FATIMA, STANDARD 2

Standard 2: (NAEYC-INI-2010.2): Building Family and Community Relationships

Exhibit 1: Paper Assignment
Description
The selected exhibit is one of my assignments in SEEC 535, Family and School
Partnership for Academic Success, a compulsory course for the Masters in Early Childhood
program at Northern Illinois University. I feel this is one of the assignments of the said course
through which I could demonstrate my professional competence acquired during completing this
assignment with regards to NAEYC standard 2, which also puts great emphasis on school-family
partnerships. The conceptual framework outcome of this standard expects early childhood
teachers and educators to demonstrate, practice, and reflect upon why their knowledge and skills
in the domain of school, family, and community partnerships is an essential component of
successful early childhood education programs.
For this assignment, we were asked to choose a family- school related topic, read at least
three articles that focus on our selected topic, and write a 5-page reflection paper. The paper had
to include why we selected the topic, what we learned from the articles, and how we would like
to implement what we have learned in our current/future classrooms. I picked the theme of
family involvement and students success because, back in my country, my trainee teachers
complained regarding parents/ families irresponsive attitude towards the education of their
children and that due to this problem, they were unable to best address the teaching, learning,
and behavioral issues in their classrooms.
The first part of the NAEYC standard 2 anticipates the very most important aspect of an
early childhood education program: school-families/ communities partnerships and their
ultimate outcome, i.e.students success. I believe while I was completing this assignment, I not

FATIMA, STANDARD 2

only read my text book Creating Welcoming Schools, I also examined different school-family
partnership models already in place and what outcomes these models have given in terms of
students success. These readings helped me enhance my understanding of how important these
partnerships are.
This standard also demands an early childhood teacher or educator to value and use their
understanding to create respectful, reciprocal relationships, that supports and empower and
involve families. In regard to this part of the standard, the research articles I explored for this
assignment provided me great insight into the topic and it also enhanced and updated my
knowledge and understanding about the school-family/community partnerships. The knowledge
of different parental/ community involvement models through this assignment enabled me to
distinguish and acknowledge family structure and characteristics of students from diverse family
backgrounds. I also learned why schools must understand the importance of this partnership,
how an early childhood teacher and educator uses understanding of different families to make
their student progress, and not only empower families for the education of their children but also
empower the students to become an active member of the teaching learning process.
The third component of NAEYC standard 2 requires early childhood professionals to
establish a more deferential family-school partnership so that they would be in the position to
take advantage of this partnership for improved student learning outcomes. This exhibit is quite
relevant to NAEYC standard 2 because, through this exhibit, I explored different successful
family-school and communityschool partnership programs. These programs have yielded
positive outcomes towards strengthening and empowering families in their childrens education.

FATIMA, STANDARD 2

Exhibit 2: Reflection Paper

Description
The second exhibit which I have selected to demonstrate my professional competence as
an early childhood educator in relevance to NAEYC Standard 2 will explain how important
acquiring knowledge and skills about school-families/ communities partnerships is and to
explain how I would be better able to create a welcoming school environment. For this
assignment, we were given a scenario to suppose that we are going to teach kindergarten students
from diverse socio-economic backgrounds and that before the start of school, what would be
three strategies we would use to get well-acquainted with the families of these students.
Keeping in view the knowledge and understanding regarding the importance of schoolfamily partnerships, I feel this assignment will best reflect the third part of the NAEYC Standard
2, which expects an early childhood teacher or educator to use this understanding to create
respectful, reciprocal relationships that supports and empower families, and to involve all
families in their childrens development and learning. I think completing this assignment was
not an easy task because without having sound knowledge and background of the topic, I would
not be able to think and argue about devising strategies through which I could not only get
knowledge of my students, but also get information about their family structures as well.
The first step towards having this assignment done was the review of all literature we
were presented in this course. On the basis of this detailed review of reading material, I devised
my own strategies that could best meet the needs of the assignment as well as refine my relevant
past experiences. I suggested the strategies that could best accommodate the diverse cultural
backgrounds of my students and could open the lines of communication between school and
families. I tried to utilize all the human and physical resources that might be available. For

FATIMA, STANDARD 2

instance, one of the strategies to get well-acquainted with the families of the neighborhood was
to have informal conversations with my senior colleagues and school administration so that I
would better utilize their experiences to create more respectful school-family relationships.
Likewise, the other important strategy was to develop a tentative home-school
partnership action plan on the basis of my own understanding and knowledge of home-school
partnerships. The activities I designed and suggested in that action plan were according to the
needs of the young children and their families. The action plan was self-explanatory and flexible
so that any unforeseen challenges and timely activities based on the parents preferences/ choices
and their cultural beliefs could be incorporated in it. I have selected this exhibit with regards to
NAEYC standard 2 because I believe while I was doing this exhibit, I was stepping in a more
sophisticated phase of enhancing my comprehension regarding family-school partnership and its
expected outcomes. Then, I started comparing in my mind the characteristics of the families of
diverse cultural backgrounds. I was thinking of my students back in Pakistan and realized how
important it is to have understanding of our students families and their cultural backgrounds.
Meanwhile, I was also thinking about the ways I could be able to help my trainee
teachers and their principals realize this fact. They often complained against irresponsive
behavior of parents towards education of their children and I used to advise them to involve
parents. I did not share these research-based family school partnership programs because I was
not aware of them at that time. This exhibit created the sense of realization in me to improve my
own knowledge and understanding regarding family-school partnerships and how to establish
these partnerships. As an early childhood teacher educator, it was my personal and professional
responsibility to have the knowledge of up-to-date research-based family school partnership
interventions and disseminate this knowledge further as well.

FATIMA, STANDARD 2

Reflection on NAEYC Standard 2

The conceptual framework outcome of NAEYC standard 2 focuses on three major
component related to home school partnerships. Thus, this standard anticipates early childhood
teacher and educators ability to demonstrate the acquired knowledge and skills not only in their
professional life, also use this knowledge and skills in their social life as well so that a healthy
and welcoming school environment could be created for young children and their families.
These components are knowledge, practice, and to reflect.
These three essential components of the standard 2 demand an early childhood teacher
and educator to expand the sphere of their knowledge and skills of home-school partnerships by
making their understanding and acknowledging that a strong home school partnership is the
predictor of their students.

This acknowledgement can be done through the application of

their home-school knowledge to create and foster home -school partnerships.

The course SEEC 535, Family and School Partnership for Academic Success was the best
source for me as an early childhood educator to make my understanding regarding the
importance of family and school partnership and that how much is this to realize that academic
and social success of a young child depends on how much is his family involved in his
education. Further, it is the school that can create and foster this partnership so that teaching
learning could be improved and maximize the learning outcomes.
If I reflect on my learning on this important component of educating young children, I
would say, Yes, this was the course through which not only my surface knowledge transformed
into deep understanding of the content equipped with research-based family school partnership
models used throughout the world also motivated me to replicate my knowledge and skills in
order to minimize parental involvement challenges faced to my trainee teachers. This course

FATIMA, STANDARD 2

facilitated me expanding my horizon of knowledge in terms of reading and searching different

methods and strategies for more culturally responsive teaching and considering cultural
differences an important factor for educating young children.
I also learnt how important is to reflect upon our practices. This skill helped me to think
critically and recall each and every single topic of this course so that I would be able to
distinguish effectiveness of different family school partnership models and which of these
models can be best replicated in my context, how would I be able to execute that model, what
resources would be needed and how I can best utilize the available resources. These all questions
helped me to map a plan in my mind and give it a graphical shape. Through these course, I feel I
have grown professionally a lot, because as a teacher educator I lacked this knowledge and skill.
I feel more comfortable with the thinking that now I would be able to help my teachers in a more
systematic way through coordinating with all stake holders so that I would be able to bridge the
gap between school and families.
Moreover, while I think to implement my learned knowledge and skills in real life
setting, I realized that I have to build my own capacity more for more encouraging family school
partnership as there doesnt exist any parental involvement concept in my province. I feel that I
need to build my communication skills as one of my future professional goals because the main
reason behind no family school partnership is missing lines of communication between family
and school. Schools face challenges to engage families in education of their children just because
of the reason that schools couldnt communicate how they supposed to. I train teachers. If I build
my communication skills, it will help me train my teachers and teaching them different researchbased school- family partnership models. I believe my improved expertise will be helpful in
imparting training on further levels. Therefore, I have decided to become member of NAEYC so

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that I would be able to keep me abreast with the current interventions in the field of early
childhood education as my future goals for my own professional development.