Home-school Relations

Book excerpt: Home-School Relations examines the contemporary family and its relationship to the school and provides educators practical advice for developing strong partnerships with their students' families. Supporting parents as full partners in education, this text stresses the need for educators to have positive working relationships with the students that they teach by understanding the families from which their students come. In addition to covering the traditional topics of ethnic families, change in families, and parent-teacher communication, Olsen, Fuller, and their contributors delve further into the issues facing families today. Looking at the effects of poverty, advocacy, the role of fathers, domestic violence, bullying, school violence on families, the authors offer practical techniques that give educators the tools to cope with the many factors affecting their students. Integrating diversity (cultural, racial, religious and sexual orientation) throughout the text, Home-School Relations is the best text available to prepare educators for all the forms of diversity they will encounter in the field. practical examples of building good home-school partnerships and fostering parent involvement.