RENT TEXTBOOKS

by: Gonzalez-Mena, Janet

ISBN: 9780137002313 | 0137002319

A targeted text that offers practical strategies for partnering with families to support, enhance, and maximize the quality of care and education of young children. The text offers ideas for creating the trust necessary for true collaboration between families and the early childhood professional, as well as developing useful programs that include all families and individuals.

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50 Early Childhood Strategies for Working and Communicating with Diverse Familiesis a practical and easy to use book.#xA0;#xA0;It presents ke... MOREy concepts, discusses them in research-based, accessible prose, and provides useful strategies to facilitate communication and collaboration.#xA0; The book focuses on family-centered care and education for young children and emphasizes partnering with families.#xA0; Many of the strategies in this book address ideas about how to create a climate of trust by communicating in a collaborative way.#xA0; The goal is to create inclusive programs that respect and honor differences in families and individuals.#xA0; Teachers will love the fifty short chapters with information they can apply immediately.#xA0; At the heart of all these strategies lies the welfare of the child. #xA0; FEATURES: Emphasizes the importance of partnerships between teachers and family members. Stresses the integral components of communication between diverse families and teachers or administrators. Raises the important issue of respecting the various diversities and cultures that exist in today's classrooms. Reader-friendly writing style and the alphabetic arrangement of the strategies-interesting, understandable, and easy to find what the student or teacher is looking for. Interwoven, cross-referenced strategies-integrity throughout the book as the relationships between the strategies are highlighted; one strategy often mentions several other strategies that pertain to the same subject. Broad coverage: spans ages 0-8 in a variety of different care and education settings-applies to early childhood educators at all levels-not exclusive to Pre-K; also includes child care, but not exclusively. Goes beyond mere parent involvement and education-closely examines how a partnership may include both, but is different from the more common approaches early childhood educators often take to working with parents; promotes a family-centered approach instead of a child-centered one that is common practice. Photos and artifacts illustrate the messages-these visual images are designed to help readers grasp information and enliven the book. #xA0; New to this Edition! #xA0; Strategies organized by categories, rather than alphabetically. Emphasis on kindergarten and primary grade teachers. Diversity theme at forefront of strategies. New subjects covered include: working with families to maintain home language, holidays in the classroom, media issues, improving child nutrition, children playing outdoors, and dealing with death in the family.

Janet Gonzalez-Mena taught in the California university and community college systems for 35 years.  She was on the full-time faculty at Napa Valley College in the Child and Family Studies Department for 15 years until her retirement. Janet started her early childhood career in a cooperative preschool as a parent volunteer back in 1966.  She became a preschool teacher and taught in three types of programs including Head Start, a program for Spanish-speaking children and their families and a home-based preschool program.  Later she became a director of child care programs and helped open several pilot projects including a therapeutic child care program and an infant-center.

 

Besides preschool, Janet’s special interests include working with parents, diversity, family child care, and infants.  In the 1970’s she studied with Magda Gerber, an infant expert from Hungary.  Recently she has studied at the Pikler Institute in Budapest where Magda came from.  Janet has written 4 ECE textbooks, plus a book on diversity and 2 parenting books, including a humorous one that is called Dragon Mom.  Presently Janet is involved in helping create a training project called “Strengthening Family and Professional Partnerships” with the National Association for the Education of Young Children.  In 2002 she co-authored Bridging Cultures in ECE, a training manual, also for WestEd.  She has been on the faculty of WestEd’s Program for Infant-Toddler Care training of trainer institutes since 1991.  Since 1998 she has been on the faculty of Beginning Together, another training of trainer institute for helping professionals learn to include children with special needs in early care and education programs.   

 

Janet lives in a multicultural family in a state where there is no longer a majority culture.  In California, everyone now is a minority.  Janet earned a B.A. in English from University of California, Davis (1959) and a M.A. in Human Development from Pacific Oaks College (1976).