Readings
Read from your text, Building Culturally Responsive Family-School Relationships:

Chapter 11: Engaging in Collaborative Problem Solving with Families
Chapter 12: Family-Centered Parent Involvement and Shared Decisions Making in Special Education Classrooms

Chapter 14: Seeing the Big Picture: Creating a School Climate that Strengthens Family-School Connections

Recommended Resources

IRIS Center. Retrieved from http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/preref/cresource.htm

Explanation of the pre-referral process, includes information on how to involve parents in the process.

IRIS Center (pages 3-9). Retrieved from http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/preref/cresource
Description of the purpose of the pre-referral process and explanation of the six stages of the pre-referral process

Discussions

Family-School Problem Solving

Summarize the 6 steps involved in conducting family-school problem solving meetings. Explain why this process is ideal when dealing with culturally diverse families. Include why the listening and communications skills discussed in earlier assignments and specifically mentioned in Chapters 8 and 11, are key to successful problem solving. Respond to at least two of your classmates' postings.

IEP Preparation

When preparing for an IEP meeting a teacher must attempt to be culturally sensitive to all families. List and explain three (3) suggestions that a teacher can implement in an IEP meeting. The teacher's focus should be to understand a family's cultural views regarding the disability and bridge any gap that may exist between these views and the policies of the school system.

Please respond with general examples that will transfer to all situations.

Include at least one additional resource to support your thoughts. Respond to at least two of your classmates' postings.

Final Project

Your Culturally Responsive Classroom PowerPoint and Final Essay

You have been asked by your administrator to develop a PowerPoint presentation and supporting paper for the staff. The purpose of the PowerPoint is to give concrete examples, suggestions, and ideas to create a more inviting family-school climate at your site, and to entice the staff to read your full paper on the topic. Your Principal understands your desire to make change at your school site and has shown you additional research stating that family involvement supports student success. In order for your staff to buy-in to this new paradigm they must have the background knowledge and specific examples to understand the necessity of change.

Therefore your presentation and paper must:

• Address family needs and understanding
• Analyze the importance of understanding that the family/parents are the expert regarding their child
• Describe possible family stressors and include at least six resources to share with families
• Summarize current definitions and understandings of culturally responsive teaching
• Analyze research-based information regarding how culture influences an educational setting and how to support families and students from non-mainstream cultures
• List examples showing the importance of becoming connected with students' families and describe from your own experience or from a credible source one activity to support this relationship
• Describe a method for using family-school problem solving with culturally diverse families
• Analyze the role of culture and disability in your work with families
• Synthesize an approach, from the previous points in the presentation/paper, to link your school and family with your community

Requirements

The presentation should include 10-15 PowerPoint slides (enough to entice your coworkers to read your supporting paper) and a 7-10 page paper to accompany your visual presentation. Your PowerPoint should include a title slide and a references slide in addition to the 10-15 slides highlighting the major topics described above. The purpose of the PowerPoint is to persuade your co-workers of the importance of creating an inviting school climate. The accompanying paper should be well organized and professional and should be written in correct APA format as per the Ashford Writing Center Guidelines. It will be a minimum of 7-10 pages excluding title and reference pages. At least five scholarly references are required, with at least two of those being credible websites/resources to share with parents. Check with the Ashford Writing Center for guidelines regarding what is considered a credible website for a graduate level presentation.

Carefully review the Grading Rubric for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.