Welcoming and Communicating with Families

Welcoming and Communicating with Families

Lillian: So, in partnering with families of children who are dual language learners, considering that home languages may include also English, so they might be bilingual, right? So, I think that's one important thing, is to really understand what is that family's English language proficiency?

So many families in the U.S. are fully proficient bilingual, so we shouldn't assume, number one, that no English is spoken in the home; there's probably some. Two, if there is limited English proficiency and the family really has difficulty communicating in English, then we need to make sure there are appropriate services and supports in place to develop effective and responsive communication with those families, right?

So we need to have interpreters, but we need to have interpreters that are trained in our field, interpreters that know how to communicate with families, that understand the nuances of the kinds of conversations we're trying to have with families.

It's not just any old person off the street who can often go through our assessment protocols, our interview protocols, ask the sensitive questions we might need to ask, and so really it takes involving our interpreters as part of our team, becoming trained like we are in terms of cultural responsivity, understanding that dynamic between professional and partner, and how to build those collaborative relationships.

So investment in those interpreters really become our lens to our cameras, and if your lens is scratched, all day you will be taking pictures that we would not see very clearly, right? And those interpreters really function as that role, they're our lens into that family because we don't understand what that family is communicating to us without them.

So that is one of the critical features of working with families who speak languages other than English that we're trying to build relationships with. I think the other critical feature would be having welcoming classroom environments. Too often I've seen ...

I conduct observations all over the country in preschool classrooms and ask questions and come to family meetings and it's just part of my ongoing research and work, and what I see is that families come in the classrooms and it's like watching someone trying to jump into a jump rope and they don't quite know when to jump because the situation's new, they're nervous, no one there speaks their language and yet you said, "Come on in! We're always welcoming you!" And yet, when they get there, it's not so welcoming.

So I think it's really this reflection on how welcoming have I actually made this environment for families to come in? It's one thing to say, "Come in anytime!" It's another thing to actually have the supports in place when they come, to have somebody who speaks their language, to have a low-key activity they could participate in, using their native language around a Play-Doh center or sensory table or something that's fun and engaging. They could sing a song with the children, so just finding these ways that are authentic and meaningful for those families to engage, in their home language in the classroom setting.