Thompson designed an empirical study to gather feedback from African-American parents on numerous issues pertaining to their children's schooling experiences. The results, discussed in this book, can be utilized to improve the schooling experiences of African-American children nationwide. The African-American parents/guardians who participated in this study were biological parents in two-parent homes, single parents, grandparents, foster parents, and stepparents who were rearing school-age children. Some had been deterred from completing their own formal education as a result of peer pressure, temptation outside of school, or stressful circumstances. Others had positive schooling experiences and stable childhoods. Regardless of the differences in their background experiences, the majority of these parents or guardians were single-minded about wanting a better life for their children, believing that a good K-12 education and college education were crucial to their children's advancement. And while most believed resolutely in the hope offered by the public school system, they recognized that schools couldn't do it all. African-American parents and guardians are willing to work with teachers and administrators to ensure that their children receive a quality education. Yet if the historic achievement gap is ever to be eradicated, teachers, administrators, researchers, and policymakers must be more willing to view African-American parents/guardians as assets. African-American parents/guardians must be invited to verbalize their concerns, and those concerns must be taken seriously to effect meaningful and lasting change in the public school system.

This book discusses measures of work-family, conflict, policies designed to reduce conflict, comparisons with other industrialized nations, and reasons why family-friendly work-policies have not been adopted with enthusiasm.

Equity expertise from premier educators This resource showcases key chapters from critically acclaimed Corwin publications written by stellar authors. These renowned educators believe in making education accessible and successful for all students and ultimately creating a stronger democratic society. Offering a unique perspective on overcoming barriers to student achievement, they share academic research, creative ideas, and concrete, practical strategies. Key topics include: The tools of cultural proficiency Courageous conversations about race How to analyze data to uncover and eliminate inequities Equity audits Powerful classroom strategies Reflecting on practice

The SAGE Guide to Curriculum in Education integrates, summarizes, and explains, in highly accessible form, foundational knowledge and information about the field of curriculum with brief, simply written overviews for people outside of or new to the field of education. This Guide supports study, research, and instruction, with content that permits quick access to basic information, accompanied by references to more in-depth presentations in other published sources. This Guide lies between the sophistication of a handbook and the brevity of an encyclopedia. It addresses the ties between and controversies over public debate, policy making, university scholarship, and school practice. While tracing complex traditions, trajectories, and evolutions of curriculum scholarship, the Guide illuminates how curriculum ideas, issues, perspectives, and possibilities can be translated into public debate, school practice, policy making, and life of the general public focusing on the aims of education for a better human condition. 55 topical chapters are organized into four parts: Subject Matter as Curriculum, Teachers as Curriculum, Students as Curriculum, and Milieu as Curriculum based upon the conceptualization of curriculum commonplaces by Joseph J. Schwab: subject matter, teachers, learners, and milieu. The Guide highlights and explicates how the four commonplaces are interdependent and interconnected in the decision-making processes that involve local and state school boards and government agencies, educational institutions, and curriculum stakeholders at all levels that address the central curriculum questions: What is worthwhile? What is worth knowing, needing, experiencing, doing, being, becoming, overcoming, sharing, contributing, wondering, and imagining? The Guide benefits undergraduate and graduate students, curriculum professors, teachers, teacher educators, parents, educational leaders, policy makers, media writers, public intellectuals, and other educational workers. Key Features: Each chapter inspires readers to understand why the particular topic is a cutting edge curriculum topic; what are the pressing issues and contemporary concerns about the topic; what historical, social, political, economic, geographical, cultural, linguistic, ecological, etc. contexts surrounding the topic area; how the topic, relevant practical and policy ramifications, and contextual embodiment can be understood by theoretical perspectives; and how forms of inquiry and modes of representation or expression in the topic area are crucial to develop understanding for and make impact on practice, policy, context, and theory. Further readings and resources are provided for readers to explore topics in more details.

Over the course of an African American’s lifetime, mental health care needs change according to an individual’s unique interactions with his or her environment. Mental Health Care in the African-American Community uses this perspective to provide a deeper analysis of factors and issues affecting the mental health of African Americans. This comprehensive text provides a current and historical analysis of the impact of mental health research, policy, community, and clinical practice from a life course perspective. Stressing evidence-based practice as an expanded way to think and talk about individualizing and translating evidence into a given practice situation, this valuable book provides a social work context for all helping professions. Mental Health Care in the African-American Community provides the helping community with non-traditional, expanded ways of thinking and intervening in the mental health needs and care of African Americans. Organized logically, this complex subject presents data in a user-friendly way that engages the reader, and provides chapter summaries and suggested group/classroom activities to facilitate understanding. This text is extensively referenced and includes figures and tables to clearly illustrate data. Topics in Mental Health Care in the African-American Community include: a historical overview of African Americans’ mental health care a conceptual and theoretical framework for African Americans’ mental health current issues affecting mental health intervention for African Americans mental health in group homes and foster care depression substance abuse poverty ADHD suicide mental health in elderly African Americans mental health policy rural African American mental health needs kinship care multiethnic families and children much, much more! Mental Health Care in the African-American Community is a valuable textbook for practitioners; administrators; researchers; policymakers; educators; and students in social work, psychology, mental health services, case management, and community planning.

School leaders are increasingly called upon to pursue meaningful partnerships with families and community groups, yet many leaders are unprepared to meet the challenges of partnerships, to cross cultural boundaries, or to be accountable to the community. Alliances are needed among educators, families, and community groups that value relationship building, dialogue, and power-sharing as part of socially just, democratic schools. This book brings together research perspectives that intersect the fields of leadership and partnerships to inform and inspire more authentic collaboration. Contributors from the fields of educational leadership, family engagement, school-community partnerships, and education for social justice come together to examine the role of educational leaders in promoting partnerships as a dimension of leadership for social justice. The volume offers a mix of empirical, conceptual, and reflective chapters with research representing qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches in urban, suburban, and rural schools. The chapter, "Conversations with Community-Oriented Leaders," includes candid advice from district and school-level administrators on this under-documented aspect of leadership. Situating leadership for partnerships within the leadership literature, this book proposes a model for addressing tensions embedded in home-school relations and leading schools toward more authentic relationships with stakeholders. This collection of original scholarly articles will be a unique resource for new and aspiring administrators and for researchers in both the fields of leadership and school-family-community partnerships.

In the second edition of her critically acclaimed book The Dreamkeepers, Gloria Ladson-Billings revisits the eight teachers who were profiled in the first edition and introduces us to new teachers who are current exemplars of good teaching. She shows that culturally relevant teaching is not a matter of race, gender, or teaching style. What matters most is a teacher's efforts to work with the unique strengths a child brings to the classroom. A brilliant mixture of scholarship and storytelling, The Dreamkeepers challenges us to envision intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant classrooms that have the power to improve the lives of not just African American students, but all children. This new edition also includes questions for reflection

How often do you hear, "The only parents who showed were the parents who didn’t need to be here." But how often do you consider time of day, lack of child care, cost of dinner, transportation, language of the presentation, even relevance of the topic—all real-world barriers for families of our historically underserved students. Here at last is a resource that will open up access and reveal all-new ways to forge more culturally inclusive partnerships with families and communities . . . partnerships that extend well beyond parent-teacher conferences, PTA meetings, and the occasional bake sale. The two big services Equity Partnerships provides? Using the Tools of Cultural Proficiency, you’ll Discover new concepts and strategies to engage families and communities—and reduce, if not eliminate, barriers--through four essential principles: communication, connection, collaboration, and community Engage in frequent opportunities to reflect on your own assumptions and values, then collaborate with colleagues to co-create systemic practices and policies for devising, implementing, and assessing family and community engagement actions in your schools and districts We know inherently that family and community engagement is critical to the success of our students. Let Equity Partnerships be your go-to tool for breaking down the walls that for too long have limited all of us. "Raising the next generation is a shared responsibility and privilege. These authors have been first responders for decades by promoting Cultural Proficiency as a means to ensure equity and access for all. In Equity Partnerships, they identify the powerful and critical link of family, school, and community engagement to strengthen families, build community support, and increase student success." --TRUDY ARRIAGA, Associate Dean for Equity and Outreach, California Lutheran University, and Coauthor of Opening Doors

Teacher Education, Diversity, and Community Engagement in Liberal Arts Colleges examines the promise of and issues related to preparing teachers for cultural diversity through community engagement in the liberal arts colleges. This book emphasizes the transformational power of community engagement to both teacher education and the small liberal arts college. Through a careful examination of literature and reflections on practice, Lucy W. Mule underscores the community-engaged approach to teacher education, emphasizing deep relationships with culturally diverse communities, community-based pedagogy, and a consideration of institutional contexts. Building on recent conversations in the areas of teacher education, diversity, and community engagement in liberal arts colleges, she cogently examines a range of issues, from how teacher education's vision, curriculum, and pedagogy can be modified to be more consistent with the goal of educating for cultural diversity through community engagement to some of the program, institutional, and external challenges to community engagement in teacher education. The field of teacher education and small liberal arts colleges will find in Teacher Education, Diversity, and Community Engagement in Liberal Arts Colleges an excellent reason to enact purposeful change and transformation.

This book examines the process of conducting research on parental involvement in an effort to promote academic achievement across all school levels, income levels, and racial lines, theories, and research. Latunde explores the policies that have emerged to support the role of families and home-school collaboration in the education of youth, and evidence supporting home school collaboration and the need for parental involvement to improve student outcomes. She defines parental research and its role in our understanding of parental involvement and student outcomes and examines federal and state mandates for parental involvement and shares specific parental involvement resources. The nuances in parental involvement are critical to understanding the roles family play in the academic achievement youth, and how schools may partner with parents for success.