link the community activities to the classroom it:

• Improves school-related behaviours
• Positively impacts academic achievement
• Reduces school suspension rates

We can find some different types of family-school involvement:

• Parenting: the families help the students making home environments to support learning. School offers information to the parents on how can they help the children and develops family support programs
• Communicating: it is to create a two-way of communication between the school and the family to know the children’s progress.
• Volunteering: families help school activities and functions.
• Learning at home: the families help the child to learn at home. School have to give the needed information to create a family learning environment.
• Decision making: family participate in governance activities. They make decisions about practices and policies.
• Collaborating with the community: collaborate with local business in ways to support student’s learning and their experiences in school.

Finally, if you want more information you can visit the web pages where we have toke the information:

• Department of education of New Hampshire. http://www.education.nh.gov/aboutus/index.htm
• Virgina’s Department of Education, Office of Student Services, Office of Special Education. http://www.doe.virginia.gov/support/student_family/family-school_relationships/collaborative_family-school_relationships.pdf
• Schools and families. Sandra L. Christendon and Susan M. Sheridan. http://books.google.es/books?id=eBEpEmC8f64C&printsec=frontcover&hl=ca#v=onepage&q&f=false