 organize volunteer work for parents to do at
home or on weekends.
PROGRAMS FOR MULTILINGUAL FAMILIES
The most promising
programs to reach multilingual families do not locate the problem of low
literacy support at home with the parents. The National Clearinghouse on
Literacy Education asserts that strengthening the achievement of children is a
reciprocal one--enabling parents to understand schools while enabling school
personnel to understand and take into account how non-English-speaking families
view their situation.
While the programs have great variety, they all tend to build on family
strengths, emphasize collaboration among early childhood and adult educators,
and place value on the families' traditional cultures as well as on the new
culture and language. Often, the programs deliberately incorporate a
tables-turned aspect--children who are more proficient in English become their
parents' teachers. For example, the Pajaro Valley program for Hispanic families
in Arizona (Ada, 1988) uses storytelling among parents and children in the
native language and in English.
Despite the growing amount of research on parent
involvement in high-poverty urban schools and number of practices to choose
from, it is too early to say what works in the long-term and why. Iglesias
points out that the present parent programs "are a conglomerate of different
approaches which differ in their goals, formats, and durations with little or no
regard to the interaction of parent characteristics and programs." So far, few
programs seem to have produced much reliable knowledge about the special needs
of very young parents, and the interventions that both create long-lasting bonds
between such parents and their children's schooling and help the parents develop
better coping and parenting skills. What does seem clear, however, is that
inner-city schools must go beyond traditional strategies that depend on parents'
initiatives and see themselves as educators of families.
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