This week’s chapter discusses the important roles families play in a center. As a teacher and administrative point of view, I believe our school is lucky that we don’t provide transportation because we can build a relationship with the children and their families. Someone will always have to pick up and drop off that child, so during those times we can communicate and build relationships with the families. Families are one of the biggest parts of a center especially since the success of a school depends heavily on the partnership with families. If families don’t feel valued, they won’t stay at that center long. It’s funny how this chapter has coincided with our family conferences and we just handed out our family surveys. We provide a lot of various activities and opportunities for family involvement in our center. We have become creative with ways to get family interaction because all families are different. The biggest problem we have faced was actually getting families into the classroom. It was hard especially since most of our families work in town and when it’s time to pick up their child, they don’t want to spend more time then they have to, which is understandable since most times they just battled traffic and they just want to be home already. Some creative ways we have explored family involvement is by having families take home projects to work with their child and have the child share it the next day at school. This has also worked out because it eases the transition between home and school, and families will know what activities they are learning at school.

The book had a paragraph about teachers that are not prepared to work with families. I can relate to this when I was a first year teacher. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t prepared, I just didn’t feel comfortable. All through college, I learned the importance of families to a program and how important communication is, but I remember always being nervous. I think in the back of my mind, I didn’t want to upset the family or have families think I was telling them what to do, or how to raise their child. The more I forced myself to talk to families, the more familiar I got with the situation and how most families like to hear feedback about their child from the teachers. Now my goal as a director is to have a great relationship with each family. I know it starts with saying hello to everyone that walks in our gate. The previous director and my mentor told me that families come first and you are never too busy to say hi or bye to each person. I have noticed how appreciated people felt with the simple gesture.

The online article talks about grandparents raising grandchildren. This is happening more and more often. It is a tough situation for the grandparents and a constant struggle. It makes some good points on how tough it is for a grandparent especially those who are in what they mentioned “sandwich generation” in which they are taking care of an older generation and younger generation. When talking to grandparents I know one concern that they have about the change. Raising a child is always changing from new technology to education and knowledge. One grandparent had shared their concern that they just can’t keep up with it and how different it is to raise a child now than when she was raising her own child. I do like the suggestions that they provide in the article about sharing information with Grandparents. I think the most important thing is to make sure that the grandparents feel supported!