Home, School, and Community Culturally Responsive Family Engagement , Second Edition, by Kathy Grant and Julie Ray is a comprehensive textbook for family engagement courses that uses the culturally responsive family support model to prepare early childhood and elementary teachers to work effectively with the diverse families of their students.
This is an excellent textbook for social workers, counselors. administrators and any educational professionals interested in working with families, communities and outreach in order to help kids achieve in school. There are plenty of good points in this textbook and I thought most was very good. There is one major flaw however, covering g the Common Core Standards as it they were thought up by great thinkers and professionals without reservation is very concerning. This textbook is used mainly in education preparatory programs so it is doesn't mention that law can be wrong and contradict what is basically the educational law of the land. Without looking at the educational law and curriculum and focusing on educational problems as being within children, families, and communities is just wrong. The section on the Common Core reads like an advertisement for them. That is disturbing.
I wish I had a class covering this topic and this book in my teacher preparation program. I knew the biggest weakness of my program was not preparing me to work with parents and families as a crucial part of being an educator and this book not only answered all my questions but provided ample resources, and all from a culturally responsive teaching framework. I would highly recommend this book to all pre-service and new teachers especially. I feel so much more prepared now going into my first year of teaching.
I read four chapters of this textbook at my boyfriend’s parents’ kitchen table towards the beginning of the semester and then never opened it again. Learned a lot from those four chapters though!
Shoutout to Prof. F and his lack of weekly assignments.