50 Strategies for Communicating and Working with Diverse Families

For courses in Early Childhood Education

This text offers practical strategies for partnering with families to support, enhance, and maximise the quality of care and education of young children. It presents a plethora of ideas for creating the trust necessary for true collaboration between families and the early childhood professional, and guides the student how to develop useful programs that include all families and individuals

50 Strategies for Communicating and Working with Diverse Families, 3rd Edition presents practical strategies teachers can use to create a positive, family-centred approach to their classrooms. With myriad stories, examples, and vignettes throughout the text to help readers apply the information to real life, this text is based on the idea that a child cannot be separated from the context of the family and its influences, and when programs take a family-centered approach, everyone profits.  It honours diversity and emphasises how to make every child and family feel welcomed and respected. Key family communication issues are discussed in research-based, yet highly accessible prose. Useful strategies to facilitate communication and collaboration are presented in brief 2- or 3-page chapters. Many of the strategies in this book address ideas about how to create a climate of trust by communicating in a collaborative way. Teachers will love the fifty short chapters with information they can apply immediately. Practical and easy to use, the goal of the text is to create inclusive programs that respect and honour differences in families and individuals, keeping the welfare of the child at the forefront of all that is said and done. 

Janet Gonzalez-Mena is Retired Faculty in Child and Family Studies, Napa Valley College, Napa California, where for 15 years she was on the full-time faculty until her retirement in 1998. Not only has she taught in the California community college system for 36 years, but also Gonzalez-Mena's career includes being a preschool teacher in a bilingual program, child care director, and coordinator of a pilot program of therapeutic child care for abused and neglected children. A prolific author, her textbook achievements include: Child, Family, and Community;  Infants, Toddlers and Caregivers; Foundations of Early Childhood Education: Teaching Children in a Diverse Society and Diversity in Early Care and Education: Honoring Differences.  Janet also co-authored Basics of Developmentally Appropriate Practice: An Introduction for Teachers of Infants and Toddlers. Currently self-employed as a consultant in early care and education, she also finds the time to write for Young Children and Exchange, and occasionally for publications in Canada and New Zealand.  

50 Strategies for Communicating and Working with Diverse Families offers early childhood educators a unique and truly diverse perspective with the most practical strategies for partnering with families to support, enhance, and maximize the quality of care and education of young children. With a plethora of ideas for creating the trust necessary for true collaboration between families and the early childhood professional, the author guides readers on how to develop useful programs that include all families and individuals. Extensively revised, it reflects the most current themes, trends, research and ideas in the field today, making it the most diversity-centered text on the market for courses covering diversity and the relationships between teachers and families in early childhood education classrooms and centers. Notable updates to this edition include:

50 Strategies for Communicating and Working with Diverse Families, 3rd edition by Janet Gonzalez-Mena is unique in its practical approach to improving teaching skills of early childhood educators by offering the most practical strategies for partnering with families to support, enhance, and maximize the quality of care and education of young children. It presents a plethora of ideas for creating the trust necessary for true collaboration between families and the early childhood professional, and guides on how to develop useful programs that include all families and individuals. Extensively revised, it reflects the most current themes, trends research and ideas in the field today, making it the most diversity-centered text on the market for courses covering diversity and the relationships between teachers and families in early childhood education classrooms and centers.

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