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Families and Professionals as Partners in Communicating and Collaborating
Communicating within a team context
Teams in schools
Fostering communication within teams
The book offers ten steps that will aid open and honest communication to allow the most effective partnership possible:
-Creating a comfortable environment
-Having people face each other
-Allowing everyone a chance to participate by keeping the group small enough
-Meeting regularly at certain times
-Setting an agenda for what will happen
-Providing minutes to everyone, including absent members
-Making the goals, ground rules, individual's roles and the decision making process as clear as possible
-Appreciating and enjoying each other's contributions
Families' roles on teams
Using positive communication skills
Nonverbal communication:
Physical Attending
Listening
Communicating within a team context
Teams in schools
- The amount of support a student needs will influence the number of professionals on a team
- Special education teams deal with referral, assessment, and determination of eligibility
- Problem-solving teams work on any specific issues the student has
- Service delivery teams attend to the coordination, implementation, and evaluation of the individualized learning and progress
- Role release: happens when any team member steps out of their usual role to take on another one
Fostering communication within teams
The book offers ten steps that will aid open and honest communication to allow the most effective partnership possible:
-Creating a comfortable environment
-Having people face each other
-Allowing everyone a chance to participate by keeping the group small enough
-Meeting regularly at certain times
-Setting an agenda for what will happen
-Providing minutes to everyone, including absent members
-Making the goals, ground rules, individual's roles and the decision making process as clear as possible
-Appreciating and enjoying each other's contributions
Families' roles on teams
- The extent to which parents are involved with the team can differ depending on the family. If a family believes they are part of a team it makes a positive impact on them. As a teacher, it is important to find out what role the family would like to play, whether its more involved or less intensive. It's important to value all contributions from the family
Using positive communication skills
Nonverbal communication:
Physical Attending
- This consists of eye contact, closeness between communicators, facial expressions, and gestures.
- Different cultures have different interpretations of nonverbal communication so it is important to realize this and understand what kind of contact is appropriate for the family you are communicating with.
- Professionals should keep in mind that certain disabilities may alter how a family member is able to communicate nonverbally.
Listening
- Healthy communication requires active listening by all communicators.
- The books offers a "LAFF don't CRY" model to suggest active listening skills (McNaughton & Vostal, 2010)
Verbal communication skills
- Furthering responses: This encourages people to continue speaking. Minimal encouragers are short responses like "oh?" or "I see" that let the speaker know you are taking in what they are saying. Verbal following is another kind of furthering response that includes restating main points of what the family member has said or even emphasizing a certain word or phrase.
- Paraphrasing: This is using your own words to make the other persons message clear. You are basically repeating the important part of what the person just said to get a better understanding of it.
- Responding to affect: This is paying attention to the persons feelings that may not be directly shown, and letting them know of your understanding of those feelings. It is important to pay attention to and try to read the persons body language to gain a better understanding of underlying feelings.
- Questioning: Closed ended questions should be used sparingly because they do not allow for much interaction. Open ended questions allow for family members to share and talk a lot more than if answering a close ended question. Questions should be formed to not focus on problems or concerns of the student because they can come off as negative and give the wrong impression. It is also important to respect the family's comfort level with questions because all families will have different boundaries in regards to what they are willing to share.
- Summarizing: This is restating what the person has said focusing on the main point and any pain thoughts and feelings. It is similar to paraphrasing but is more in depth. Summarizing helps remember any highlights to what has been said, it also helps clarify and content that was not directly understood.
Solving problems collaboratively and creatively
Using creative group problem-solving approaches
The book suggests nine ways to address disagreements with families or professional peers
-Develop a vision
-Agree on a goal
-Brainstorm options to address that goal
-Evaluate benefits and drawbacks of the options
-Choose the most appropriate option
-Specify an implementation plan, including the person responsible, resources needed, and time line
-Implement the plan
-Evaluate how the results match the goals
-Modify the plan and continue to make progress
Resolving conflict and misunderstanding
- It is important to be aware and understand that families experience anxieties, tensions, and feelings that may influence how they are communicating with you. Staying calm and aware will help handle any difficult situations more effectively.
- Viewing conflict as an opportunity to make positive changes can help better deal with any conflict with families. Effective communication during conflicts will help build a trusting partnership after conflicts are resolved.
Strategies for communicating positively
- Gaining a family systems perspective: The more you are able to connect with a family, the more effective partnership you will be able to build with them. Using the family systems framework will allow a better understand of the family in general.
- Respecting families' preferences: Modifying communication strategies to fit how a family communicates will allow more effective communication. To understand how a family communicates, professionals should ask about their preferences.
- Creating supports to accomodate linguistic diversity: It may be necessary to use a translator while communicating with families who have limited english proficiency. Having documents translated to fit the family's needs is also important. Some family's are not able to read at the level expected, so understand this and adjusting any documents to fit this will benefit the family.
Low-tech written and spoken method of communication
Handbooks, handouts and newsletters: These should be written in a clear, simple language and should be printed in different languages for families who do not speak english. Make sure the information included in such methods of communication is useful, affirming, and relevant. You can personalize handouts for specific families by highlighting or starring information thats relevant to them. Newsletters can allow contribution from students an families.
Letters, notes, and dialogue journals: These strategies pertain to individual families instead of wide audiences. Negative comments about students should be kept to a minimum. Any sensitive information should be shared to parents either on the phone or face to face instead of a letter, note, or dialogue journal.
Telephone contacts: Making a phone call to parents should be about something brief that does not require a full face to face conversation. It is important to really listen to what they are saying over the phone because you are unable to see the parent's body language.
Face to face interactions
Planned meetings: Some families choose to not attend planned meetings, some choose to attend but not participate in any way, and some are active participators in the meeting. It is important to be well prepared for planned meetings and make sure the families are comfortable. Beginning the meeting on a positive note, asking the parents to share information, providing specific examples, and being aware of your word's impact on the family will all allow for a more effective meeting.
Unplanned meetings: It's important to identify what topics are open or closed for discussing in unplanned meetings. Talking with other professionals about how to handle unplanned meetings will help better prepare you for them. These can happen if you run into a family member in public, or if a parent stops by at school.
Group meetings: The book suggests informing parents on what will take place during the meeting and what time the meeting ends. It is also suggested to take into consideration what will work bests for parents and families in regards to time, location, and transportation.
Application: This chapter will definitely help me as a future educator in the ways I will communicate with families. I will use the suggestions given to communicate more effectively with families to provide the best learning for the student. I can use these communication strategies to build trusting partnerships with families I will collaborate with.