Inviting families into the classroom—at home

As a Speech Language Pathologist in a high needs elementary school, I was challenged with finding ways to connect with the families of our low income and English Language Learners- particularly families of my preschool and kindergarten students with language delays. Parent education and home participation is a critical part of our early childhood language development program.  Traditionally, these families are difficult to reach by telephone, and frequently there is no response from printed material sent home. Our families do not have computers, or email addresses. Many of our student's parents do not own a car, and they often work more than one job, which makes scheduling meetings challenging.  In our developmental preschool it is not uncommon that our only direct communication with individual families happens at their child's yearly IEP meeting. For the parents of children with language delays, I encourage them to work on language comprehension and vocabulary growth by asking them to "Look at picture books with your child, talk about the pictures, and read to them." I generally have just enough time in the meeting to quickly demonstrate oral reading techniques with one page from a picture book. For the most part, the parents nod their head in agreement, and accept the books that I give them to take home.  However, at three-year-old Javier's IEP meeting, his mother explained, "I'm not a good reader.  I'm his mom, not a teacher.  I'm not sure what you want me to do, and I don't want to do it wrong."  I shared with her that she did not have to read the book perfectly, and that Javier would still benefit from her talking about the pictures in the book in any way she was comfortable.

That meeting was an epiphany of sorts as I flashed back to my year of National Board Certification, and related to how this mom was feeling- I didn't know how to answer all of their questions, I wasn't sure what "they" wanted me to do, and I didn't want to do it wrong. Especially for the videotaping, where I was asked to demonstrate my teaching.

The huge, heavy "News at 5" style video camera sat on it's spindly tripod in my developmental preschool classroom throughout most of the year of my National Board Certification process.  It became our 13^th class member.  During full class lessons, small group table work and free play it seemed to follow the students and I around the room like a dark Daddy Long Legs on steroids.  Surely one of the many sessions that I taped would show the perfect lesson that I was looking to capture.  That beautiful scenario when all of the students listened to the directions and took turns answering my questions. Where they demonstrated their social skills by looking one another in the eye and making spontaneous comments about the instructional materials that I had so carefully chosen for the particular lesson being filmed.  The reality is that this "perfect scenario" never made it on film. Actually, it never happened.  A perfect lesson in a developmental preschool class is messy, noisy, and at its' best, funny.  

The video clips showed three and four year olds rolling play dough off the table and onto the carpet. Then they rolled onto the carpet.  They interrupted questions before they were completely asked, made faces into the camera, refused to share toys with their peers, or turned away from the group to create their own play scheme with the toy animals.   In other words, the videos showed preschoolers doing what they do best - learning through play.  If I wanted to play along, I had to follow their lead.

After reviewing these video segments numerous times before finally selecting the lessons I would submit, I came to fully realize the value of video as a teaching tool. I was able to see specific examples of progress in individual students over the course of the year by comparing videos shot in September, with those shot in January.  In some instances I was able to show portions of the videos to student's parents at their IEP meetings, and saw the light in their eyes as they watched their child in a world that until then had been closed off to them.  At Javier's next IEP meeting I saw his mother stare at the screen in disbelief as he sat with me and looked at a familiar book, adding his comments and gestures to    re-tell the story. She shared with me that she had never seen a movie of Javier, as her family did not own a video camera, and she asked to take the tape home to share with his father and their extended family.    

At that moment I realized that not only was Javier showing his skills, but his family would also be able to see and imitate the teaching techniques I used with him in order to encourage him to communicate effectively. I had found a way to connect, in a most engaging way, with the families of my students.